Dear Lady de Grazon,
The work is slow and hazardous, as I’m sure you can imagine, but we have made some interesting progress with the outer sections of what I, for want of a better term, call the corridors of the Behemoth. As I have stated in the past, I strongly believe these beings are closer to being living, organic creatures than simple conveyances for the Jure’lia, and everything I have found so far only confirms this hypothesis.
I intend to publish my findings in the next two to three years. I have chosen to take your impatience over this as a compliment rather than the thinly veiled insult I suspect it actually is – I have no doubt that the great Lady de Grazon thinks she would have solved the mysteries of the Behemoth in half the time, but believe me when I say that there is more here than you can possibly imagine. Yes, my family have been investigating the site for generations, and they will continue to do so. My boy, Tyron, has all sorts of ideas as to how to make exploration of the compound less dangerous.
As I have said before – at length – I will not send you any maps or drawings or samples. There is nothing you could trade that I would want. You will have to wait for my book like everyone else. I do not wish to hear from you again on this subject.
With affection,
Your good friend, Esiah Godwort
Extract from the private letters of Lady Vincenza ‘Vintage’ de Grazon
Tor spent some time in front of the mirror, alternately unable to look away from the ruin of his face, and unable to look at it, staring instead at the richly woven carpet. Eventually, he stood up, found a bathroom, and bathed slowly in cold water. He could have gone down to the kitchens to heat it up, but then he would have had to face the fell-witch, and he felt strongly that she had seen him in this state for long enough. Soaping his hair and carefully cupping water to his face, he watched as dark flakes of dried blood fell away – it was black, the blood of a mortal wound, but he had survived. When he was as clean as he could manage, he went to Esiah Godwort’s rooms and spent a good hour scavenging an outfit he felt wasn’t entirely abominable.
Dressed, with his hair pulled back into a simple tail, Tor made his way down to the kitchens, where Noon was sitting at the big scarred table, a goblet of wine in front of her. She looked a little brighter than when he’d seen her last; her cheeks were flushed – the wine, perhaps – and she was wearing a scarlet velvet jacket with a high collar. It suited her.
‘I will have that drink now, if you don’t mind.’
Noon nodded once and filled the empty goblet that was waiting on the table. Tor sat, too aware that he was moving stiffly, that each movement pressed the tight skin of his shoulder against his shirt.
‘Ebora,’ he said into the awkward silence. ‘I still wish to return there. With the Jure’lia fluid.’
Noon looked up at him, lacing her fingers around the goblet. ‘The dreams, then. They were real?’
‘What a question.’ Tor half smiled, but feeling the way his face twisted strangely with the movement, he lost all urge to smile almost immediately. ‘Yes, they were real, in so much as dreams can ever be real. The conversations we had there were, certainly.’
She looked away. Perhaps she was remembering how close they had been, in that dreaming place. How they had lain together in the grass. Tor knew now that part of that had been prompted by her blood; all that time it had been seeping through his own system, quietly repairing him. Or quietly summoning the crimson flux. It was an intimacy he normally only shared with lovers.
‘The original sample of the fluid is gone,’ she said. ‘The Winnowry destroyed it along with Vintage’s carriage on the winnowline. Even if we still had it, I doubt it would be enough to effect something as big as your tree-god.’
Tor took a sip of his wine. It was passable. ‘Indeed. I will want to take as much of it as I can to Ebora, which is why we must go back inside the compound.’
Noon raised her eyebrows at him, crinkling the bat’s wing on her forehead into a curious shape. ‘Are you out of your actual mind? You really want to go back in there?’
Tor drank more of the wine. He was remembering brushing the dust from the tall mirror in the bedroom. How he had thought that it couldn’t be that bad. ‘I am saner and more observant than you will ever be, witch. We saw the containers in the Behemoth, remember? Golden orbs, just like the broken one we found in the Shroom Flats. Judging by everything Vintage said and wrote about him, Esiah Godwort was a cautious man. Those intact orbs will have been left in place so that he could observe them, get an idea of the bigger picture. There were several of them in the half of the Behemoth you didn’t destroy. It could be enough.’
‘Even so. We nearly died. All of us. To go back in there would be—’ Noon stopped, pushing her hands back through her hair, making it stick up wildly. ‘I can barely think with all this noise.’
Tor blinked at her. It was utterly silent in the house. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Never mind. Look, the parasite spirits in that place were enormous, and aggressive.’ She stopped again, wincing. ‘It’s not worth the risk.’
‘Not worth the risk?’ Tor slammed his goblet on the table, then took a slow breath. He would need the witch to watch his back inside the compound; it was important to remember that. ‘Not worth the risk? How dare you say that to me?’ He leaned forward over the table, meeting her eye. ‘Because of you, I am stuck with this ruined mask of a face, possibly for the next few hundred years. Do you know what that means?’
‘I saved your life.’
Tor laughed. There was a knot of nausea in his chest like a fist. ‘Oh yes, thank you for that. I have a chance here, witch, to save not only my god, but my people. And if the sap of Ygseril runs again,’ he pointed at the ruined side of his face, forcing her to look at it, ‘then there’s a chance it could heal this. Not worth the risk, you say?’
Noon finished the rest of the wine in her goblet, swallowing methodically until it was gone. When she put it down, Tor noticed that her hands were shaking, and for a moment he felt a brief spike of concern. He pushed it to one side.
‘Fine,’ she said eventually. ‘Why not? Perhaps going back in there will sort everything out. Make everything clearer. I don’t know.’ She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. ‘Give it a few more days, until you’re stronger, and we’ll go back in.’
‘We go back in immediately.’ Tor stood up. ‘It is a long way back to Ebora, and I have no intention of remaining in this – this state for a day longer than necessary.’