DUST AND STILLNESS lay on the forest floor in drifts, thick and stifling, smothering noise and slowing their progress. The very bottom of the true deeps was a labyrinth of rocks and stumps and pillarlike tree trunks, endlessly dark and half buried in spongy, vegetal dust, knee-deep where it wasn’t waist-deep. The air was still and thick with spores, smelling richly of mould.
The cutter engine coughed and choked, and all of them but Oranna had to get out and walk to spare the engine for the return journey. Cherenthisse assured them that they were no more than a few miles from the temple.
The muffling quality of the dusty air made it difficult to talk much, but Shuthmili had enough to occupy her in their surroundings. Alien, intractable, and dangerous, as Oranna had said, the true deeps were more than anything beautiful.
Overhead—unimaginably high above—was the colossal vault of the canopy, the moving sea of life and growth and noise, and they were down here, small and slow-moving, crawling across the jagged face of a warm and living darkness. Every surface was draped and layered with moss and lichen, as heavy and as intricate as the blood vessels of the gut wall. Shoals of fungi gleamed like coins at the bottom of a well. Spores glittered. Fruiting bodies shivered. Swarms of silvery beetles scuttled away from the light. Shuthmili had to school herself to keep walking, to focus on only what fell within the scope of her lantern. After a while it was futile to try and identify what kind of life she was seeing: worms and tendrils, sacs and tubers, florescent moulds and sloughed petals.
“Well, it’s official,” said Tal. “This is the most disgusting shit I’ve ever seen, so you’re probably like, Will anyone notice if I lick it?”
Shuthmili jumped. She’d been so absorbed in watching that she hadn’t even noticed him approaching. “Surprise, I’ve been licking everything since we got down here. What’s the matter?”
“When was the last time you saw the cutter?” he said.
“What?” she said. “It’s just—” She looked up, expecting to see the blue-white bubble of the lantern just ahead. No sign. She looked round, fear rushing back up to clench round her heart, and there it was—three hundred yards away, far to the left.
“Right,” said Tal, and grimaced.
“I suppose I’m lucky you’re not the lecturing type,” she said. Her heart was still racing. A few more minutes, and the cutter would have passed out of sight altogether. If Tal hadn’t noticed she was gone … “There’s something distracting about this place.”
“Yeah, it looks like god threw up on it,” said Tal. “Had to round up Csorwe and Cherenthisse earlier too, wandered off like a couple of bloody toddlers.” Cherenthisse had been very quiet for most of the journey, focused entirely on the route. Shuthmili’s best guess was that she was past the first shock of loss and was deliberately losing herself in the task.
“Her and Csorwe are such a fucking pair,” said Tal.
“Pardon?” said Shuthmili.
“You don’t see it?” said Tal. “They’re both like, ‘I could pull this stick out of my arse, but it would take time out of my packed frowning schedule.’ Next time I look away, you’re gonna be married to both of them.”
“They’ll both have to present a compelling matrimonial petition to my family’s solicitor,” said Shuthmili. “Which will come as a surprise to my father, because the last he heard of me, I was convicted of murdering my aunt.”
“Qarsazh is weird,” said Tal.
“Everywhere is weird,” said Shuthmili. “Do people even get married in Tlaanthothe?” It was nice how much easier she found it to talk to Tal now than when they’d first moved to Cricket Station, she thought, now that they each knew they could let their guards down a little.
Tal shrugged. “You don’t have to. My mother never did. It’s not a big deal.”
“Do you think you ever will?” said Shuthmili. She knew immediately that it hadn’t been a good question to ask. The guard went right back up. Romance was a touchy subject with Tal, as was anything in the nature of long-term plans for the future. Shuthmili had lived with Tal for two years, on and off, and she was pretty certain that he hadn’t met anyone else in all that time. He never brought anyone back to the apartment, and whenever they went to meet him in a bar, he was sitting alone. Her plans with Csorwe were sparse but solid: their own ship, and all the worlds ahead of them. Csorwe sometimes talked about maybe opening a restaurant. Shuthmili daydreamed about having her own library. As far as she knew, Tal had no such dreams, and nobody to share them with. It really must have been pretty intolerable for him, at times, living with them.
