Salvation's Fire Page 38

  A streak of boiling grey and white flame shot out of the core of the Guardian’s statue as if he had been pierced from behind by a blade that extended all the way to her palm. It was a flame that was gabbling as it went, explaining, protesting, words and prayers flying with it, in scraps and gibbers so garbled they could not be made out. As it fled, the veil of thick dust it wore fell away and revealed Wanderer’s previous body, an old Oerni wayfarer, tired, collapsing. As he sank to his knees and then to his side he looked up at her. “Help Bukham. Help my student,” he whispered and Lysandra nodded.

  Meanwhile, in their own tangle of wills Deffo and Tricky were still fighting, “I can’t let you end them,” Deffo was saying, weakly, unconvinced, now in the form of a young man with mussed hair and a dandy’s clothes from a long-ago era, perhaps the way he had first appeared in the world. He was trapped under Tricky, her coat become feathered wings, her hands around his throat. He was buckling visibly in terror as he choked. “It was always my duty. You don’t understand. We all had a duty. Except you of course. But I am supposed to prevent…” And then he was hit by a form surging out of the sand but very definitely not made out of it, a form that smothered and hid both of the Guardians with its massive, feral mass of teeth and claws and wolflike monstrosity.

  Fury had weighed in, but for whom and for what it was impossible to say. The three of them became a blur of fighting shapes.

  Where Bukham had been the gods had gathered and were now seething. Celestaine could make them out now, one by one, empty outlines of them anyway, as they had been shown in their temples and their devotional paintings, outlines that were gradually filling up as they gained structure and sense from Bukham’s memories of them. As he died so they expanded, legends and prayers, dreams and hopes, fears and loathings all combining to remake them in his images. Celestaine was horrified, but also awed, as she saw them begin to manifest. She was witnessing the birth of gods.

  “I don’t think so.” Lysandra put out her hand and opened her palm to the gods.

  In an unstoppable, rapid torrent the huge, trailing sails and rags of what was about to be mighty beings rushed to her like water down a mountainside, helpless, thundering to the point of contact with her palm. Within two seconds they were gone, entirely.

  Lysandra grinned at Kula and bobbed a tiny, playful curtsey. She was impish, so pleased with herself. She raised her hands up and did a little jiggle, saying in a childish singsong. “I’ve won!”

  The mass of Guardian war became a still, exhausted tangle of limbs and fur and feathers, After a second a large badger huffed, puffed and struggled its way out from the pack and lay on the ground, panting.

  On the sandy ground Bukham lay still.

  “…endings,” the badger gasped. “Duty… prevent… endings.”

  Celestaine saw the waiting creatures of the plane begin to lumber off, rather hastily and with the distinct air of tails between their legs although only a couple had anything like tails. Only one remained, a tower of black wood and claws, its long head low and tilted, some kind of shield suggesting eyes tipped in their direction as if it listened closely to all that transpired. At its back the black storm remained and around its feet and hands tiny creatures like dark mice darted and ran in mazes.

  Lysandra shook the piles of grey ash out of her dress. She looked at Deffo-the-badger and smiled. “Nothing ever really ends, it only changes form,” she said. “So—job done.”

  “What just happened?” Nedlam slurred from her hands and knees, trying to shake the grogginess out of her head. She sat back on her heels, holding her forehead with both hands as if she were trying to keep it on.

  “Lysandra ate the gods,” Celestaine said, hoarse, brushing dust away from Heno’s nose and mouth. Bending to blow it off, to feel whether or not he was breathing.

  “Hope they tasted better than this filthy muck,” Nedlam spat and coughed. “It’s like those ship biscuits, only worse.”

  The light from the lake-sky was growing. The creatures that had remained on the periphery—revenants, ghosts, shades, the jackals of the deserts—were fading away, recoiling and withdrawing to hunt the plains again in search of something to cling to, some way to keep existing. One tentacle snaked out in an attempt to snag Lysandra’s ankle.

  “Ah-ah-ah,” she said reprovingly and it shrivelled up into a tiny rag of shame and blew away in a sudden gust of wind, the first that place had ever felt.

