Part 24 (2/2)

It's as if they were hiding everything from us, he thought with shame. Bon had always considered himself a fair man, but he had regarded them as below him.

'Where are they going?' Bon asked after their fifth encounter.

'Into chaos,' Leki said. But she looked troubled. She had also seen her perception of the Skythians shattered. Which meant that the Ald, her employers, had vastly underestimated them.

'It doesn't have to come to war,' Bon said. He felt hopeless and helpless. He knew of some of the weapons available to the Spike, and suspected there were many more he had never seen or heard of. The Skythians were carrying sticks and stones.

Leki did not answer. They walked on.

Close, Venden said, his voice so strong that it sent Bon staggering against a tree. Edge along the next valley ... then down into cold ... Strong, but not the son he had known.

Leki was watching him from a few steps away, head tilted quizzically.

'Almost there,' Bon said.

It was midday. They had walked through the night, and now the snow was halfway to their knees. Still it fell. It m.u.f.fled their footsteps, obscured their view of the landscapes they crossed. They went west along the next valley, and then the landscape began to change.

The snowfields were pure and untouched, but across the wide valley were what looked like giant white boulders, hundreds of them, a chaotic array of tumbled rocks so frequent and large that even the snow could not camouflage them.

It was only as they approached close to the first rock that it became clear what they were.

'Ice boulders,' Bon said.

'But from where?' Leki asked. She sounded unsettled, and Bon could not blame her. Scattered with the huge objects, the landscape was distinctly alien.

'Below,' Bon said. 'The frozen heart of Skythe.'

'There's been an eruption.' Leki walked to the nearest boulder and touched it, sc.r.a.ping snow from its surface until the solid ice was revealed. It was green, deep with age.

'That's where we're going,' Bon said. Leki turned to look at him, her hand still on the boulder.

'Venden whispers to you,' she said, her voice barely louder than falling snow.

Bon nodded because he could not speak. They stared at each other, and he saw fear and fascination in her eyes. Perhaps it was a reflection of his own.

'Everything I've ever learned from Arcanum, and you're leading us in,' she said.

'Perhaps Arcanum doesn't know as much as it thinks.'

'No, it knows more. But it doesn't matter. I'll know where Aeon is, and then ...' Leki touched the hem of the jacket where she had hidden the shoot dust tube.

I will never let her, Bon thought, and it felt cool and final. He said, 'We're not finding Aeon to harm it.'

'Then why?'

'Because it's telling me to in my son's voice.'

They walked on, with nothing else to say.

Just as they reached the ragged wound in the land from which the ma.s.sive ice boulders had been blasted, the snowfall began to ease.

In the utter silence they both heard, from the dark rent in the world that looked bottomless and timeless, a breeze that might have been a breath.

They went down. Bon led, working his way carefully across the rugged, broken ground leading to the fissure. The thick snow camouflaged the sharp edges of rock and ice, and when he fell it buffered him from injury. Leki grabbed his arm and helped him up, and he thought once again of her husband. He knew that the affection between them was not in his eyes only, but the idea that it had been a part of her ploy a a way for her to remain close to him, and so grow potentially closer to magic and the rumoured rising G.o.d a made him feel sick. Not because she had taken advantage of him a he was coming to accept that had happened before, in some way, with Milian a but because his feelings for Leki had been growing. Even before finding Venden, she had given him a reason to look forward to the next day.

The caverns caught light in chaotic ice sculptures, filtering down from above and sucked inward as if those deep, dark places drew it down. Soon there was no snow covering, but ice still covered the ground.

If it erupts again ... Bon thought, but there was no benefit in thinking that way. If the same powers rose once more, he and Leki would be crushed and merged with the eruptions, red smears on ice that had existed at these depths for so long. They were climbing past evidence of Skythe's tragic history. Before the war, these caverns might have been warm with the fires of Skythe's contented heart. Now they resounded with the chill of death. It was as if magic's corruption had made a cadaver of the land.

