CHAPTER 49

The journey south was very different. Fleeing north, Dej had been empty inside, shedding her love for Etyan step by painful step. Now she was doubly full: her body of the life he had sparked in her; her head of Jat’s many lives.

Damn him.

Many of the memories she had inherited gave her joy – echoes of Jat’s past moments of love and wonder still warmed her, and she was delighted at the confirmation that skykin did have music, drums and flutes, which they danced to unselfconsciously, extravagantly – but the knowledge of what the skykin really were and what was happening to them now weighed her down.

The low hills continued inland. On the first night, she lit a fire with wood-stuff taken from the ruined city. As the sparks rose, a cloud of floating, translucent creatures drifted towards her out of the night, converging from several directions. She tensed, in case they meant her harm, but both her animus’s response and her newly acquired seer’s knowledge said they were no threat. There were about a dozen, each a cluster of bubbles, each bubble with a single dark, thick spot shifting across its surface; currently all the spots were directed towards her.

Dej smiled, pointed back at the creatures and said, “What do we think those are then?” Speaking to her unborn child was a habit that came easily now. At the sound of her voice the eyes, or whatever they were, slid back inside the mass of bubbles. Dej opened her arms to show she meant no harm, and stood still. The bubble-creatures came closer and began circling the fire, a slow bob and drift. After a while two approached each other and the bubble masses merged for a moment. Then they whirled apart, a motion accompanied by a sigh like distant wind. A few minutes later another pair did the same and, Dej saw as they glistened in the moonlight, one of the bubbles had transferred itself from one cluster to another. She grinned; she was pretty sure this was the skyland equivalent of wild sex.

Dej watched the float-bubbles at play until they finally drifted away again. She hoped they might return the next night, but they didn’t.

After a few days the hills flattened out, with more bare earth and boulders between patches of vegetation. Soon she saw a new type of landscape ahead, massive rock formations, red and imposing. She doubted there would be any water there, and probably not much to eat either.

“Let’s see what we can find here first.” Her girl kicked in response. She moved a lot now, getting ready to meet the world.

She stood stock-still on the barren plain and let her awareness roam over it, drawing extra strength from the life inside her. She picked up the presence of a few interesting creatures, but they were for later.

Aha. A little way southwest, the scent of water under rock. She opened her eyes, gave her perpetually sore back a rub, and set off.

Her instinct was true: a spring in a boulder-filled dip in the land. She filled both waterskins; she’d taken Jat’s too, given he had no further use for it.

Now: food. She picked her way over to the area of jumbled rocks she’d sensed earlier, careful of her footing. She couldn’t afford a fall. As expected, the rockslithers heard her coming and burst from their nest, darting off in every direction. Which was fine. Dej tasted the wind, and found a place to wait where they wouldn’t catch her scent. She sat back on her haunches and let thought drain away, aware only of her immediate surroundings and her gravid body. It was a battle to keep her over-full head empty, to still her thoughts, but she managed it.

Slowly, cautiously, the rockslithers ventured back. The first few didn’t come near her. She shifted to relieve a cramped shin. This would be easier without the extra weight she carried. Finally a fair-sized ’slither passed within reach. She jumped up, one foot pinning it down at the same time as she drew her knife and plunged it in between the creature’s first and second segments, killing it at once. She felt its life flee, and offered up something between a prayer and an apology for having taken it.

It was a big beastie – a full five segments – and once she’d got back onto even ground she prised off the fore-segment, cracked it open, and scraped it clean of meat. A full segment on a ’slither this size was a hearty meal. When she’d eaten, she curled the remaining four segments up in the bottom of her pack.

The next day she reached the maze of wind-sculpted rock. Her choice was to go round or through, and round was a long detour. At first the rock walls loomed overhead and she doubted her decision. But the gulleys soon widened out, and her unerring sense of direction allowed her to pick the best path.

No chance of firewood here, which was less of a concern given the lack of predators – this land was as empty as any she’d passed through – but she’d have liked a cooking fire. As well as tasting better cooked, the rockslither meat would keep longer that way. After eating another segment that night while camped under a rocky overhang, she considered discarding the final segments but decided they might keep for one more day.

She came out of the rocky maze the next afternoon. The land was less arid here, similar to the scrublands around Shen, but still with no standing water and nothing to eat or burn. In the evening when she opened her pack she could smell that the rockslither meat was spoiling. She tipped the pack out; hopefully any staining would just be at the bottom.

That was odd: one segment had indeed discoloured, turning from mauve to brown, and going soft in places. The other two looked fine. She examined them more closely. There was something stuck to the un-rotted segments: the cleansing-moss. She’d forgotten about her stolen tech but it looked like, as well as removing dirt, it could preserve meat. Useful stuff indeed.

That night she extended her senses as far as she could while on the verge of sleep and utterly relaxed. She estimated she was about a week away from the band of shadowlands around the world’s equator – another term she’d got from Jat’s knowledge – but given the large gap between each shadowland she could pass between any two, most likely Marn and Zekt, without realising it. If the terrain was favourable a shadowland might be visible from several days walk away, but if she approached in a valley, or if the clouds remained as low as they had been today, she could easily overshoot. Her child was only a couple of weeks away. She might only get one chance.