“You can wander forever,” said Tal, absently. Clearly not an answer to her question. Just something that had occurred to him.
“Pardon?”
“You can wonder forever,” he said, striding on through the undergrowth. “You never get an answer.”
He sounded awfully distant. Shuthmili raised the lantern to try and see his expression. It was dreamily unfocused, at odds with how fast he was walking. Much faster than she could easily go.
“Tal,” she said, scrambling to keep up with him. “Stop. Look at me.”
“We’re nothing to them,” he said. “Nothing.”
“I know,” she said, reaching for his hand.
“Small things,” he said, to nobody in particular. “Just little earwigs that die all the time. That’s all we are.”
He didn’t sound upset or angry about it, but reflective, almost amazed, as though it had all become clear at that moment.
“We don’t matter,” he said, reaching out and turning his hand in the dust that sparkled in the air. “None of it matters. Look at all this. This is real, this is really real, everything here is dying, but it’ll never die. And after we’re gone, it’ll still be all the same. I’m going to put out the lantern.”
“No,” she said, grabbing for his hand and clutching tighter to her own lantern, just in case he went through with it. “Talasseres, where is the fucking cutter?”
He stopped, and she managed to catch hold of his hand, and clung to it as if he were hanging from a high window.
“I didn’t know you could swear,” he said, and gave her a smile of such genuinely maddening blitheness that she understood why Csorwe talked all the time about murdering him.
“Look around!” she said. “It’s gone! I have no idea where we are!”
“It’s got to be something wrong with the forest,” said Shuthmili. They had walked in circles for what felt like hours, and had finally set themselves up at the bottom of a tree to wait. “Perhaps because it was once the place of Iriskavaal … Even if she’s long gone, the shadow of a divinity can be very persistent. There are cursed objects from the reign of Zinandour which still have to be kept under seawater in the Inquisitorial Treasury, and her half-life is probably much shorter than Iriskavaal’s because she’s a younger deity, so—”
“Just imagine me nodding and smiling,” said Tal. “Back in Tlaanthothe, our goddess was just a big mean rock that muttered at you.”
“It’s all right,” said Shuthmili. “It will be all right. Once Csorwe realises we’re missing, she’ll come back in the cutter and search.”
She wished she could be sure of that. They were lost in a maze of endless night, and even if Csorwe hadn’t been led astray as they had, she could search forever without finding them. All their supplies were aboard the cutter. They had no food, no water, and that was without knowing what else might lurk out in the forest.
Tal seemed less worried. Maybe it helped not to know anything about magic. That way you didn’t know what might happen to you, lost in the dying domain of a goddess. A quick death, or a slow death, but a certain death all the same.
Then again, Shuthmili had a divinity of her own. Iriskavaal mouldered, slow and ancient; Zinandour burnt hot and vicious. Perhaps what this forest needed was the fire that devoured.
She pulled on her gauntlets. The surge of possessive intent was vivid and immediate but not, this time, distracting. Cherry blossoms fluttered across the surface of her mind and then cleared, leaving her perfectly lucid.
YOU WILL DEAL WITH ME, THEN?
Not yet, she said. But you are still my patron, if I may still call upon your power.
Shuthmili scrambled down from her perch and knelt on the ground, sinking an inch or two into the seething dirt. Hands flat on the ground, she sent a pulse of enquiry directly into the earth. A moment of vertigo as she felt the edge of the root system, almost as big as the tree itself, extending far in every direction—much further than she’d expected. A net that extended for miles, a web of astonishing beauty and complexity, precision and elegance. She could fall into this forever and never hold it all in her head. She could sink down and become one with the pattern, and—
NO! MINE!
“Shuthmili!” She felt a pressure which she identified at length as a hand gripping her shoulder. “Your eyes rolled back in your head, try and fucking focus for one second—”
“They’re all one tree,” she murmured. “All the same organism. Like the Quincuriate…”
“Can you even hear me?”
