Vergence (59 page)

He leant forward, lifted her into his arms again, and folded away all the sevyric iron in the room. After removing the spike, all the small separate pieces in the room felt easy. He looked up and found Sevoi was already translucent.

“Tell me,” he shouted.

“Take her home—” Sevoi said.

“How?” Ebryn called after the vanishing man, but Sevoi had gone.

He looked to where Sevoi had been. How could he to get her to somewhere he'd never visited? And Senesella had been described as hard to reach. He could hear something approaching up the stairs, sounding like a hundred dry leaves driven along by a strong breeze.

Ebryn turned quickly and walked down the room, imagining the woodlands in Fyrenar, trying to reach out and create a path between the here of the library, and the there of the cool dark green forest. From Fyrenar, he hoped it would be easier to find a way to Senesella.

A creature, mottled grey and serpentine, slithered through the shattered entrance, propelled on hundreds of spines which extended out in every direction along the length of its body. There were no eyes, simply an open maw as large as a man's head at the front of its cylindrical body, filled with rows of inward-facing serrated teeth, and lined with hundreds of small suction pads.

Ebryn tried to shout a warning, do something to protect Hoi, but he was already too far into the between, committed beyond the point of return. He struggled to cast a shield around Hoi, but nothing more than a faint golden glimmer crackled along the surface of his skin.

As the old man turned, the creature reached him, completing the last two yards with a violent lunge, and struck him in the centre of his body. The force lifted Hoi from his feet and the creature's mouth-part clamped down with a brittle crunch, sucking lips gripping and holding him in place. Hoi made no sound, but a moist sucking sound came from the creature as it worked its mouth parts — gulping once, twice.

Rearing to the height of a man, it flung the limp form of Hoi away. His body hit with a wet smack and slid, trailing fragments of organs and entrails across the floor of the library.

Ebryn looked back over his shoulder with horrific fascination even as the tides of the between seized him and propelled him forward. The creature lurched forward, turning towards him, accelerating as it slithered over the top of a table, spines rippling. Fragments of flesh clung to its teeth, and he could see the red-stained lip pads puckering obscenely as it closed.

He threw himself forward, gripping Sash to him as he forced himself into the down-flow. Rainbow colours enveloped them as the creature launched itself at his back.

Jaquit

P
ALONA AND JAQUIT
were cleaning up the mess an hour after the ground tremor. Palona harried the servants to sweep up broken glass and pottery, to right toppled furniture, and restore fallen ornaments.

Everyone looked anxious. Even the elderly cook, summoned from the kitchens, could recall nothing similar in her lifetime. Palona had dispatched an errand boy to discover what had happened, and waited impatiently for him to return with news.

They were in the entrance hall when Doctor Elali returned, looking dishevelled, with his headdress undone at the rear, his clothing torn and covered in dust. He looked tired, exhausted, as if he hadn't slept in days, with wide darting eyes, and sudden jerky movements.

“Doctor Elali?” Palona asked. “What's happened to you?”

He didn't answer, but looked at her as if he'd just seen her. There was no trace in Elali's face of his usual calm authority. Now he carried himself in the manner of one of her young Kurbehzian guards, like a battle hardened soldier. Palona became aware of the servants looking from her to him, knowing how bad it would appear if he didn't respond to her, show proper respect.

“Doctor Elali, did you hear me?” she asked.

Elali walked directly up to her, grabbed her left hand, and examined her rings. Palona was so surprised she didn't resist, letting him take her hand without protest.

“Are any of these sevyric iron?” he asked.

“Sevyric iron?” Palona said.

“Do you have sevyric iron?” Elali asked, the tone of his voice hardening.

He held out his hand, palm upwards, and a cool blue flame appeared there, suspended just above the surface of his skin. The flame produced no heat. It was there for the briefest moment, then gone.

“No,” he said, dropping her hand, and turning away.

Palona felt lost, without any idea what might be happening, thinking for a moment she must be dreaming, or she'd mistaken somebody else for Elali.

It seemed impossible that Doctor Elali could have produced a flame like that from nothing. All she could think was if her uncle knew about him.

As Elali walked away the entrance door sagged, as if under a vast weight. It groaned, then cracked, and split — falling inwards. Outside, the two guards assigned to the door struggled silently, as if wrapped in the coils of a vast invisible serpent.

Between them stepped a man, broad and powerful, with wild red hair. In one hand he held a short axe, the other closed with something molten dripping between the fingers. Numb as her mind felt, Palona thought she recognised him from somewhere, and then she recalled — the man almost always standing behind Vittore at receptions — Orim, who held the position of Ronyon.

Vittore's “steel fist” was the politest thing said about him when she'd asked, but she knew enough to also sense the fear, even at a civic banquet, from those seated around her.

“Master Yale, wherever you run to, I will follow. You cannot escape. It is not you I want — give me the name, and on my oath you are free to go for now,” he said.

“I'm afraid I can't tell you any more than you would if you were standing in my place, Orim,” Elali said. “I made my allegiance a long time ago, before you first set eyes on Vergence. I will not break it now. You work with Vittore to suppress your own kind, but a change is coming, a war, and you're on the losing side.”

