‘You are wrong,’ she said, her colourless lips peeling back from perfect, gumless teeth. ‘It is finally our time.’
The branches of Ygseril were shaking, and the strange silver fruits were beginning to fall.
‘Nothing you’re saying makes any sense, my darling.’
Vintage sat with her legs out in front of her, one hand pressed to the crystal. Next to her Nanthema crouched on the other side of an impossible divide. She was being insufferably calm.
‘Think about it, Vin. Where do they go when they’re not attacking us? They must come from somewhere.’
‘If we knew that . . .’
‘Yes, so many other questions would be answered.’ Nanthema sighed, a short puffing of air between her lips that Vintage remembered very well. It was the sound of her putting a difficult problem to one side. ‘I’m telling you, I hear them, Vin. I can’t make out what they’re saying, of course, it’s like a distant room where a lot of people are talking a language I don’t speak. But every now and then another voice will come, and all the other voices become quiet. Or they all become the same voice.’ Vintage could see her frowning now. ‘But they are not far. Not far at all.’
‘None of this sinister speculation gets us any closer to freeing you.’
‘No, and you will need to go back soon. How much food did you bring with you? How much water?’
Vintage snorted. ‘What do you take me for? Some green-kneed child fresh out of the nursery? My dear, in my pack—’
At that moment the entire chamber shuddered violently. Vintage yelped, falling away from the crystal, and Nanthema’s startled query was cut off mid-sentence.
‘What the . . .?’
At first Vintage thought it must be the wreck finally falling apart – a big wave had loosened it, perhaps, preparing to shake its old bones onto the seabed at last. But the shuddering vibration was too constant, too regular. She turned back to the crystal and pressed her hand to it.
‘Get out now, before it all collapses! You fool, start climbing!’
Vintage shook her head. ‘I’m not leaving here without you, my dear.’ Behind Nanthema the clouds were racing faster across the sky, and a wind began to tug at her hair.
‘It smells like a storm here,’ said Nanthema, her eyes very wide. ‘It has never smelled of anything here before.’
Vintage opened her mouth to reply and a ring of bright white light travelled down the length of the chamber, from the very top to the very bottom. For a few seconds the light burned on the crystal, too bright to look at, and then Nanthema was falling through it, into her arms.
They both screamed.
Vintage recovered herself first. ‘This bloody place is waking up!’ She struggled to her feet, pulling the taller woman with her. She was delightfully solid, warm against her hands.
‘Then I think it’s best we are not here when it stretches its legs.’
Climbing out of the chamber, with the rope ladder swinging wildly back and forth with the vibrations, was, Vintage would reflect later, the hardest thing she had ever done. Knowing that Nanthema was alive and free, knowing that if she didn’t get her arse up the ladder swiftly enough she would doom them both, made her knees turn to water and her fingers turn into numb sticks. She gulped down air, desperate not to panic, and then they were out of the chamber and in the larger room. All around them, lights behind the fleshy material of the walls were bleeding into life, and the shuddering underfoot went on and on.
‘Can you find the way out, Vin?’
‘Of course I bloody well can.’ Vintage grabbed Nanthema’s hand. ‘Stay close to me.’
They ran.
To her surprise and enormous relief, Vintage found that she did indeed remember the way out. It was her observer’s eye, honed all these years on the strangeness of the Jure’lia artefacts. She could get them out, if the whole place didn’t fall to pieces around them, or they weren’t turned inside out by a stray parasite spirit, or they went too quickly and fell down some unseen chasm.
‘What was that?’ Nanthema squeezed her hand hard, forcing her to stop. They stood together in a darkened corridor, breathing hard.
‘Nanthema, we really need to—’
‘Shhh! Listen.’
Vintage stopped. There was the shuddering all around them, and she could hear the distant hiss of the sea now – they were close. And then, from somewhere deeper within the Behemoth, a soft voice, calling. It was female, that voice, and something about it caused Vintage’s insides to fill with ice.
‘How can that be?’ she hissed at Nanthema. ‘How can there be someone in here?’
‘It’s the voice I heard inside the crystal,’ said Nanthema. There were two points of colour high on her cheeks, and her crimson eyes were too bright in her pale face.
‘Come on, we’re nearly there.’
They heard the voice again and again as they ran, seeming to come from all over the broken Behemoth. It was soft, teasing almost, as though they were playing a game, and Vintage felt as though it was coming after them, seeping through the dark places wherever they ran.
Eventually, they saw a splash of daylight ahead, washed out and dappled with the shifting shape of the water, but as they approached it, a thick black substance began to ooze from the walls there. Nanthema skidded to a stop, and Vintage collided with the wall to her right.
‘What is it doing?’
The black substance appeared to be alive. It reached up with tar fingers and seeped towards the broken ceiling. As they watched, it flowed around the panels and tubes there, gently pushing them back into place. Further down, more of the black ooze was smoothing over the yielding material of the floor, healing it in some way that Vintage couldn’t understand.
‘It’s mending itself.’ Vintage blinked. She had an urge to pinch her own arm, sure that this must be some sort of nightmare – surely she must be back at Esiah Godwort’s compound, unconscious on the dirt, her face scorched with winnowfire – but then she heard the soft, cajoling voice again.
‘I’m not going through it,’ she said firmly, tugging at Nanthema’s arm. ‘Let’s go around.’
Edging around the corner they found another corridor leading to daylight, but it, too, was dripping with the substance. It was growing livelier all the time, as if it were gaining strength at the sound of the strange distant voice. The entire structure was groaning now, creaking as things that had not moved for centuries were shifted and eased into new positions. Vintage and Nanthema moved on, still seeking a clear way out, but the stuff was starting to ooze up from the floor, sticking to their boots and slowing them down.