She murmured assent, reaching further. The root system seemed to have no centre point. It was like the Quincuriate, a distributed intelligence. Which made her life harder because, unlike the whale, it had no heart to stop. But perhaps a self-replicating curse—something which could multiply itself along the roots, branch and adapt and poison as it went—it would take an extraordinary amount of power, but she had that power, if only she’d reach for it.
YES. IT WOULD NOT EVEN BE SO FAR TO REACH.
Tal was saying something, but she couldn’t understand what he was saying over the roaring in her head, the awful formula unfurling itself. She knew exactly how she would do it. It would be the best magic she’d ever done. She had been the best in the School of Aptitude, and this would make her the best in the world, perhaps the best of all history—
“What is a forest, anyway? Worlds die all the time,” she said.
Tal grabbed her by both shoulders and shook her. She could feel the useless panic in him like a trapped animal, beating against the bounds, and it would be so easy just to quiet him, and then she could concentrate, but—
“What the fuck are you doing? How is this helping? I thought we were going after Csorwe—”
DEAL WITH HIM. THERE ARE THINGS FOR US TO DO.
“No!” she said.
There was a horrific struggle in the dark. Tal tried to hold her still, and her limbs fought back, clawing and slapping at him, but at last her hands were free again and she was on all fours on the ground, choking on the dust and ichor in her throat. The two of them struggled back upright and leant back against a tree root, breathing hard.
“I’m fine,” said Shuthmili, her voice shaking as much as her hands.
“You threw up a whole lot of slime!” said Tal. “On my shoes!”
“Yes, well,” she said. “If I start doing it again, I’m fairly certain you know where to hit someone to knock them unconscious.”
“It’s not as easy as it looks,” said Tal.
“I’m sure you can manage,” she said. “But perhaps it’s best if I don’t use magic for a while. I don’t like this place, and—”
She broke off. Over Tal’s shoulder, glowing like the first light of dawn, was a lantern, and from the way it was moving, it was attached to a cutter, fast approaching.
She should have felt relief. Instead, anxiety knotted in her stomach. This was not the blue-white light of an alchemical lantern, but the sunny yellowish glow of a freshly cast magelight.
The cutter came gliding into view and slowed. A tall, broad figure leant over the side, silhouetted in the light, but evidently considering them.
“You two look lost,” said a voice.
Tal’s eyes widened. Shuthmili would have known from the unbridled horror on his face if she hadn’t already recognised the voice.
“Maybe I can help,” said Belthandros Sethennai.
Not even Tal thought it was a better idea to die in the woods than to go with Belthandros. They got into the cutter.
“You know, upon running into old friends in the woods, one might experience a moment of awkwardness,” said Belthandros, seated in the cockpit. He looked exactly as Shuthmili remembered: deep brown skin, curly hair doing its best to escape from an expansive topknot, an expression of veiled and watchful amusement. From the sharp flicks of kohl at the corners of his eyes to the gold rings in his leaf-shaped ears, the impression he gave was calculatedly that of a pirate king who still found time to visit the barber. “But luckily I never feel awkward.”
Tal clenched his fingers in the fabric of his trousers. His ears were low and flat against his skull. “Old friends,” he said, with a visible effort.
“What would you prefer?” said Belthandros, without looking round at them. “You’re here with Oranna, are you? Looking for me?”
“Yes,” said Shuthmili, at the same time Tal tried to deny it.
Belthandros gave an odd laugh, one part genuine amusement to one part resigned exasperation. He and Oranna really were a good fit for each other.
“Typical of her. Another flock of ducklings,” he said.
Shuthmili was still reeling. She had come close to something irrevocable. She might have vomited if not for the indignity of throwing up on the fresh varnish of Belthandros Sethennai’s immaculate cutter. But however weary and however shaken she was, this was going to be her conversation to handle. Tal had gone as silent and surly as she had ever seen him.
“We’re here with Oranna, but she’s looking for Saar-in-Tachthyr. I expect you are too.”
“You’re Csorwe’s friend,” he said, thoughtfully.
