'I'll follow you. I'll follow you to the end of fucking time if I have to.' And then there is an explosion. The whole sky seems on fire.
I wrap my arms around her, shield her from the worst of it. I'm hit, but heal almost as fast as the wounds make their mark. There is so much strength in me. But not enough for her.
And there isn't a plane anymore. Just fragments dropping towards a black and perilous sea. The air roars and all around us, people fall. All around us is the death that I made.
She falls. And falls.
And I can't lift her up, so I hold her close. I whisper my love. I press my lips against her, and I fall with her.
We plummet towards water dark as slate in the storm. She holds my gaze with a strength that amazes me. An implacable acceptance. I can feel her heartbeat, like I can feel all their heartbeats, and it is racing. But she doesn't look away.
I am going to lose her.
Let me, the Hungry Death whispers, Let me.
And I do. I let it fill me. I make a void for it within my soul, and for the first time in my life I have an inkling of what real power is. I shift.
And this time she comes with me. We're here, in my office.
She belts her hands against my chest. 'No! You shouldn't have, you shouldn't have!'
'Stay here. I'll be back. I promise.'
'Where are you going?' Lissa asks, weeping.
'To bear witness. To pomp the souls of those lost.' There are bodies in the water, lifeless. Only their souls know motion among the flotsam, bits of plane, and pieces of people's lives. I hover cross-legged, shifting above them, and it is effortless. But the wonder has been sucked from it, by these dead: one hundred and fifty in total. Their souls thrash in the water, bound there, unable to do more than keep their essences afloat. Out here, if I don't do anything…
Long grey limbs slither from the sea. Water spills from narrow bald heads, beneath which beam mouths long and beakish. The ocean wants these souls for itself. It wants them restless and heaving in the depths. The grey shapes flash towards the souls of the dead. I glare at them. HD howls. And they hesitate.
'These are mine,' the Water whispers. 'Not yours. You have no dominion in my seas.'
'This time I do.'
'You would challenge me, Orcus?'
Orcus. I blink at the title, at the stupid formality of it. But it is true. It is what I am. I am Orcus, my region is the earth. I am the only one capable of pomping these souls to Hell away from the shore. Children! There are children here. Dozens of them. And, God help me, HD guffaws with pleasure.
'Yes,' I say, 'and you cannot stop me.'
I close my eyes, and draw the souls within me. It's hard work pulling them from the suck and cold of the sea. I'm sweating and shaking by the end, with the effort of it. The Water was right. I have no dominion here, but I do have my power. Finally they are gone, sent to the Underworld, which is their right, no matter that it has come too soon for all of them.
The grey forms drop beneath the water. 'Orcus, you do yourself no good in making an enemy of me.'
'One more enemy. What does it matter?'
Then the Water beneath me is just water again, and the dead are soulless and drifting among the wreckage. I've done what I can here.
It's time to find Rillman. The bastard has to pay.
33
I can sense his heartbeat. It can't hide its secrets from me. I close my eyes and shift.
The Deepest Dark. Why here? Which is precisely the question Wal asks when he crawls out from under my shirt. I can sense Rillman circling around, shifting from space to space. I catch glimpses of him. A leg. A foot. A hand tight around a knife hilt. His feet send up clouds of dust. Closer and closer. I wait.
And then, through the dark to my left, two stony blades jab out at me.
I jerk to the right, though one of the blade points cuts through my suit, bites shallowly into my stomach. It burns. I resist the urge to crouch over it, as though to stop my guts spilling. But the wound is already healed.
'Out you come,' I snarl.
A body takes form in the dark, arms and shoulders, then head, torso and legs knitted from all that cold shadow.
Solstice smiles. Who else would it be?
'So what do I call you? Rillman or Solstice?'
His limbs move with a jerky energy that Solstice never had. I wonder at the strength of will it must have taken Rillman to contain all that madness. He doesn't need to now, and it bursts from him as wild as any storm.
'I never really liked the name Solstice, but you take what the mask gives you. And he was such a good mask.' Then he changes, becomes the Rillman I know. The Rillman in the tunnel. The dull, smiling bloke in Lissa's photo album. He shrugs. 'You know, after I failed, I killed myself. Not once, but twice. And every time I came back. She helped me come back.'
'Aunt Neti?'
'Yes, even when I didn't want to. And then RMs noticed. They tried to kill me, too, and each time I died, I came back, different, stronger.
Around him swings the tiny dragon, Smauget, its red eyes aflame. It darts towards my face. There's a blur of movement, a shrill yowl, and Wal has snatched it from the air. The dragon hisses and snaps, its tiny mouth going for Wal's jugular, but the little fella is ready for it. He catches it by the throat, and they tumble to the ground.
'Leave this to me,' he says, from between clenched teeth. 'You deal with him.'
Rillman holds the knives at a distance from his chest, as though even he's afraid of what they are. I don't blame him. I understand their will intimately. The knives blur the air like light sticks waving in the depths of a cave.
They whisper and snort, Hello, hello.
'I am better armed now. These things kill RMs like you wouldn't believe. They're simplicity itself. And here, you don't have any Avian Pomps to protect you,' Rillman says.
'Why did you kill them?' I ask.
'Who? The RMs, well, you know that they deserved it.'
'Not them. This isn't about them.'
I lift my hand. Dust shapes itself into a plane. Dust people tumble from it.
Rillman almost drops the knives. They shudder in his hands. 'What?' The emotions that play across his face shock me. It's almost as variable as Mr D's. Joy, sadness and a mad hunger mix and meld across his features, and it would almost be comedic if he wasn't waving knives in my face. Then I realise that Rillman isn't well at all.
I could almost pity him.
'Your Stirrer drones,' I spit. 'The ones with Lissa. I took them out, and then the Hungry Death came. I wouldn't have been there but for you. Its presence within me wouldn't have destroyed that plane.'
Rillman snorts. 'You RMs, always ready to blame anyone but yourselves. Lissa was meant to die. To make you understand. To teach you the mechanics of pain. And my attacks on you? That was their purpose, too. To hurt, to blind, to scare. I take it that you managed to save her. Too bad about the others, eh? They were your doing.'
'I understand pain.' HD snickers. It's intimate with pain as well.
'Ah, you only think you do. Maddie, I killed her. But I could have brought her back. And there he was, your Mr D. Smug and useless. There he waited, in the dark that slides along the borders of the Underworld. And with a