  Tricky and Deffo were looking at each other. Deffo shrugged. Tricky shrugged and then she grinned. “That’s what I like to call a Long Game. Outplayed the bastard, at last! Now, admit you were wrong. Bringing them back was a terrible idea.”

  “But I had to,” Deffo whined. “I was made for that. Don’t you see? We are all…”

  “Tricky? I think I’m dying…”

  Celestaine looked around, trying to figure out who was speaking, and saw Ralas a few yards away, nearly buried in sand.

  Tricky looked around, sudden terror on her face. “Plucky?”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  "OH, NOT TODAY,” Lysandra said with the air of someone who has had quite enough trouble and is on the verge of losing their temper. She reached down to where Wanderer had sunk to the ground and picked up what looked like an old sack—as it came up it was unmistakably his skin and clothing, somehow together as if they had both been only a suit he wore. She shook it hard and it disintegrated, eroding with the usual speed Vadakh offered to anything untethered by the living. Dusting off her fingers she made a peremptory gesture with both hands, one in the direction of Ralas and one in the direction of Bukham who lay as he had fallen, a short distance from Deffo.

  A bolt of vivid golden fire shot from each of her movements. They struck the hearts of her targets silently and the storm of dark motes that had covered half the sky boiled backwards like waves receding from the shore on an outward tide.

  “Actually, I may have overstated the case,” Ralas said, wonderingly as he sat up from where he’d fallen. The horrid sensations of his flesh reknitting itself came again, working through his body on every broken bone and tendon but this time there was no stopping. His crooked toes realigned. His ribs straightened. “I… appear to be all right. Really, actually, all right.”

  Tricky, kneeling beside him, smiled her dazzling, crooked smile. “Look, I found this!” She produced the lute from inside her pocket.

  “But, where was it?”

  “Lying around some old mansion over in the city,” she said. “I saw it when I was looking for that dust stuff.”

  “Wait, does this mean… can I… die?” He looked at Lysandra, who was bending down to brush the dirt off Kula’s legs as the girl stood up from where she had been sitting at Heno’s side, comforting the big Yogg with little pats.

  Lysandra looked at Ralas, straightened, tucked her wild, long hair back behind her ears. “I thought I should leave that for now, seeing as you’ve got so many wedding plans, and all. Would be unfair to give a mouldy old man to an ever-youthful bride. She can kill you when you’ve both had enough.”

  Tricky blinked in surprise and Nedlam laughed. “Ah, you had me goin’ until the end bit. Dead romantic, that is.” She was holding her head and laughing, obviously hurt, but she managed to rise to her feet and pick up the worn and sludge-drenched haft of Lady Wall. She staggered over to where Bukham lay as he had before, beaten to it by an eager Dr Fisher—now returned to his less terrifying form—who was waving a jar of something under Bukham’s nose.

  “Salts of Micka,” he said enthusiastically. “Proven to raise all but the absolutely long dead.”

  “Not too much, Fishy,” Catt called out. “Too much makes them…”

  Bukham sat up and promptly vomited all over the sand. They had eaten long ago so this wasn’t much of a trouble. Wiping his mouth off he got sand all over himself and then managed to clean with the help of a handkerchief that Dr Catt reluctantly passed to him with many assurances he need never, ever give it back. “What… something’s different�
� Did something happen to me?” He stood up. He was glowing faintly all over, the coloured piebald of his skin like some strange cowhide lamp that he’d once seen on a market stall.

  Deffo looked at him, mouth ajar. He looked at Lysandra, questioningly. “Oh that’s… Did you put the old man into him? Is Wanderer…?”

  “Lost and Found,” she said. “I liked them. We liked them.”

  Kula nodded up at her, smiling and jumped up and down once, in happiness. She worked her mouth with difficulty, her speech as awkward as ever, but distinct. “Thanks. Ma”

  Then the dark creature got up from its place and the roiling dark of mice and motes surged to its back. “You should leave here. I can’t hold them back much longer.” His vermin mantle swirled around him, swarmed up his limbs to deliver all the morsels they had scoured from the dust.

