Worldsoul

Forty

Shadow had become paranoid about the earth on which they walked. It was all very well preparing oneself from attack by unknown spirits, but what about the ground itself? She expected at any moment that it would rise up and assault her.

Gremory seemed prone to no such fears. She appeared amused, occasionally smiling satirically at things that Shadow was unable to see, as though she walked through a private world. Shadow found this annoying, but she did not want to anger her only ally, so she said nothing.

Once past the orchard, the garden was indeed beautiful, but it was overpowering. The flowers were too large and highly scented; the trees were immense. Shadow would not have described it as a garden of giants, but things were bigger than they should have been and this made her nervous. Looking back, the fortress itself had again altered: it stood in a series of high steps, like a ziggurat.

Eden. Babylon. Both? Shadow did not know; the legend of which this was a part was possibly too old to know much of, dating back to the very dawn of Earth’s Fertile Crescent. There were signs of some kind of occupation, apart from the golem-gardener and the orchard rows. There were stone spires, like totems, but decorated with winged birds that might have been vultures, and they looked very old. They pricked something in Shadow’s memory, something primal. She was inclined to avoid them, and did so.

And she felt they were being watched. When she asked Gremory, the demon simply shrugged again, as if this was a matter of no consequence. “I haven’t seen anyone living. There are plenty of the dead.”

“What do they look like?”

“Ancient. Their skulls are strange; their heads are too narrow. I think they are an earlier form of man.”

“There were other peoples before the Flood, so it’s said.” She had once heard that, on Earth, a volcano in the region of Sumatra had wiped out three-quarters of the variants of the human species, leaving behind only their boring old ancestors.

Did these unknown plants and trees date from then, the dawning of the human world? Shadow wondered as she walked.

Some distance from the fortress, the trees began to thin out and eventually Shadow and the demon stepped into a glade that fanned outwards to become a valley. The sides were wooded, but faded into golden cliffs and finally, Shadow recognised an echo of the Great Desert through which they had travelled. The valley floor, perhaps a quarter of a mile wide, was grassland, with trees only at the edges, so that it resembled a natural park. Along the valley, a black rock jutted up from the grass, a boulder so dark that it resembled a fragment of night.

Gremory hissed when she saw it.

“What’s the matter?”

“It’s from the heavens. A meteorite.”

“It’s not the Ka’aba.”

“No, another. Older. Still worshipped.”

“We don’t-” Shadow stopped. “Well, never mind. I don’t see any signs of people.”

They approached the black stone. It had fused with the surrounding earth, reminding Shadow of the flower strike that had destroyed Elemiel’s hut. Something flickered along its length as Shadow thought this, and then the demon cried out.

“Shadow!”

She felt the scorch of it through the veil, but the veil itself saved her hair from catching fire. The thing shot over her head, rolling against the base of the rock. Shadow scrambled up; to her dismay, this was not another earth-creature. It was made of fire, a flicker of bright flame in a shift of rainbow colours. It smelled of hot metal. It turned to come at her again and Shadow ran.

Her first thought was to find water. Paper, scissors, stone… Metal trumps earth and water trumps fire. She needed a stream and she found one, but it was only a rivulet of water, a trickle, running between narrow crumbling banks in the grass. It was perhaps two feet wide and shallow, not enough to cover her. The thing hissed as it sprang and at its brightness, Shadow shut her eyes and stepped backwards over the stream. Then there was a sound like a crack of lightning and flame erupted behind Shadow’s eyelids. She opened her eyes, half-blinded, to see only a thin wisp of smoke. Elemiel stood before her, with a flaming sword in his hand.

“Hello again,” the Messenger said.

“So this is-what? Your home?”

They sat by the stream. Shadow’s feet were in cool water. Elemiel sat cross-legged in the grass. Some distance away, Gremory paced like a prowling cat, intent on her own thoughts.

“No. But I can come here.”

“When we met you-”

“Still the same place. It’s changed over time. Thirty thousand years or more.”

Shadow eyed the Messenger with respect. “You’re a long-lived species.”

His smile was sad. “Too long.”

“Your house has been destroyed, I’m afraid,” Shadow told him, but she wondered whether this would really mean anything. After all, a garden had died; a desert had taken its place and that desert itself had shifted and changed so much as to be almost unrecognisable. He did not seem surprised.

“I know. Are you all right?”

“I think so. Were they aiming for me, or for you?”

“Both.”

“So who’s the enemy?”

“I said I’d show you. And so I will.”

“The spirit-” Shadow began.

“Yes. I’m sorry. I did not succeed in what I set out to do; I’ve made matters worse for you.”

She did not want to say: it’s all right. It wasn’t.

“I don’t know what to do now,” she said.

“Nor do I,” the Messenger admitted. “But I think it’s brought you here. That’s a good thing and a bad thing.”

“I don’t like ‘bad thing.’ ”

“Who does?”