Part 22 (1/2)

Aeon walked the land, and remembered its movement like an adult might recall his or her first steps in the world on their own. Brave and confident, facing fresh possibilities as if they would only ever result in a good outcome, not bad. It pa.s.sed across ocean floors, stepped through mountain ranges, and here and there were vistas that Venden almost recognised. Forests stretching as far as the eye could see, though these trees were larger than any he had ever witnessed. Mountain ranges s.h.i.+fting beneath colossal, timeless forces, rising and falling like ocean waves slowed a trillion times. Strange creatures the likes of which he had never seen, though in some of them he could perceive features that he might recognise in a million years.

A larger shape, a shadow, pa.s.sing across a gap between two huge trees. Wings, heavy legs, and what could only have been a face turned his way.

There were lakes of molten rock, coughing frequent geysers that threw fire bombs across the desolate landscape. The land was in flux, birthing the future with every gaseous gasp. Aeon pa.s.sed across the upheaval on long legs that barely touched, and at the other side stood scores of monoliths of cooling rock that touched the sky, smoking, a couple still glowing. Rain beat down and rose again as steam. Between them, a shape moved back and forth like a snake. This shape was as large as Aeon, its skin scaled and fine. It moved with grace and purpose. Aeon paused before it.

The two ancient creatures conversed. Living Aeon's timeless memories with it, Venden could understand the importance of the conversation, and the urgency.

The snake-creature went one way, Aeon the other.

Through tumultuous landscapes, close to where a sea was cras.h.i.+ng down mile-high cliffs, Aeon paused to touch a rock. The rock was larger than Aeon, and it moved with a fluid grace that belied its solid appearance. Its eyes were golden fires in its rough-cast face. They grew paler as Aeon and it conversed, and then it flowed into the ocean.

Aeon moved on, and its memory followed the journey.

More creatures came and went, as inexplicable as Aeon. What we cannot understand, we call G.o.ds, Venden thought. They all had a part in some tumultuous place, and Venden understood that these beings were present at the beginning of history. They observed the shaping of the world, and yet he could not glean whether the world was here because of them, or they were here because of the world. Perhaps that was something no one could never know.

Down in Skythe's frozen depths, Aeon s.h.i.+vered at these memories, and Venden did not know why. Sadness, or fear?

He remembered with Aeon, wondering what their purpose together might be.

And then Aeon asked him to speak.

Bon woke from nightmares to sparks, and the gentle shus.h.i.+ng of water on a lake's sh.o.r.e.

Beyond the fire Leki sat staring at him. Her contemplative expression did not change, as if she had not even noticed him waking. In her hands she nursed Juda's pistol.

'When did you steal that?' he asked.

'He dropped it.' Still her face did not s.h.i.+ft. She was neither benevolent nor threatening, just cold. Empty.

'Thinking about shooting me?'

'Yes.'

Bon blinked, frowning away that final image of what had been his wife. She fell and died, that's all, he thought, but of course that was not all. Milian was more than she seemed, he was sure of that now. As was Venden. And as was Leki.

'But I can't,' she continued. 'Shoot you. I can't.' She looked down at the pistol in her hands as if surprised at its presence, then slipped it into her jacket pocket.

'If you wanted to kill me-'

'I don't want to kill you, Bon.'

'But you'd have shot me yesterday.'

'If you'd interrupted the racking. But ...'

'What?' Bon stood, knees clicking. He did not take his eyes from Leki. She's so beautiful, he thought, an idea about another woman that had not touched him since Milian's fall.

'Now we need to move.' She stood and started kicking soil and dust over the failing fire.

'Tracking Aeon?'

'Yes. What else is there to do?'

What else, Bon thought, because he did not know. They had banished him to Skythe with the sense that his aimless life was not moving on, but ending. No hope of progress, no thought to better himself or make good out of bad. Too weak even to consider killing himself, his future had stretched out as an unknown land that he had no desire to explore. Then Leki, and Juda saving him from the slayers, and whispers of Venden, and suddenly he was a new man.

Now, everything had changed once more. Venden was dead. That confused Bon, because his son had been dead to him for years. Their brief reunion had yielded nothing to sate the grief, and Bon was waiting for the mourning to strike in once more, as hard as it had been picking at him since Venden's disappearance. He'd had no opportunity to know his son.

'What else?' Bon said. He turned his back on Leki and walked into the bushes to p.i.s.s. This morning she was not the woman she had been to him yesterday. Perhaps today he would meet her anew.

And Aeon was abroad, striding somewhere across the Skythian landscape with its aims obscure, its intentions unknown. That terrified him, but excited him as well. Like a ghost from the past, Aeon had returned to haunt the Ald and every lie they had ever told against it.

As he p.i.s.sed, Bon thought of Leki's comment that she would have shot him yesterday. If he'd interrupted her strange racking, she would have pulled Juda's pistol and fired at him. He could not picture her face as she performed that terrible act. But he reminded himself that she was a stranger to him once again.

'I'm ready to leave,' Leki said behind him, and Bon thought perhaps he sensed a pleading to her tone. She wants me to go with her, he thought.

b.u.t.toning his trousers, he realised that there really was nothing more for him to do. But his aim in travelling with Leki was suddenly very clear a he would do his best to protect Aeon from the forces Leki was marshalling against it. And not only because of what he believed about it, and magic, and the Kolts. That was a surface reason, but his emotional drive was closer, and deeper.

Venden had become a part of Aeon, and perhaps there was a glimmer of his son still there.

'I'm ready too,' he said, returning and smiling at Leki. She smiled back. I could have loved her, he thought. But she had become too much of a stranger to love.

'I hope you're feeling energetic.' Leki started running.

They skirted the lake, and on the other side Leki picked up Aeon's trail. She jogged into a thick woodland, scarred here and there with cracked and tumbled trees. The fresh flesh of broken trunks glimmered with morning dew, and small mammals and birds congregated around these areas of destruction. They sniffed and sang.

A new day seemed to have imbued Leki with fresh confidence, and she followed Aeon's trail unerringly through the extensive woodland, never taking the wrong direction even if some footprints were large distances apart. Bon wondered whether she was using any other arcane means to track, but he did not want to know. He followed, and for the whole morning neither of them spoke.

When the midday sun was high overhead and its heat filtered down through the heavy tree canopy, Leki stopped at a stream and filled her water bottles. Bon did the same upstream from her, glancing sidelong at her distorted reflection.

'We're being followed,' she whispered.

Bon resisted the temptation to jump up and turn around.

'Skythians. Since mid-morning.'

'How do you know?' he said.

'I just do. I hear them, but I only know one word in three. Their language isn't as I've been taught. It's regressed more than we believed.'

'Or it's advanced,' Bon said, believing that much more likely. 'More than you Ald b.a.s.t.a.r.ds know.'

'They're no threat,' Leki said, but her doubt was obvious.

'We're following their risen G.o.d that our ancestors murdered,' Bon said. 'Of course they're no threat.'

Leki did not respond, but she sat beside the stream and leaned forward, feet and hands in the flow of water. It parted and splashed around her limbs, and Bon could see the webbing between her fingers catching water as she stretched her digits. She closed her eyes.

Bon stood and stretched, casually looking back the way they had come. He could see no signs of pursuit, but he did not doubt Leki's observation. He tried to put himself in those Skythians' place a their murdered G.o.d risen, perhaps a surprise to them, or perhaps the manifestation of a prophecy; and two strangers following in the G.o.d's footsteps.