  “Oh, what?” Deffo said, looking at him with a wrinkled nose and then at Tricky. “It was holding them back? I thought it was preparing to kill us all.”

  “You would think that,” Celestaine said, trying hard to be happy, trying hard not to ask the inevitable question as Heno remained still. “Not all ugly things are out to get you. We only wish they were. But… ” She looked up at Lysandra in appeal.

  Lysandra looked at Kula as if for permission. Kula nodded solemnly.

  Lysandra twitched her fingers.

  Heno took a breath.

  Dr Catt turned, holding his returned handkerchief between forefinger and thumb at arm’s length. He dropped it and it disintegrated before it hit the ground, a storm of grey shadows swirling to grab its fading threads. “So, old girl,” he looked at Lysandra. “What was it exactly the Kinslayer would have had you do here, if you’d come on his ticket, so to speak?”

  Lysandra looked around and then shrugged. “But I didn’t,” she said and held up her hand and flipped the world inside out.

  CELESTAINE LOOKED AROUND. They were on a blustery headland, wind very much in the face, soggy grass under them, within a circle of trees that reached like pillars from earth to the sky and seemed to hold it up on huge canopies of green. Through the long avenue of wild growth that led down the hill they could see the shape of Roherich’s Tower and the white gleam of Ilkand Temple below them. Of Deffo, Tricky, Ralas and Drs Catt and Fisher there was no sign. Lysandra stood beside Kula, who was holding hands with a taller, stronger girl, a Yorughan girl in a tunic and short trousers, with a grey skin and just the beginnings of new tusks pushing out her lower lip. Nedlam was still holding her head, staring around her, puzzlement on her face. Heno was getting up, looking in bewilderment as they were circled by the bronze and gold form of Horse, cantering in excitement as she went around and around the Wanderer’s Circle she had grown, brandishing her silver spear, shouting, “It worked!”

  “What…?” Celestaine was asking when Heno jumped up, almost knocking her over, his gaze on the children.

  “Azu?” he said, and his voice was shaking, his knees were shaking. He called on his power of the white fire, and nothing happened. He felt nothing, nothing at all where it used to be, not even a whisper.

  “Heno,” the girl said in obvious relief, sagging suddenly. “You came back for me. I knew you would.” She let go of Kula’s hand and rushed over into Heno’s embrace and they hugged one another tightly, Nedlam rushing towards them to see if it was true and not a trick of some kind.

  Lysandra was looking at Celestaine watching them. Celestaine shook her head, thinking she’d ask later, now not the right time. Instead of the question about the girl, she looked hard at Lysandra. “Could you bring them all back. All the ones who made you?”

  Lysandra shook her head. “Fire burns everything up—flesh, memory, form—until only the energy remains. I have been made in fire. They’re gone forever, just like the gods.”

  “And are you a god?”

  “I think it would be a very bad idea,” Lysandra said as Horse slowed down and turned in, out of breath, her javelin twined with living flowers whose scent trailed a sweet fragrance across the grass towards them.

  Celestaine got up, feeling left out. She looked at Heno and at the girl, obviously related to him now she looked closely. She asked silently as he looked at her—is it?

  “My cousins’ girl,” he said. “Azu.” Tears were running down his craggy face. He held out his arm.

  Later, she thought. Later, I’ll ask. She hurried to join the hug.

  Kula was already riding around on Horse’s back, her mouth open in excitement, eyes wide as she held on. They stayed there long enough to regain their bearings.

  “What about Deffo?” Celest asked once they’d checked themselves over and recovered.

  “I thought he could take the boat,” Lysandra said. “Tricky and Ralas have their own ways with Taedakh, um, I mean with the big dark evil-looking Vadakhi of the Storm. And Catt and Fisher wanted to see the City before it was ruined so it’s up to them whether they can tear themselves away in time.”

  “Where’s Bukham?” Nedlam asked. “And that hole in the sea thing. Did we close it?”

