Free The Devoured Earth by Sean Williams Page A

infinity.

    ‘The last climb,’ Vehofnehu told them, adding that it would probably be the most difficult stretch of all.

    ‘You know we make it, right?’ she asked the gathering in general. ‘Someone’s seen that far ahead?’

    Vehofnehu put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Do you think we’d be here, otherwise?’ His wry brown eyes didn’t reassure her one iota.

    Four of the Holy Immortals were fiddling with alphabet tiles not far from her. For the first couple of days, they had been willing to talk, answering her questions before she’d actually asked them, which made for strange and tense conversations. In recent times, however, they had avoided her, averting their faces when she approached and putting the tiles away. This time was no exception.

    As she watched, two more joined the group. One of them seemed to be weeping, while the other spoke tonelessly in their strange, backwards language. The others looked up at her from beneath their dark-coloured hoods. Thick and warm, they seemed to be doing a far better job of insulating their wearers than all the layers Shilly wore.

    ‘Are they all right?’ she whispered to Vehofnehu.

    A frown flickered across his oddly wrinkled features. ‘Yes. No. I don’t know. A long time ago, I wove a charm for my friends to help them communicate on their travel backwards through time. It would be a lonely life otherwise, to be so few in number and surrounded by people you couldn’t talk to. Now, that charm is wearing thin, and there’s nothing I can do about it. That saddens me. It doesn’t augur well.’

    ‘Why wouldn’t they want to talk to us?’ Shilly asked, but Vehofnehu only shook his head. Everything about the Holy Immortals puzzled her. The weeping woman refused to look at Shilly. Her hands made strange clutching motions at her hair, which seemed to be growing longer before Shilly’s eyes. Dismayed, Shilly realised that from the woman’s point of view, she was actually tearing out clumps of hair.

    Vehofnehu checked that Mawson’s straps were tight. ‘Are you comfortable, my friend?’

    “ Kin don’t carry ‘kin ,’ was the man’kin’s huffy reply. The high-templed stone bust lay strapped, with dignity wounded, on the back of a stone lizard sporting long horns and a forked tail.

    ‘Well, they do now.’ Vehofnehu clapped him on the chest and moved on.

    Shilly followed him. ‘What about that?’ she whispered, nodding at the glast. It stood perfectly poised on the tip of an upthrust spur, uncannily as though about to dive off into the air. The sun caught its crystalline body, making it appear to glow from within.

    ‘That, my human girl, is a very good question. One I’m not equipped to answer just yet. The stars are difficult to interpret so far away from my observatory and instruments.’

    ‘Screw the stars,’ she said. ‘Why don’t we just ask it?’

    ‘Why don’t you, Shilly?’ Vehofnehu broke his inspection of the man’kin steeds to turn and face her. ‘Have you tried? Has it given you an answer you can understand?’

    Shilly felt her face turn red. She had never heard Vehofnehu berate anyone before, and his tone definitely had the sting of reproach in it now. That she deserved it didn’t make the verbal slap any easier to take.

    ‘I — I’m afraid to,’ she said.

    ‘To ask or to hear its answer?’

    ‘Both.’

    Vehofnehu nodded. ‘Me too, Shilly. Me too.’ One long-fingered hand patted her cheek lightly. ‘One job at a time. Maybe when we reach the top it’ll talk to us, eh?’

    The Panic empyricist moved off and she let him go. She shot another glance at the glast, and saw it balancing Kemp’s massive frame on the tips of its toes with arms outstretched at shoulder-height.

    Just jump , she urged it. Go ahead and do it, if that’s what you’re thinking. You’re not wanted here !

    If it heard her unspoken wish, it didn’t obey. It closed its eyes in alien bliss, and basked in the weak sunlight until it was