Tor grunted. ‘But instead she rushed us halfway across Sarn to visit this lunatic and his hell hole. She always was too impatient.’
Noon didn’t know what to say to that, and they walked in silence for some time. A light rain began to fall, and with it the temperature plummeted. Noon watched her breath turn to white vapour and she missed her warming scales, until she realised that made no sense at all. Shivering, she pushed her damp hair away from her forehead and retrieved a knitted cap she’d recovered from Tyron’s bedroom. Ahead of her, Tor pulled his hood back, exposing his black hair and the livid skin on his face and neck.
‘Aren’t you cold?’
He shot her an irritated look. ‘The hood already dampens my hearing. With the rain as well it is intolerable.’ He took a breath. ‘It’s not as if you haven’t already seen what I am.’
Noon opened her mouth to reply to that when, out of the dismal shadows just ahead, a limb covered in jelly-like fronds swept towards them, swiftly followed by a tall, oozing shape. It was lit all over with glowing points of purple light, and there was a dark, gaping hole near what Noon would be tempted to describe as its head. It made a ghostly, whooping sound as it came, dragging its lower limbs through the foliage.
‘Quickly, let’s go round it,’ said Tor, skirting immediately to the right of the parasite spirit, moving nearly silently as he ran. Noon followed, horribly aware of how much noise her boots made crunching through the dead leaves. They quickly left the creature behind but Noon was certain she could feel it watching them go, that strange dark hole whooping after them as they left.
‘We’ll go faster now,’ said Tor as she caught up. ‘Where there’s one, there will be others, and we don’t want a repeat incident of you blowing anything up.’
Noon scowled. ‘Believe me, I do not want anything—’
There was another swarm of lights, this time from their right. This parasite spirit had a great broad head and jaws that hung down onto its chest, and it reached towards them with translucent appendages like bear claws. Tor muttered several oaths under his breath, bringing the Ninth Rain around to meet it, but as Noon looked up at the parasite spirit, it stopped.
‘That’s right!’ Tor shouted. Noon realised with some alarm that his voice was shaking. ‘Step away!’
The parasite spirit cocked its head, in a gesture oddly like a hunting dog listening for a distant herd, and it let out a series of discordant wails. Noon cried out involuntarily – the noise seemed to stab at her ears, piercing her deep inside her head – while at the same moment a great tide of sadness welled up inside her chest.
‘Brave warrior,’ she said through numb lips. ‘You have been served a great injustice.’
‘What?’
Tor took hold of her arm, pulling her away, and with some shock she realised she’d been reaching out for the thing, her fingertips outstretched. The feeling of sadness left her and they were running again, stumbling through the trees away from the parasite spirit. The smell of wet soot was growing stronger all the time.
‘What, in the name of Ygseril’s wisest roots, do you think you’re playing at?’ Tor glared at her. His skin was damp, although she couldn’t tell whether it was the moisture in the air or sweat. ‘You were reaching out to the thing like you wanted to pet it! Have you forgotten these things can turn you inside out?’
‘We shouldn’t have come back in here so soon,’ she replied, shaking his hand off her arm. ‘You’re not ready. You’re too afraid.’
From the corner of her eye she saw the expression of outrage on Tor’s face, but a pair of parasite spirits were running towards them out of the gloom. Beyond them, she could see the shattered shape of the Behemoth wreck, black against the bright grey of the sky. Without thinking about what she was doing too closely, she called out to the cold presence in her mind while reaching towards the shimmering, changing shapes scampering towards them. All at once, Noon felt larger, more powerful. The creatures in front of her were not to be feared; they were to be pitied. Nothing so sorry could possibly harm her.
The parasite spirits stopped, wavering as though they were pieces of seaweed in a strong current. After a moment they turned away, and Noon was herself once more: small, reduced, no longer lethal.
Nonsense. The voice was like cold coins dropped into her mind. You are a burning brand, child.
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know.’ Noon grabbed hold of Tor’s arm this time, glad of the solidity of it. ‘Come on, before more of them come.’
They ran together then, near arm in arm, until Tor’s hand slipped down and took hold of hers. She squeezed it, and they ran faster; heads down, they were dark shapes slipping through the mutant forest.
‘Here we are, witch. We’re here.’
On their left stood the portion of the Behemoth that they had all been inside when Noon had set off the winnowfire explosion. It was not difficult to tell; it was a blasted, twisted wreck. Pieces of the greenish moon-metal were twisted, blackened shards, reaching up to the sky and out to the surrounding trees. It was hard to make out the interior structures that they had seen on their last visit; it was all broken and in pieces, the ground itself an inch thick with pale ashes and black soot. The place stank. Noon wondered what had happened to the parasite spirits that had been caught by the explosion itself. To their right was the half of the Behemoth that had contained the sad corpse of Tyron Godwort, and the metal orbs that, hopefully, would hold the Jure’lia fluid they had come for. Tor was already striding towards it, the Ninth Rain held out to one side, pointing at the ground.
‘Go carefully,’ she said to him. ‘This is still a dangerous place.’
‘We’re nearly there.’ The look he turned on her was wild. ‘From here, to Ebora. Quickly now.’
The entrance they had used last time had collapsed further in on itself, but they could still just about squeeze through, Tor crouching so low that he was almost on his knees. Inside, they were lit with the same eerie lights, and Noon thought she could see their own boot marks in the dust. Coming back here felt like a further intrusion, and, unwillingly, she thought of Tyron Godwort, lost somewhere in a strange chamber below. She wondered if Esiah had reached him and was even now sitting by his son’s body, his mind finally gone.