The ground tilted beneath Faint, almost pitching her from her feet.
Amby staggered up to Precious Thimble – his face a mask of blood – and when his fist struck her face her entire head snapped back. She toppled. Bawling, he took her in his arms and began running.
The arm was reaching higher, the remnants of Sweetest Sufferance’s body still clinging to the grasping hand. Blood was burning away, blackening, shedding in flakes, revealing a limb of purest jade.
Faint staggered back. A mound was rising – an entire hill – splitting the hard ground. The tree at the spring thrashed, and on its long-dead branches green suddenly sprouted, writhing like worms. Jade fruit bulged, burgeoned in clusters to pull the branches down.
Rock exploded from a ridge fifty paces to the south. High grasses waved like jade flames. A vast, gleaming boulder rocked into view – a forehead – oh, gods below, oh, Hood. Beru – please —
Draconus turned round, his eyes black as pools of ink. ‘Wait here,’ he said.
Ublala opened his mouth, but the ground was shaking, rolling like waves rushing in from somewhere to the north, and he forgot what he wanted to ask. He turned to his beloved.
Ralata was awake, crouched low on the balls of her feet. Terror filled her face as she stared past Ublala.
He turned back in time to see Draconus drawing his sword. Blackness poured from the long blade like wind-whipped shrouds, billowing out, twisting to close around the man like folding wings. Draconus disappeared inside the darkness, and the inky cloud spiralled higher, growing in size. In moments it towered over them, and then those black wings unfolded once more.
The apparition rose into the sky, enormous wings of inky smoke thundering the air.
Ublala stared after it. His mace was in his hands for some reason, and the skystone head steamed as if dipped in a forge.
He watched the huge thing fly away, northward. Not a dragon. Winged darkness. Just that. Winged darkness .
He licked his lips. ‘Draconus?’
The brow ridges lifted clear of the shattered bedrock. Eyes blazed like emerald beacons. A second hand had thrust free, thirty paces to the west. Faint stood as if rooted to the shaking ground, as trapped as the rattling tree. Her thoughts had fled. A pressure was building inside her skull. She could hear voices, thousands, tens of thousands of voices, all speaking in a language she could not understand. They were rising in alarm, in fear, in panic. She clapped her hands to her ears, but it was no use.
They want out .
They asked. But no answers came. They begged. Pleaded. The world gave them silence. How do I know this? Their hearts – the beating – I can feel them. Feel them breaking .
Anguish tore at her soul. She could not survive this. It was too much, the pain too vast.
Icy air swept over her from behind. An enormous shadow swirled across the earth to her left. Something enshrouded in darkness, borne on vast ethereal wings, descended to where the jade head was emerging.
Faint saw the flash of something long and black, a gleaming edge, and as the darkness slammed like a tidal wave against the brow of the giant that splinter was driven forward, piercing the centre of the forehead.
Thunder cracked. Faint was thrown from her feet by the concussion. The impossible chorus of voices cried out – in pain, in shock, and something else. Beneath her the earth seemed to moan. Staggering upright once more, Faint coughed out the blood filling her mouth.
Those cries? Relief? At last. At last, an answer .
The forearm directly in front of her and the hand off to the west were suddenly motionless, the jade luminescence fading as if sheathed in dust. The tree, tilted precariously to one side, slowed its manic shivering, its branches now burdened with leaves of jade and the huge globes of fruit.
Up on the hill, the darkness coalesced, like a slowly indrawn breath, and in its place stood a tall, broad-shouldered man. His hands were clasped about the grip of a two-handed sword bleeding black streams that spun lazily in the air. She saw him struggle to pull the weapon from the jade forehead that reared like a stone wall in front of him.
He grunted when he finally succeeded. The sword slid into the scabbard slung under his left arm. He turned round, walked towards Faint. Pale skin, chiselled features, black hair, depthless eyes. As he neared her, he spoke in Daru. ‘Where he came from, every god is a Shield Anvil. Woman, have you lost your mind?’
She opened her mouth for a denial, a rush of protest, but then he was walking past her. She turned, stared after him. South? What’s down there? Where are you going? No, never mind, Faint .
Gods below, what have I just witnessed?
Her gaze returned to the sundered forehead surmounting the hill. The wound in its centre was visible even from this distance. It had nearly split the giant skull in half.