Tor turned to them, raising a single eyebrow. ‘No wonder the old man can no longer bear to come out here. It is his son’s tomb.’
They stayed in the chamber for another hour, Vintage taking the pencils from her bag, meticulously recording as much as she could, the strange walls of the chamber and the incredible crystal at its heart. She and Tor walked around the other side, away from the corpse, but Noon stayed, sitting amongst the remains of the camp. She couldn’t help looking at the young man’s face, his eyes open and his head lolling awkwardly on his shoulder. Whatever the place was beyond the surface of the crystal, it had held the boy outside of time. There was no sign of corruption on that smooth face, no hint of the death that had claimed him – slowly, painfully – and yet he was dead. She wondered what that was like for Esiah Godwort; to know that his child was down here in the heart of the Behemoth. That he could come and look on his face any time he wanted, but that he would also have to face the terrible fact of his death. The bones and the running flesh. Tyron Godwort was a memory of himself, and his father was trapped by it.
Noon reached up and pulled off her cap, running her fingers through her hair. With some difficulty, she dragged her eyes from the still form of Tyron Godwort and looked at the strange landscape beyond him. A night sky, a desolate plain. Wherever it was, it wasn’t on Sarn. The thought startled her with how true it felt. Fire and blood, she was hardly the most well-travelled fell-witch, but everything about the alien place beyond the crystal felt wrong to her. After a moment she stood up, thinking of the suit of winnow-forged armour in the young man’s bedroom. She wished they had never gone in there; it felt like an invasion of a sort.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly, before walking around the crystal to join Tor and Vintage.
‘The place inside the crystal – I think it’s where the worm people come from.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I think it’s their home.’
Tor raised an eyebrow at her, but Vintage only nodded. ‘I suspect you are right, Noon, my dear. It’s no place on Sarn I’ve ever been and, of course, we’ve never known where the Jure’lia come from exactly.’ She paused, clutching her notebook, and Noon noticed that her normally neat and steady handwriting was wild and shaky. Noon pulled her hat back on. The room suddenly felt unbearable, a place of dead things and sorrow.
‘We should go back,’ she said.
To her surprise, Vintage agreed. The three of them climbed out of the chamber in silence, leaving behind the flickering crystal shard and its prisoner. Tormalin led the way out, following the corridors without hesitation. The closer they got to the exit, the more Vintage seemed to recover, some of her usual cheer returning to her voice.
‘We can come back,’ she said, patting Noon on the arm as they walked. ‘We’ve all had a shock, but we can rest, fortify ourselves. I want some time to think on the crystal, put it together with some other writings I’ve made over the years. I feel like it might be the key to the Jure’lia – who they are, what they want. That an unwary explorer can become trapped, stuck, in time. An overly curious person, perhaps, determined to find out –’ Vintage paused, and seemed to trip over her own feet. Noon grabbed her and saved her from falling, but as she helped her up, she noticed that she was trembling all over.
‘Vintage, what’s wrong?’
‘Oh my dear, I just had a thought, that’s all.’ Vintage smiled, but her face had gone an alarming shade of grey.
‘We need to get out of here.’ Noon looped her arm round the scholar’s waist, taking most of her weight. ‘Tor? Are we near the way out yet or what?’
Tor glanced back at them. He looked distracted himself, but he was standing in a ragged circle of dim daylight. ‘We’re so close we’re here, in fact. Come on. I want a glass of wine and a hot bath, and another glass of wine, in that order.’
Noon and Vintage hurried forward, stepping out onto the dark earth. The shattered remains of the head of the Behemoth stood opposite them, and the air at least was fresher. For a moment Noon felt disorientated. How long had they been in there? It felt darker than it should; they had entered the compound in the early morning, and now it felt like the early evening.
She looked up and saw a huge amorphous shape hovering over them, blocking out the sky. Baleful violet lights like diseased suns pocked its sides, and it turned its blunt head down towards them.
‘Run!’
Tor turned at her shout, his eyes widening as he spotted the parasite spirit above them. He drew his sword.
Half running, half falling, Noon dragged Vintage away from the wreckage, only for another shifting shape to rise up from behind a piece of debris that had fallen away from the main section. It was sinuous and lizard-like, a clutch of brilliant blue fronds where its eyes should be, and it rushed at them, hissing. There was a thud, and a bolt hit the thing in the neck before Noon even realised that Vintage had wrestled her crossbow from her belt.
‘There’ll be more of them,’ she muttered. ‘We really should go, my darling.’
Noon turned, looking for Tor. The giant parasite spirit that hung over the entrance to the Behemoth was shaped a little like a great long-legged insect, the main bulk of it out of the Eboran’s reach. Tor was pushing back a pair of parasite spirits with long, rabbit-like faces, multiple pink eyes shining brightly. The Ninth Rain flashed and danced, picking up and reflecting the eerie lights of the parasite spirits and driving them back.
‘Tor! There’re too many! We have to go!’
‘Quick,’ said Vintage, ‘to the other side. Perhaps we can lose them in there.’
Tor glanced at them over his shoulder, his mouth moving, but the giant parasite spirit that hung over them all had begun to make a low, desolate wailing noise, drowning out everything else. Noon turned, and with Vintage’s hand held firmly in hers, ran for the other half of the wreckage. More parasite spirits seemed to ooze out of the semi-dark, as if they were attracted by their movements. Barely thinking, she reached out and brushed the tips of her fingers across Tor’s hand as he came alongside her, siphoning off energy from him even as he shouted with surprise. She turned and threw up her free hand towards the approaching spirits, feeling the churning energy she had stolen boiling in her chest, and threw all of it with as much force as she could muster. A fat blossom of winnowfire burst wildly from her palm. It dissipated long before it reached the parasites, but they reeled back all the same. Tor had stumbled at her touch, but his face was set in grim lines, and he was still moving.
‘Good work, my dear!’ gasped Vintage.