Palona stood with her mouth half open, looking from one man to the other, trying to understand what Elali might be talking about, and why Orim called him Yale. She understood enough about Vergence to know it could never be threatened by war — no army could ever reach it in sufficient number to mount any kind of threat, and her uncle had never even suggested the possibility. The idea was preposterous.

She heard a grating sound, like hundreds of rough-edged stones dragging over the wooden floor, and a flash in the air between the two men, like a tiny flicker of lightning, splaying out a dozen blinding threads in all directions. When Palona looked at Orim, the after-image of the discharge forming dark lines in her vision, she found he'd disappeared into a group of indistinct figures of similar size and appearance.

Part of her wanted to flee, as some of her servants were, but her feet felt bound to the floor, her legs so loose-jointed she felt she might fall if she moved at all. An empty hollow of fear held her inside, but she remembered her uncle's pride in the courage of her people, and she knew, with a clear certainty, she would choose not to run.

Neither of the men moved. They stood facing each other with expressions of furious concentration furrowing their faces, their lips moving silently, as if each struggled to recall some vital message fragment for the other.

The room thrummed, reverberating as if repeatedly struck, and fine blue fissures appeared in the middle of the air. Halfway between the men the surface of the floor blistered, and cracks appeared in the wall at the far side of the room.

Palona didn't know how long she stood there until guards burst into the room behind her, as many as a dozen — some half-dressed, all equipped with weapons and shields, and stumbled into a flowing wall of ribbons that appeared in front of them.

As the guards fought their way past the entanglement, manoeuvring around Palona and Jaquit, a long many-legged creature, the colour of black Epitian silk, slunk into the far end of the room with its head low, like a hound following a scent. It moved with the sinuous fluidity of a serpent, gliding smoothly over chunks of masonry, weaving blindly. For the second time she felt shocked into disbelief, as eyeless it seemed to sense them, rearing suddenly to almost the height of a man.

An axe, hurled by Orim, neatly split what might have been its head, and it fell writhing to the floor, spraying a smoking black liquid across the wall. Behind the creature's thrashing body a pall settled outside, and other dark shapes appeared.

Jaquit moved near her, protective and fearless as ever. The fight between Orim and Doctor Elali, and her guards, seemed to be forgotten. Orim backed towards her as a pack of shaggy-haired jet black things bounded past the remnants of the door. Heavily muscled like cheg, but with less than half the stature and only four limbs, they spread out, and charged across the room without pausing.

Two in front of Orim were enveloped in a sheet of flame, and another ran into something like an invisible flow of engulfing sand, and from the corner of her eye Palona could see others blasted apart in front of Elali. More followed, scrambling round the edge of the hallway, and charged into her guards.

Unable to move, her senses overwhelmed by the impossible onslaught, Palona stood as if in a calm place at the heart of a storm. Behind her, in some other part of the house she heard crashes and screams, and beyond the fight yet another creature pushed into the room. This one all charcoal blue knots and tangles, like bundles of bramble oddly gathered together, with arm-length razor spurs. It shambled forward undeterred as another gout of fire washed over it, brushed off something from Elali that shattered the wall near the entrance, then gathered itself and sprang.

Orim leapt backwards as it landed, almost colliding with her. Palona caught a movement behind her, multiple low scuttling shapes with bulbous gelatinous bodies supported on long spindly legs. One brushed her as it passed, and then something light landed on her back and heaved itself up onto her shoulders with a dozen or more legs clinging to the fabric of her dress.

She screamed, and Orim wheeled round, a sword appearing in his hand as he swung. He slashed the monstrosity from her head in a spray of noxious liquid, and a boiling cloud of fire surrounded them, but Palona saw another like the things that had jumped on her lunge past and stab Orim with a stinger as long and thin as a rapier, before bursting into flames and rolling away.

Around her, the guards were falling, pummelled to the floor, grappling dark shapes or burning. She felt strong arms fold around her as bright red blooms appeared across Jaquit's back, and abruptly the room was gone.

Palona and Orim tumbled backwards through emptiness, locked in an embrace. She tried to scream with horror and fear, scream at him to take her back for Jaquit, but no sound came from her throat. She wanted to push him away, but could sense he'd been hurt and found herself clinging tighter as his grip slackened. She closed her eyes, and wished she was anywhere but in this impossibly strange place.

As quickly as she'd been snatched away from Vergence she arrived somewhere else. Her feet landed on a hard surface and the sudden weight of Orim dragged them both to the ground, with Palona on top — still half wrapped in his arms.

Orim lay on his back, his body unmoving except for his eyes and lips. With what must have taken a colossal effort, he gripped her shoulder, and pulled her down to hear him speak.

“Do … not … leave … me …”

Each word sounded like an agony, and when he'd finished he lay completely still, with nothing more than the faintest of breaths disturbing his beard to show he still lived.

Palona knelt next to Orim with tears sliding down her face, a solitary figure in the vast desolate plain of red sand and twisted rocks, while overhead a fiery wind chased molten clouds across a dark ruby sky.

Lost

E
BRYN FELL WITH SASH
clutched tightly in his arms. With a dry rattling and gust of putrid breath, he felt the thing behind him thrashing about, caught in the same flow, captured in the same small sphere as they hurtled through the between. Part of it struck him on the hip, and then seized hold of the back of his cloak.