‘It can’t be!’
For a moment Tor couldn’t think who was screaming until he saw Hest advancing on the roots, her hands knotted into fists at her sides. She was glaring at the creature standing on the roots as though it had done her a personal insult, and more alarmingly, the creature was looking back at her with something like fondness.
‘You lied to me!’ Hestillion’s voice was ragged with rage. Tor made an attempt to snatch her back but she shook him off. All around them now he could hear the men and women of their audience panicking, shouting in alarm. Someone had thrown open the big doors and some of them were leaving, but not actually that many. Despite themselves, most of them were still curious. The thing that had formed from the black substance under the roots was still shifting, changing as though forming itself; long hands with fingers like talons, hips like thorns, narrow clawed feet, all sculpted in oily darkness.
‘It is good to see the light,’ said the figure. Its voice was soft and yet still carried to every corner of the room. The voice, Tor realised, and the figure, were female. It stepped forward a little, holding up its hands to look at them. ‘To smell something other than dirt.’
‘You lied to me!’ With a start, Tor saw that his sister was crying. He had never seen her cry; not when their parents died, and not when he left. ‘I would have died for you!’
‘Dear Hestillion, special child,’ said the figure. It smiled. ‘A remarkable mind.’
‘Hest, how does it know your name?’ All at once this seemed like the most important question he’d ever asked. ‘Why does it know your name, Hest?’
He didn’t expect an answer, but his sister spoke without looking at him. ‘I spoke to her,’ she said, her voice soft and dreaming now, as though half asleep. ‘I believed she was our god, but she was a prisoner within his roots, whispering through the cracks.’
‘What is she, Hest? What is this?’
The woman on the roots turned – she hadn’t formed completely, he saw then, there were ragged holes in her forearms and calves, bisected with slimy strings of matter – and gestured, almost lazily. The remaining ooze in the roots surged into busy life again and split into thousands of tiny scurrying things, a tide of them moving out of the shadow of Ygseril and towards them, the people on the marble floor.
Burrowers had come to Ebora, and the figure that stood on the sprawling roots of his god was the Jure’lia queen.
‘Get away!’ He turned and began running for the back of the room. ‘Everyone, get out!’ Most of the guests had got the idea already and were crashing through the doors, but in their panic, many of the chairs had been overturned. He saw people falling, being trampled underfoot, and then he saw them being overtaken by the beetle-like creatures. In moments, the Hall of Roots was filled with screams, and with a wave of horror that was almost like fainting he realised that he had left his sword back in his room.
He looked back, seeking his sister. What he saw was the old Eboran who had knelt by Ygseril’s roots. The old man was writhing as the burrowers surged down his throat and nibbled busily at his eyes; they were inside him already, eating away at his soft organs and flesh and leaving behind their own excreta – black lines of it dribbled from his mouth. Beyond that he could see the rest of the Eboran contingent – some of them had had the sense to get up and were making for the doors, but most were too weak to move. He saw one woman stamping weakly at the beetle-like creatures underfoot, but they were already in her hair, their mandibles slicing easy holes into her flesh. Aldasair’s friend, the big one with the axes – he remembered, his name was Bern and he was from Finneral – had his axes in his hands now. Although they were little use against such a small, fast moving enemy, he stood in front of his cousin as though he meant to protect him.
‘Hestillion!’
His sister jerked at the mention of her name, but she did not turn – she merely shook her head, as if disbelieving. The old Eboran had stopped writhing, and now he was standing up calmly, moving with more grace than he had in centuries. His eyes were empty holes, and he was smiling.
‘Hest! We’ll die if we stay in here! Come away from there!’ Tor shouted.
A crowd of burrowers swerved towards him then and Tor danced back, his heart in his throat. One of them got a purchase on the soft material of his boots and he felt a series of pinpricks in his skin as it scrambled up his leg. Grimacing, he smacked it away, but there were already two more in its place.
‘We have to run,’ he said, although he no longer knew who he was talking to. The Jure’lia were back, they had released the queen, and it would all end here after all; just faster than expected. A bitter laugh twisted in his throat.
And then there came a voice. There were no words, but a series of feelings, impressions – it came, he knew instinctively, from the same source as the great sense of sorrow he had felt moments before. Something enormous was speaking, although it had no mouth or throat, and with a shudder Tor knew what it was saying.
A gift. A final gift.
High above them, in Ygseril’s newly living branches, something silver was growing.
44
Noon lay on her back on the enormous bed, staring up at the ceiling. There was a painting there – Eborans were keen on paintings everywhere, it seemed – and if she looked at it, following the lines and guessing at the story it told, she didn’t have to think about Mother Fast, and her missing eye or her melted face. She didn’t have to think about how even the lush grass, full of spring juices, had caught fire, or the look on her mother’s face when she had realised what was happening, or how people smelled when they were burning, the noises they made.
Noon cleared her throat, and narrowed her eyes at the ceiling.
The painting showed tall, elegant figures leaving on a ship, taking a route north, into an unknown sea. The ship had an elegant golden fox at the prow, and the artist had populated the ocean with wild sea monsters; giant squids with grasping tentacles, a thing like a great armoured crab, and women who were half fish, their mouths open to reveal pointy teeth. It was dangerous, their journey, but the artist had painted a tall man with brown skin leading the people, and he looked wise. You looked at him and you believed that he knew the paths around the monsters.
AWAKE.
The voice in her head obliterated all thought, and Noon squirmed on the bed as if she were drowning. She could taste blood in the back of her throat.
‘What is it?’
War, said the voice. It sounded both exulted and afraid. War has come for us again, my friend. Move! Quickly now!