Free The Heretic Land by Tim Lebbon Page B

drumming against the wood. He gained his feet and walked back to the cart, nervous that the same sensation would strike him again, but he was steady and sure.
    The object was almost weightless, motionless, in his hands, cool, and nothing like anything alive. It was only as he started across the clearing with the thing in his hands that the remnant began to move.

Chapter 4
remnant
    Days after MilianMu’s awakening in the cave, she catches her first food. Tiredness no longer preys upon her. Yet she is still weak and almost withered away, and it will be a while until she can move again.
    There is no day and night, only the ebb and flow of the tide to time her slow heartbeats – five beats ebb, five beats flow. She has been sleeping and ageing with the land. The shard of Aeon has been resting with her, and perhaps dreaming as well, because she can feel it still inside like a forgotten memory.
    She has been listening to skittering back and forth on the cave floor. Hearing the animal locates it in the dark, and the warmth of its meagre supply of blood has raised the temperature on Milian’s right side. She reaches out slowly and grabs the creature. There are waving, scabrous legs, a spiked carapace. She squeezes, and the sounds of breaking things echo. She puts it to her mouth as it still struggles, keen to feel its life against her lips. The dying animal moves against her mouth. There is no taste, only sensation, and she swallows because sheknows she must to grow strong. Her future awaits. The shard swells within her, a cold thing reminding her of where she came from, in preparation for where she must go.
    She chews some more. The memory of hunger is a bloom of heat from a spreading fire, rumbling in her stomach, vibrations spreading along limbs she has not been able to feel since waking. The more she chews and swallows – soft innards, spiky shell and legs – the more awake she feels.
    After finishing eating she sits for a while in the complete darkness, listening to the water washing against the shore outside the cave. She can almost feel the sun on her skin, the wind blowing abrading sand against her face, and she can taste much more than the crushed dead thing.
    She remembers arriving, and wonders how much things outside have changed.
    Another animal oozes between the rocks; she can smell it, and hear its moist skin flexing and releasing secretions that allow it to slip along. It is somewhere to her right, easing closer. She prises the thing from a narrow crack and brings it to her mouth, cool and slick. Her arm scrapes as she moves, heavy and weighed down.
    How long have I been here?
    The shard does not steer her or coerce, but it is aware. She can feel it watching, and has the idea that perhaps it has
always
watched, and kept her alive, and waited for …
    Something.
    Because it is merely a shard, not the whole. The remnant of a god.
    Bon was exhausted. After seven days at sea with poor food, sickness, dirty water and a constant belief that his next breath might be his last, he’d had to swim half a mile to shore through vicious waves, with sea things doing their best to take bites from him. His armsand legs no longer wished to function. His stomach was rumbling from the bread and meat, and he wondered whether Juda had succeeded in poisoning him, intentionally or not.
    But the memory of the dreadful murder and mutilation he had seen on the beach drove him on. And after so long fearing the light and courting the dark, the realisation that he desperately wanted to live came as something of a revelation.
    Juda led them from the small cave and into a narrow crawlspace that seemed to go on for ever. The oil lamp threw vague illumination, but it birthed shifting shadows that deepened crevasses and exposed the sharp ridges of broken rock, and after a few minutes’ crawling Bon had slashed his left thumb and right knee. Behind him Leki seemed to move soundlessly, a counterpoint to his gasps and struggles. She had grace. She