‘It’s no good, Vin. We’ll just have to force our way out.’
Vintage nodded grimly. She unhooked the crossbow from her belt – although what good that would do against the oozing substance, she did not know – and they moved as quickly as they could down the nearest corridor. Vintage kept her eyes on the circle of weak daylight ahead while the walls to either side teemed with busy life. Once, a tendril of the stuff curled out towards her, exactly like a curious finger, and she had to bite her lip to keep from yelping as it brushed her curly hair. It was like being within the busy bowels of a gigantic creature: all the vital systems that kept it alive were churning on, and Vintage was a small piece of food, waiting to be digested. She pushed the image away hurriedly.
‘There, look!’
They had come to the end of the corridor, and from there she could see the rope she had used to climb up into the belly of the Behemoth, and, bobbing below it, her small boat. It was being tossed back and forth violently, as the waves were teased into action by the simmering movement of the wreck. It was around fifteen feet away, across a section of jagged wall.
‘We’ll have to climb it,’ said Nanthema. As soon as she finished speaking, the whole section they stood on tipped abruptly, nearly dumping them both straight into the water. Just above their heads, a smooth piece of greenish metal was being twisted back into place, and further up, similar parts were moving, the pieces of some giant jigsaw puzzle.
‘And bloody quickly. You go first, go!’
Nanthema scrambled down and across, taking fistfuls of the fleshy material and using it to yank herself along; she moved, if not with grace, then at least with strength. Vintage followed on behind, the muscles in her arms still numb with fright. She gritted her teeth against her panic. It would not do to fall now and drown in the black water below, drowned or crushed in the mysterious shifting of the Behemoth.
Ahead of her, Nanthema cried out. At first Vintage couldn’t see what had caused her to do so, and then a series of bright points of light slid through the wall around a hand’s breadth from Nanthema’s head. They looked like the sharp fingers of a glowing hand, filled with blue light. A parasite spirit – perhaps they were leaving like rats deserting a sinking ship? Nanthema cringed away from it and, holding on with one hand and her boots wedged into the Behemoth’s broad side, Vintage yanked her crossbow from her belt again and fired off a shot without pausing to think about it. The bolt struck the creature and it retreated instantly, the bolt itself snapping off and falling past Nanthema to be lost in the water.
‘Keep moving!’
They made it to the small boat, although it was bucking and dipping so wildly that Vintage felt they should be no drier than in the water. Nanthema took up the oars and began trying to manoeuvre them out of the shadowed space within the wreckage, while Vintage used a small pot to bail them out; the waves were slapping at them, threatening to toss them over as the Behemoth shifted and murmured to all sides, a long sleeping beast now awakening. The black substance was running down the walls, up and down and in all directions, and everywhere it went the skin of the creature repaired itself, pulling its scattered innards back from the corrosive seawater and unkind daylight; an uncanny healing.
As they left the main section of the Behemoth behind, the whole thing started to shift forward, meeting the section that stood stranded from it. Black tendrils reached out for it like grasping hands, and identical limbs met them from the other side. Vintage and Nanthema narrowly avoided both capsizing and being crushed between them, and then they were out, the overcast sky a blessed space over their heads.
‘Careful,’ said Vintage. She was still bailing out the boat, although she could barely tear her eyes away from the Behemoth. ‘There’s wreckage under the sea where we can’t see it, and knowing our luck that’ll be moving too.’
‘Right. Keep an eye out, Vin.’ Nanthema’s black hair was stuck to her cheeks with sweat.
The small boat tossed and lurched, and more than once Vintage was sure that they must be turfed out into the unkind sea, but Nanthema kept them moving and they didn’t stop until the shore was dusting their hull. Then, without speaking, they both turned and looked at the wreck they had just escaped.
‘By the roots,’ murmured Nanthema. ‘By the blessed roots.’
As they watched, the Behemoth – and it was a wreck no longer, there could be no doubt about that – began to rise out of its grave. Water gushed from it, a deafening roar as places that had been waterlogged for centuries were suddenly cleared. Portals opened in the side of it and more seawater was expelled, so much that Vintage thought it would never stop. The whole thing rose, clearing the sea in a great dripping mass. To Vintage, who had never truly expected to see a complete specimen of the things she had studied all her adult life, it looked like an impossibly fat woodlouse, segmented and swollen, covered all over in pulsing pores. Tendrils of the black material were still crawling over it, like flies over – well, flies over something very unpleasant.
The Behemoth, nearly whole and newly alive, rose slowly into the sky.
‘What is happening?’ Vintage took hold of Nanthema’s hand and the Eboran woman covered it with her own. They both stared at the vast creature, eyes wide like frightened children. ‘What is happening?’
45
The question is: what broke our world?
Better yet: what poisoned it? They did of course. Every place they touch is broken and strange, and everything they leave behind sinks into the very flesh of Sarn to spread its tendrils of poison.
It poisons the world, but where do you put it? It’s not refuse that can be dumped in a distant ravine – the ravine will become poisonous, and the poison will spread. Put it in the sea, and the sea will also be poisoned. Attempts have been made to move the broken pieces of Behemoth, over the generations. They always result in people dying, one way or another. Even my beloved vine forest, and the grapes I have cultivated my whole life, are just as poisoned as anywhere else that has been touched by the Jure’lia.
So, instead, we build walls around our cities, the edges of towns are closely watched, and travel is a dangerous occupation, fit only for the mad and the desperate.
Extract from the journals of Lady Vincenza ‘Vintage’ de Grazon
The silver pods, high in the branches of Ygseril, were trembling slightly all over. Noon could see perhaps fifteen of them, and under the smooth silver skins living things were moving sluggishly. She had a moment to wonder if the fall would just kill them outright, and then they were falling, dropping one by one like overripe autumn apples.