  “Bukham,” Lysandra said. “I think he will find his way back—otherwise I’ve made a big mistake. As for the hole in the sea—that one will fade. It’s the one under Nydarrow that’s going to be harder to deal with.” She shrugged with that eloquent move that said she’d done her bit, she was over it. “But now Kula and I are both hungry. I don’t know what all of you are going to do with yourselves—” she reached out and plucked Kula off Horse’s back and set her on her feet, “—but we are going back to town for another one of those pies.”

  “But—” Celestaine started to say, but Lysandra shook her head and held her finger up to her lips.

  “Do you think we should go with them?” Nedlam asked as they watched the two of them heading down the avenue together, hand in hand.

  “No, I think they’ll be all right on their own actually,” Celestaine said, sadly. She was already starting to miss them. “After all, a kid and a woman that can unmake and remake the world. What trouble could they possibly get in that needs three crocked has-beens?”

  “Speak for yerself,” Nedlam said with a huff, but she was grinning. “Oi, Horsie. What about a lift?”

  “You’ve got legs,” the centaur said. “But I’ll walk with you if you like.”

  “I want pie,” Azu said. “Kula said there was pie.”

  “She did say that,” Celestaine agreed, longing to go. “Oh, what are we waiting here for?” And she took Azu’s hand in her own, not even sure she was going to until she did, and then they were running down the hill after, until Kula turned and saw them and then she and Lysandra picked up their skirts and started to run too, away, and they were racing, racing fast as they could, jumping down through the wet grass, the hooves of Horse a merry thunder in the back, and it was nearly, nearly like flying.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  RALAS DUNWIN OF Forinth, scion of the noble but minor house of Parsleymaine, bard to the courts of Ilkand, was married to Gwenthyn, orphan of Tredyllant, which is somewhere far far to the South of Cinquetann on a nameless bend of river, at Cinquetann Temple. The happy couple were received at a modest roadside tavern and celebrated with a feast that went on for several days in which guests, at first few, then many as the word spread, stayed to eat and drink until they passed out only to wake later and find a silver polly in every pocket—though on the third day the Dunwins were nowhere to be found. Not that anyone minded.

  As well as paying for their stay they had managed to leave behind a rather worn leather wallet which, when the lady of the house checked it, had but one copper scit in it but later, when she had decided to give it away to her nephew he found it had one scit in it and thereafter whenever he opened it to play with it he found it always had one scit in it no matter how many times you took one out and, unfortunately on one occasion, no matter how many pollys you put in.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ONE DAY EVERYONE will realise that my works are all a rehash of 1980s classic an
imations, fairytales and the skiffy and fanty collection of the Leeds City Libraries 1978-1988 running on the Star Wars/Labyrinth engine. However, until such a time occurs and some academic punts out the critical paper proving it beyond all doubt I’d like to thank not only those things mentioned above but the following people for enabling me to become a very happy recombiner algorithm.

  This book is dedicated to my son, Daniel, who is 16 this week (June 2018). All my children have changed my outlook on humanity and the meaning of life enormously but since he was the first he did the most damage to my previously oblivious state so a great debt of thanks to him. Also to Ben and Alice: I’m sure you have many revelations yet to offer and books dedicated to you will be along in due course.

  Secondly I’m going to thank Adrian Tchaikovsky in whose sagely footsteps I have trod in creating this story. Not only did I tread on his footsteps and stamp on his characters and expand his world with wild and poorly-geographically understood extensions, I have also scribbled on his map and mucked around with all his toys. They were such great toys! In addition to that I would never have been able to write for Rebellion on this project if we hadn’t been standing at the pub carvery counter together one day and Adrian said, ‘I’m writing this fun little book for a project. I think they might be looking for other writers to…’ and I bit his hand off. They should have served that turkey a lot faster.

  Third I am thanking my editor Michael Rowley, who did a fantastic and thorough job. His instincts for pace and his meticulous help with continuity issues (arising from the fact that Adrian writes a beautiful rich history in every sentence and I seemingly forget every bit of it and then misremember the bits I do recall) were invaluable.

  Thanks to my husband for helping me stay relatively sane—not only when I’m prey to writing pitfalls but also at all other times.