'How deep?' Leki asked from behind Bon.

'We'll know when we get there,' he said. 'Why? Afraid?'

Leki did not answer. When Bon glanced back at her she was glaring at him as if about to speak. But she remained silent.

'I am,' he said. A great ice wall stood to their left, and it seemed to glow with an inner light. Shapes and shadows existed deep within. Perhaps this had once been a wall of fire. He placed his hand against the ice. As if the contact was a signal, a waft of warmer air came from below, deeper down. It carried no scent, but was heavy with moisture.

'Just listen to your voices and move along,' Leki said. 'The time's long gone for standing still.'

Time seemed to distort a frozen, shattered, and melded back together by the ice. They went deeper, along ice tunnels and into creva.s.ses that would have been deadly if another ground-s.h.i.+fting event took place. No water flowed or dripped. This was a completely frozen environment, and though warmer air occasionally wafted up from below, there was no indication of thaw.

Deeper, Venden whispered in his ear, and Bon looked around, startled. Leki had heard nothing. There was no echo. Not far now ... not far.

'And what does Aeon want of us?' Bon asked aloud. There was no reply, other than Leki's troubled look. 'Will you know the way out?' Bon asked her. She was Arcanum, after all.

Leki nodded, but he saw doubt cloud her expression.

They moved deeper, deeper. A solid waterfall threw off a haze as though its spray had also been frozen. Jagged razors of ice promised pain if they slipped. Deep fissures offered dark oblivion. They kept to the easiest routes, and it was almost as if their path was being illuminated for them. The air carried light tainted with the hues of deep time a heavy greens, blues, the solidity of ice formed from the ruins of Skythe's dreams.

Bon listened for Venden. But his dead son only spoke to him again when they stood before the fallen thing, risen once more.

And Venden stood before them.

After Aeon's words came the pain.

Venden's physical pa.s.sing had been brief but awful. He had felt his body coming apart, aware of the terrible damage being wrought upon the sh.e.l.l he had always known, the vessel that had been him. The realisation had been worse than the pain a that this was the end, and that the ripping, rending, splas.h.i.+ng finality could never be reversed. Then had come the strange continuation as part of Aeon, not apart from it. His mind persisting, not entirely as it had been and yet still an independent glimmer in the ferocious blaze of Aeon's new existence.

This was different. The agony of being brought together was a whole new order of pain, because it was not simply a fleeting moment in time. He felt flesh and bone and blood a.s.sembling, and every newfound nerve knew it to be wrong. His mind received each signalled agony and held onto it. Bones melded, blood liquefied and flowed, flesh knitted, skin and veins formed, and the most complex form in the world a a living, breathing thing a came into being from the body of Aeon. Venden screamed in his mind, and then realised that he could hear that scream as well, feel it itching his throat and vibrating through his chest, and taste the spray of blood that hazed the air before him. He took in a deep, juddering breath and screamed again, and he felt a wash of pity swilling around him as Aeon s.h.i.+fted position.

It was in his mind, as he had been in its own. It was a connection both physical and ephemeral. He was still a facet of Aeon, a Venden-shaped projection like a limb giving itself to another use, with thin fleshy constructs connecting them. He had his own face, his own hair, and looking down across his naked body he was struck with a startling familiarity. It's been so long since I have seen myself, he thought, although perhaps it had only been a day. Being a solid thing felt so wrong.

Venden opened his mouth to cry out again, but then the pain began to subside. His naked and bloodied body swaying in that freezing cavern. The ma.s.s of Aeon was behind him, and before him were great ice walls glimmering with their own inner light. He s.h.i.+vered. A mist of warm air drifted across him from Aeon to swill the blood from his skin.

Aeon wants me as myself for when my father comes, Venden thought.

'Venden Ugane,' he said, his voice barely a croak. He said his name again, more evenly. And again. By the time he heard scrambling footsteps descending towards the cavern, he could almost believe he was himself again.

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