“Yes,” said Shuthmili, raising her chin, daring him to make something of it. In the end, though, all he said was:
“What does Oranna think she’s going to find there, I wonder? I would not have imagined that the lost temple of Iriskavaal would interest her.”
Belthandros’ cutter was sharp-nosed, glossy, and compact, as if designed specifically to navigate the true deeps. Perhaps it had been: the engine purred, apparently having no trouble at all with the dust, and the passenger area was covered by a sleek canopy that protected them from the worst of the spores. Speaking of which—
“We ought to take some precautions,” she said. “The forest is affecting our minds in some way—I think it must be the shadow of Iriskavaal, since—”
“Possibly,” said Belthandros, and she felt an unexpected flush of embarrassment to realise that she had been trying to show off. “I’ll see what I can do to shield us.”
Belthandros looked back at her and grinned. It was objectively a charming smile, unguarded but conspiratorial. You were meant to feel that you were being welcomed into a joke, whether you liked it or not.
“Well,” said Shuthmili. “This explains what they tell you about getting into boats with strangers. You never know who’ll turn out to be a living serpent god.”
Shuthmili sank back into her seat. Something about Belthandros’ presence made her very aware that she was covered in dust, that a trail of prickly spores had worked their way down the back of her neck, and that she smelled of sweat and rotting plant matter. Next to her, Tal had folded his spindly legs into his seat and wrapped his arms around them, a tight defensive kernel.
The yellow magelight cut a path through the forest, illuminating the immense curvature of the tree trunks in bright segments, gilding the intricacy of the undergrowth. It was almost like a library, she thought. The colossal uprights, the dust falling in beams of golden light, the sweet mild smell of decay. Like being a single mote floating between bookshelves.
Csorwe had tried to explain to her, in the past, how pleasant it had sometimes been to work for Belthandros. How safe and familiar you felt, knowing that everything was under control, that someone else was doing the thinking for once. Shuthmili hadn’t understood it until now. Her thoughts drifted, and she didn’t realise for some time that Belthandros and Tal were talking quietly.
“There’s nothing to stop you coming home, you know,” Belthandros was saying. “Once everything’s washed up here.”
“No?” said Tal.
“Csorwe seemed very determined to burn that bridge,” said Belthandros. “But I did wonder…”
A long moment of silence. The ship swept smoothly over a fallen trunk, where a cluster of mushrooms glowed like pearls.
Was this why Tal had never met anyone? Because he was waiting for something like this?
Shuthmili shifted in her seat, torn between her desire to know and her sense that she was intruding on something private.
“What did you wonder?” said Tal, very quiet. His voice sounded constricted, and as Shuthmili’s eyes adjusted, she saw that the points of his ears were fluttering. This made her miserable. The whole appeal of Tal was that he was rude and lacked contrition, so what was the point of making him crawl?
“You can wonder forever,” said Shuthmili, sleepily but loudly. She yawned and blinked as if only just waking. “Where are we?”
Tal jolted upright and gave her a look. She couldn’t tell if he was furious or relieved.
“As it happens,” said Belthandros, “we are approaching the compound of Saar-in-Tachthyr.”
The cutter darted out between two trees as if emerging from a canyon, and suddenly they were in open space: a glade so vast that the foliage must have thinned out overhead at its centre. A faint dappling of light reached down from above, gleaming jade and gold on the surface of an enormous lake. It was perfectly flat and perfectly round, and the surface was thick with flat floating leaves, each one big enough to wrap the cutter twice over, overlapping each other so that the water seemed to be covered with smooth green scales. They bore flowers like white water lilies—exactly like the specimen they had found in Tvelujan’s cutter, except that each petal was as large as a sail. The scent of water rose in the air, sharp and beguiling.
Belthandros steered the cutter down to dart between lilies, apparently for no reason but the joy of it, something Shuthmili could not bring herself to resent. She leant back in her seat and let out a slow breath, relieved to experience fresh air and natural light for the first time in a while. Skimming over the lake felt, she imagined, how it would feel to be a dragonfly on the ponds of the Botanic Gardens in Qaradoun.
