‘Kiska!’
She blinked, startled. She’d dropped off again. She levered herself up by the elbows. ‘Yes?’
He gestured her to him. ‘Come here. Listen. What do you make of this?’
Crawling to the cave mouth was one of the hardest things Kiska had ever forced herself to do. She thought she could hear her every sinew and ligament creaking and stretching as she moved. She fancied she could see the bones of her hands through her dusty cracked skin. She planted herself next to Jheval, who appeared to be watching her carefully. ‘Yes?’ she demanded.
He glanced away and seemed to crook a smile as he turned to the silvery monochrome landscape beyond. ‘Listen.’
Listen? Listen to what? Our flesh rotting? The sighing of sands? There’s nothing She heard something. Creaking. Loud abrasive squeaking and creaking like wood on wood. What in the world? Or — in Shadow?
‘Perhaps we should have a look, yes?’
‘It does sound… close.’
The man was grinning now through the caked-on dirt of his face. How pale the son of the desert looked now, dust-covered. Like a ghost. Though a lively one. She felt a kind of resentful admiration: he seemed to not know how to give up.
‘Very good. The both of us, yes? Side by side.’
She nodded, swallowed to sluice the grit from her mouth. ‘Yes. Let’s go. I have to get out of here.’
‘Yes. I feel it too.’ He edged forward, hunched, then straightened outside the narrow crack. Kiska picked up her staff and followed. Out on the sand slope she expected the air to be fresher and cooler, different somehow. Yet the lifeless atmosphere seemed no better. It was as if all Shadow was stale, somehow suspended.
They climbed a nearby bare hill. Kiska tried to be watchful. She knew they should expect an attack at any instant. But she could not muster the necessary focus; she just felt exhausted by all the waiting and almost wanted to have it over with. And no hound appeared. When they reached the crest and looked beyond, they saw why.
It was a migration. Across the plain before them stretched columns of large creatures. Through the plumes of dust it appeared as if many of them marched in teams, heaving on ropes drawing gigantic boats lashed to wheeled platforms. It was the ear-splitting screeching of these wooden wheels that assaulted them, even from this great distance.
‘Locals on the move,’ Jheval said, and started down the hillside.
Kiska followed, reluctant. Walking out upon them in the open? How could he know they weren’t hostile? They didn’t look even vaguely human.
Before they reached the lowest hill a figure veered towards them, a picket, or outlier of some sort. As they neared, he — or she, or it — reared ever taller until it became clear to Kiska that it was nearly twice their height. It was, clearly, a daemon, a Shadow creature. Dull black, furred in parts, carrying on its back a brace of spears twice again its own height. It looked insectile: multiple-faceted eyes, a mouthful of oversized fangs, out-of-proportion skinny limbs that appeared armoured. Jheval hailed it, waving. Kiska gripped her staff and winced. She almost shouted: How do you know it speaks our language? How do you know it won’t eat you?
It stopped, peered down to regard the two of them. Jheval stood with arms crossed, examining the creature in turn. Kiska kept her staff at the ready.
‘Do you understand this language?’ Jheval asked.
‘Yes, I know this tongue,’ it replied in a startlingly high piping voice.
Jheval was clearly surprised. ‘You do? Why?’
‘This is the language of the pretenders.’
Pretenders? Ah! Cotillion and Shadowthrone.
‘Greetings. I am Jheval. This is Kiska.’
‘My name would translate as Least Branch.’
Jheval gestured beyond, to the columns of its brethren. ‘You are on some sort of migration?’
‘Yes. Though not one of our choice. We have been forced to move. Our home has been destroyed.’
Destroyed? Queen forfend! What force could possibly overcome an entire race of Shadow daemons? And here, in their own homeland.
Jheval was studying the columns. ‘You are sea-people?’
‘Yes. We fished the giant bottom-feeders. We gathered among the shallow wetlands. But the great lake that has supported my people since before yours rose up on your hind legs has been taken from us. Great Ixpcotlet! How we mourn its passing.’
An entire lake gone? ‘What happened?’ Kiska asked, astonished. This went against all her impressions of a timeless Shadow realm.
She imagined that many expressions must be flitting across Least Branch’s face, but she and Jheval could not read them. ‘A Chaos Whorl has eaten into this realm you call Emurlahn. It has swallowed Ixpcotlet. It grows even as we flee.’
Kiska almost dropped her staff. ‘A Whorl? Like a Void? Touching Chaos?’
Some sort of membrane shuttered across Least Branch’s eyes — an expression of surprise? ‘Yes. Just so. We go to find another body of water, and to warn others. Perhaps we may even find the Guardian.’
Kiska stared anew. ‘A guardian? Gaunt, ancient? Carries a sword?’
The creature took a step backwards, obviously stunned. ‘You know of him?’
‘Yes. I’ve met him. He calls himself Edgewalker.’
‘He spoke to you? That is… unusual. We name him the Guardian.’
Jheval was eyeing her, clearly surprised himself.
Least Branch gestured, inviting them to accompany him. ‘Come, won’t you? Don’t you know it is dangerous out here? The Hounds are about.’
All the way down the hill Kiska wondered if Least Branch was tempted to ask why the two of them laughed so much. How they chuckled uncontrollably, then, catching one another’s gaze, burst out anew. Don’t you know the Hounds are about?
Least Branch led them to the rear of the migration. They passed two of the boats. Each towered over them, scaled to their gigantic makers. They rumbled on their immense platforms pulled by teams of hundred of the daemons. The dust blinded and choked them and Kiska glimpsed Jheval untying the cloth wrapped about his helmet to wind it over his mouth and face. She imitated him, winding a scarf over her face and leaving only a slit for her vision. The noise was the worst, as wooden wheels shrieked against wooden axles. The daemons did not seem to mind the cacophony but it almost drove Kiska mad.
Behind the horde, among the churned-up dirt, the shin-deep ruts and tossed rubbish, the gnawed bones, broken pots and excrement, Least Branch stopped to point back along the trail of broken earth. ‘Just follow our path. You cannot miss it. But you do not really seek this Whorl, do you? It opens on to the shores of Chaos. And we sense behind it an unhinged intelligence. We flee it. As you should, too.’
Kiska was staring up the trail all the way to the flat horizon, which to her eyes appeared bruised, darker. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I believe it’s what we’re here for.’
‘Then I must say farewell, though I confess I am tempted to accompany you.’
‘Why?’ she asked.
‘Because I believe there is a chance you will meet the Guardian. I say this because he has spoken to you once and so may again, for he seldom does anything without a reason. And so, should you meet him, ask him this for myself and for my people, the fishers of Ixpcotlet — why did he do nothing? Why did he not intervene? We are very confused and disappointed by this.’
Kiska faced Least Branch directly, gazing almost straight up. ‘If I meet him I will ask. This I swear.’
The daemon waved its thin armoured limbs, the meaning of the gesture unknown to Kiska. ‘I will have to be satisfied with your vow. My thanks. Safe journeying to you.’
‘Goodbye. And our thanks.’
‘Fare you well,’ Jheval added.
They watched the great daemon lumber away. The spears clattered and swung on its back as it went. Alone now, free of their huge guide, Kiska felt exposed once more, though the plains that surrounded them lay utterly flat and featureless.
Jheval cleared his throat. ‘Well, I suppose we’d best get on our way.’
