Free The Devoured Earth by Sean Williams

seven days of nonstop climbing, Shilly had become immune to spectacle. Before the sunlight faded, the man’kin procession crossed a river of blue ice, scaled a sheer cliff topped with a crown of snow, and negotiated a field of debris left in the wake of a recent avalanche. The steeds traversed every type of terrain with equal ease, jumping surely or creeping with painstaking care across, around, under or over every imaginable obstacle.

    Shilly dozed through most of it, and was partly ashamed of herself for doing so. While she hung limp in her saddle, Tom took in everything with eyes wide open.

    ‘I wonder what people back home are doing,’ he said breathlessly in her ear as their steed skated down an ice shelf to more stable footing. She almost didn’t hear him through the scarf protecting her neck from the cold.

    ‘Which home? The Haunted City or Fundelry?’

    ‘Fundelry.’

    ‘Fishing, probably,’ she said. ‘And farming and selling stuff at the market and arguing about stupid things. The usual. Why?’

    She felt him shrug. ‘I don’t know, Shilly. It just seems we’ve led the most incredible lives. Who’d have thought, all those years ago, when Lodo adopted you and I applied for Selection — who’d have thought we’d end up here, at the top of the world?’

    ‘What happened to the caves of ice and the thing that wants to eat us? That doesn’t sound like much fun.’

    ‘Oh, sure.’ He waved that protest away. ‘But right now, in this present moment, we’re the luckiest people alive.’

    She didn’t respond to that immediately. It was hard to think through the aches and pains and the second-hand grief from her future self and the fear that she might fail at the task set before her. Once she’d pushed through all that, though, she did see his point. The scenery, and the company she was enjoying it with, were magnificent. If she’d seen herself from a distance, she would have been jealous. That didn’t mean she was wrong to feel less than excited all the time. It just meant that the view from a distance showed less than everything. It didn’t show the scrapes and saddle sores and constant headaches and rising nausea. It didn’t show how it felt to reach out for Sal in the middle of the night and not find him beside her. And it didn’t show their destination, where awakening a Goddess might be the last thing they ever did.

    ‘I didn’t expect to end up here,’ she said, holding on tight as their steed galloped around a boulder set square in its path, ‘but if this was as far as I got, I’d be pretty upset, overall.’

    ‘I don’t think you’d be the only one.’

    ‘Mind you, if we aren’t around to be upset, would it make any difference?’

    It was Tom’s turn to take his time replying. They bounced roughly over a region of tumbled boulders and icy spurs. When their steed levelled out, she was simply glad to be in one piece.

    ‘I think it does make a difference,’ Tom eventually said. ‘Our lives matter. They have to — or what’s the point?’

    ‘But who or what do they matter to? The Goddess — if she really exists — is asleep, so she obviously doesn’t care much. And The Book of Towers tells us we’re better off without gods in general. If Yod’s a typical example, then I’m inclined to agree. Maybe it’s all just wishful thinking.’

    ‘It would matter to me , Shilly.’

    ‘We’re back where I started. If you’re dead, how can anything matter to you at all?’ She sighed, not wanting to think about the version of herself she saw in her dreams. ‘Maybe there’s no answer.’

    ‘Or no answer we can comprehend.’

    ‘That’s the same thing, from where I’m sitting.’

    They rode in silence until their next rest stop, an hour later, when they dismounted to stretch their legs and unkink their spines. Her buttocks were completely numb. The procession had reached a plateau abutting a sheer cliff face above them that, apparently, stretched to