Free The Heretic Land by Tim Lebbon Page A

Here, too, was the remnant.
    He glanced across the clearing to his camp, and for a moment the change did not register. He frowned, trying to perceive the difference, and because it was something taken away instead of added, he had to search further.
    It’s dropped
, he thought. He released the reins in reaction to this, leaning back against the cart, because even from here he could see what the remnant had become.
    The first time he’d seen it, he’d thought it was a fallen tree. Eight times as long as he was tall, it arced out of the ground from the foot of another dead tree’s stump and pointed north, lifting and dropping again so that he could just pass underneath it without stooping. Graceful and horrible, its surface was speckled and pocked, and close to one end it changed from pale brown to black. He’d shivered and leaned back against a living tree’s trunk, eager to touch something not so dead.
    He had decided to stay there for a while, camped beneath the overhang, before even looking at the thing again.
Such a delicate remnant
, he’d thought, naming the object without realising it right then.
    Now it had relaxed. The action of the remnant’s highest point lowering towards the ground had pushed out both extremes, tilting the dead tree at one end, and gouging an uneven furrowat the other. The five objects he had already brought here from across Skythe, and placed close to the remnant in positions that had somehow felt right, remained in place.
    ‘Someone has been here,’ Venden muttered, but he immediately knew there was more to it than that. Though there were those on Skythe who would think nothing of invading his space and stealing anything of use – the south coast was home to several settlements where those banished here had chosen to make their homes, and they were wild and lawless places – they rarely ventured this far north. Those who travelled usually did so for reasons more complicated than simple theft or vandalism.
    There were no footprints in the long grass, no signs that anyone had been here. He had been away for eleven days searching for the latest object, true, and much could have happened which the weather might have covered in the meantime. But the clearing had the sense of having remained uninterrupted. Untouched. There was a wildness here that he had sensed in many places across Skythe, as if the land had shrugged off all memory of human interaction and returned to its primal state. Even though he had lived here for almost three years, the cave and surrounding area managed to retain that feeling.
    Venden had often thought it strange. Now it was stranger still.
    He stepped from the trees’ shade and crossed the grassy clearing, unafraid, cautious. He listened for any sounds out of place, sniffed the air, remained alert, but he was as alone as ever. When he reached the remnant and held out his hand to touch it, something moved.
    Venden fell and struck the ground hard, one hand held out to break his fall, the shadow deep inside him rolling with apparent delight.The wet grass stroked across his face. Everything had moved but for the remnant. It was as if the land had shrugged, the sky shimmered, and the falling rain wavered at the audacity of Venden’s touch. The only solidity was the remnant and those objects he had brought to it – the objects he had been guided to by the shadow he carried inside – and he was struck with a certainty that if he had been touching it, he would not have fallen.
    The trees were still, and there were no sounds of panicked wildlife or falling rocks. The world had moved for him alone.
    Water soaked through his clothing. He lay motionless, looking up at the falling raindrops. Those that struck him seemed suddenly warm.
    From the cart came the sound of movement, and he rolled onto his side and lifted up on one elbow to look across the clearing. The object lay motionless where he had left it, yet he was certain he’d heard the sound of its many short limbs