The Heretic Land by Tim Lebbon Read Free Book Online Page B

rippled like water away from the Engine, and Milian felt her daemon shiver with something that might have been fear.
    The enemy dropped their weapons and took several steps back towards the sea, an unconscious retreat towards their homeland across the water. Their eyes went wide in fright … and then awful acceptance.
    Milian pursued them, and then the Engine exploded. The blast threw her far out past the beach and over the water, and behind her the land had come alight. The whole stretch of coast she could see had blossomed into bright white flame, the fires blasting way above the cliffs, spiralling up and out from the Engine on the beach and splashing across the land. Molten rock flowed, trees exploded, and the atmosphere itself thudded with shock after shock. As she dropped, another body fell with her, and they both flitted through the air as if carried by giant hands. Just before she splashed down she saw the ruin of the man it had once been. His body was split by some vast impact, his head a dangling mess pinned with crossbow bolts, and the dregs of his daemon hissed away to the air.
    She thought,
How much of that is in me?
Then, moments before she struck the water, something struck her.
    The touch of Aeon was unmistakeable. As a holy woman she had imagined its touch, but actually experiencing it was undeniable, andshattering. It scorched the daemon within her to nothing, instantly ridding her of the thing that had turned her, for a time, into a beast. A moment of joy followed, quickly subsumed by sadness because—
    She hit the violent surface of the sea, but hardly noticed.
    —Aeon was no more. Object of Skythian worship for millennia, a passive god that observed but did not intrude, exuded power but did not demand fealty and fear, she sensed its passing as surely as she felt this single shard of it passing into her. It parted her soul and settled inside, and the shard became the centre of her perception.
    They killed it!
she thought, hardly believing.
They murdered Aeon!
With the cataclysmic power that had just blasted from the Engine on the beach, what was left of Skythe now? What was left of anything?
    There is always something left
, a voice had said, and Milian opened her mouth to gasp. Water flooded in, but she did not drown.
I have you
, the voice continued. The voice of her god.
And you have me. This shard is a part of me, and will become a seed. But it will take time. The material part of Aeon is ruined. But … will you carry this shard of me?
    Milian could not believe that Aeon was asking her permission. But she agreed silently, and felt her god acknowledge.
    What was the daemon?
she thought.
Was that born of the Alderian Engines?
    I must rest
, Aeon said. It sounded pained, and shocked, and its voice was growing more and more distant.
I must … recuperate …
    And me?
    South, away from Alderia
, Aeon said.
And when you reach land, you must rest also.
    For how long?
    Until I am ready to wake.
    They destroyed you
, Milianthought, and her tears mixing with vast seas could have been endless.
    Nothing is for ever
, Aeon said,
death least of all.
    With her land aflame behind her, Milian sank into the water until darkness flooded her.
    In the cave, back in the present and away from those distant memories for a while, Milian blinks sore eyes. Pain is better than no feeling at all, so she blinks again. Sand in her eyes, or salt, and she goes to lift her hand and rub them. Her hand refuses to move, but there is pressure in her shoulder. Her stomach muscles flex. She is coming alive again, but …
    No sign of the shard. No sense of Aeon.
    Perhaps I
am
dead
.
Landed in the sea after the Engine erupted, sank, settled on the seabed and dreamed of Aeon. And the movements I feel are the sea creatures of the Duntang Archipelago tasting my eyes and tongue, my skin, rooting in the wounded flesh across my chest and stomach and hips …
    This is real, however, and the movements she feels are her own. These thoughts are level