“Once upon a time, this was the inner domain of Iriskavaal’s priesthood,” said Belthandros. “This was a sacrificial basin. The bones are probably still down in the water.”
“Goodness, really?” said Shuthmili. “Oranna would love that.”
“Probably best not to mention it. Most of the sacrifices were Oshaaru prisoners from the cult of the Unspoken.”
Shuthmili had almost forgotten about the conquest of Oshaar, though Professor Tvelujan had never shut up about it.
“One of Iriskavaal’s first annexations,” said Belthandros, with neither pride nor regret. “Long before the House of Silence was built, long before I assumed my incarnation, the Lady of the Thousand Eyes and her honour guard subdued the Unspoken and subjugated its people. I remember parts of it, in fact.”
“How?” said Shuthmili.
“My goddess split off a part of herself to join with me in the incarnation. In becoming the person I am now, I inherited some of her memories,” he said.
Shuthmili thought, with a bizarre pang, of Dr. Lagri Aritsa, her old supervisor at the Survey Office, a mild and gentle fusspot who would have knifed his colleagues to be first to talk to Belthandros. Here was an eyewitness account to confirm or disprove centuries of conjecture. He couldn’t be trusted, of course, but if only you could sit him down and get it on the record, what a source you’d have …
“But as I said, the conquest of Oshaar was many thousands of years ago,” said Belthandros, “and I have enough difficulty retaining even the memories of this body.”
“It must be strange,” she said. “So you do still remember being a mortal? Being Pentravesse? Do you remember having a mortal childhood?”
Tal scowled as if this was an impolite question, but on the one hand she didn’t care whether Belthandros thought she was polite, and on the other hand he didn’t seem to mind talking about himself.
Belthandros smiled thoughtfully. “Perhaps it would help to think of Iriskavaal and Pentravesse as two streams flowing into one river. At the beginning of the incarnation, there were two of us, goddess and man, together in one form. But now … I am who I am.”
He wasn’t just a source, then, but a living artefact, an unprecedented magical phenomenon. Shuthmili wondered with a sudden yawing of the stomach what it might mean for her, given how often she’d been hearing Zinandour in her head these days.
“Are we nearly there yet?” said Tal, with more spirit than she’d heard from him in a while. She turned to smile at him encouragingly, but he returned a sour look that she couldn’t interpret, looking almost like a flash of actual hatred.
“What’s wrong?” she mouthed at him, but he shook his head, dull-eyed with resignation once more, as if wishing he was a hundred miles away or dead.
Shuthmili realised, horrified, that it had been a look of jealousy, that he must have assumed she was somehow trying to get Belthandros’ attention. She blinked, feeling as if the cutter had suddenly dropped a few feet.
I was only making conversation! she thought, staring at Tal. What on earth?
He didn’t meet her eyes. Csorwe had talked sometimes about the way they had squabbled for attention. Years of fighting for the notice of this man who clearly thought of no one but himself. After that, no wonder anyone could look like a threat.
The cutter swooped close to the surface of the lake again, the keel almost brushing the water, and now Shuthmili saw there were islands in the lake. The nearest was a small crescent-shaped spit of land, half overgrown with weeds and mottled with patches of light from above.
There was still no sign of the others. The glade was very quiet: water whispered, but there was no wind, no hum of insect life. Despite the humid warmth, Shuthmili shivered.
“Something is here,” said Tal. “In the water.” His hand had gone to his sword hilt.
“Yes,” said Belthandros, and now Shuthmili heard it too: a shifting in the water, an almost undetectable rippling. Before she could pinpoint the source of the noise, there was an almighty roar, a great detonation of water, and something burst up from the surface of the lake. A wave broke over the edge of the cutter, slapping the timbers with enough force to send them spinning off course.
“Get down!” called Belthandros.
Shuthmili flinched and ducked, shielding her face with her arm. When she looked again, she saw it, overwhelming and inescapable as a solar eclipse. Soaring up out of the depths, cascading sheets of weed and water, there came a gigantic serpent.