A column of muscle, greenish-grey with a pattern of scales overlaid by a sheen of slime. It was well over fifteen feet in width, and would tower over every building and most trees Rennyn had ever seen. The head, rising well above the top of the cliff, was a massive wedge of streamlined bone, crested with a frill of yellow and green, and most otherwise mouth.
Sea serpent. For all the tales of them wrecking ships, Rennyn had never begun to picture the scale of such a thing. It dropped its jaw to make its drawn and mournful cry, and display fangs as tall as she. The stench was sickening: year-old fish gone well beyond fetid. Its eyes were long and dark and Rennyn saw in them a gleam of sorrowing intelligence before thirty battle-ready mages released their arsenals.
Flesh fountained in every direction and the massive head whipped back, then fell out of sight, crashing to the water below. Even the sea seemed to hold its breath, then Captain Faille gave a sharp hand-back signal and the Sentene hastily drew further away from the cliff’s edge as the creature’s long body began to thrash and spasm. Its death throes were brief but intensely violent, sending large sections of the cliff tumbling. Then – hush. The waves soughed, the gulls remembered their voices, and the Sentene approached the edge to look down at water churned to a bloody froth and coil upon coil of muscle relaxing in death.
The Sentene broke into squads: to recover their equipment from the beach, search out whatever was the source of the compulsion which had drawn the serpent here, and not incidentally shift a corpse. Unhappy to own the name Montjuste-Surclere, Rennyn walked back to camp. And here were Kendall and Sukata, eyes wide and weary. Her students. A study in contrasts and probably another thing she was going to regret.
"Did that come out of the Hells?" asked Kendall, for once more awed than pugnacious.
"No. Well, perhaps originally. As a rule a breach wouldn’t be big enough or open long enough to fit something like that through, but it’s likely it was Eferum-Get once. They adapt to this world after they reach it, just as we change if we stay too long in the Eferum. But nothing came out of the breach this time, so far as I could tell."
"Then how come–?"
"It was under a compulsion." One of the Hand mages, the stocky, short one whose name was either Intsen or Insen. He stalked up, scrubbing a hand across his face angrily. "Tell me, Lady Montjuste-Surclere, how is it that no matter what we prepare we are circumvented? Why are we always on the back foot?"
This was hardly answerable, and Rennyn only looked at him as others of the Hand and the Sentene Senior Captains came to join them: a council of war.
"Our opponent sees the advantage of constantly changing tactics," Captain Illuma commented neutrally. "We should not be surprised by that."
"Changing tactics is one thing," Magister Intsen said, setting his feet. "But this – how is what we saw today even possible for someone in the Eferum?"
"I don’t know." Rennyn glanced at the lightening horizon. "The hurdles he has to overcome – we have days between each incursion, while he has only hours. And that attack was specific to the breach point being on the water’s edge, which even we didn’t know until yesterday afternoon. I suppose that unlike me he may be able to pinpoint the breaches ahead of time, but even with that, to bring that serpent here from outside the bounds of Tyrland–" She lifted her hands. "Perhaps he’s come through a natural breach and is now operating in this world."
Not a comforting thought, and she wasn’t the only one who glanced at the green hills around them, wondering if they were being watched. If her Wicked Uncle was no longer in the Eferum, the danger of everything coming undone had increased immensely. He could take Solace’s focus and complete the attunement. Worse, he could decide to hunt Seb.
"Even if that is the case, he is likely to wait until the attunement is complete, and take the focus from you then," Captain Illuma said. "His current intent appears to be to reduce our numbers."
He was certainly taking a few pointed shots at the Sentene. Rennyn wondered how much of her Wicked Uncle’s actions were within Solace’s plans, and whether she could be fortunate enough never to meet him again.
Captain Faille signalled for the pull-down of the camp to begin, evidently not seeing much value in sitting around asking why?. "We will no longer focus our preparations purely on attacks out of the Eferum," he said matter-of-factly, and headed back to the cliff’s edge.
Feeling cramped, Rennyn went for a walk up the nearest hill, trying to pretend Faral and Meniar weren’t trailing discreetly behind. She returned none the wiser as to whether her Wicked Uncle had an agenda of his own, but refreshed enough to face the coach journey. One of the Ferumguard handed her a steaming bowl of oats laced with honey and fruit, and she sat on the coach’s step to eat.
"Is he a better mage than you?"
Kendall, eyes groggy from a night spent watching and waiting, had reverted to her usual charming self.
"Almost certainly. Just not as strong." Rennyn weighed the castings she’d experienced. "Though that, too, might have changed since our last encounter. If he’s in this world, he can summon a focus, and I doubt he faces the dangers we do. The Grand Summoning may even impact focus-summoning, though hopefully not casting in this world."
She could see the girl methodically working through that one. "So, even if you stop the Grand Summoning, we might end up with some incredibly powerful part-monster running about trying to take over the kingdom? One that keeps Night Roamers for pets?"
"One that eats people himself, unless I miss my guess."
"What does he look like?"
"Human. Unremarkable. Like Solace, but with the Surclere colouring." With a curl of amusement, she considered the girl’s cropped head. "Not like Seb."
The girl pulled a face, her now-familiar glower darkening her eyes. "So where are we going next?"
"South-east, into the forests. We’ll be going past Sark."
"And Falk?"
"As near as is safe."
Chapter Nineteen
There was a valley where home used to be, flat and wide like some great round footprint. All the world which had been Kendall’s for fifteen years was gone, had been stepped on.
Around the road they’d used, trees lay flat or splintered, radiating out from the heaviness' outer ring, where a crust of debris was oozing slowly up. At the centre a woman in white would still be lying. Kendall probably wouldn’t have been able to see her, even if it hadn’t been raining. Too far away. But the rain, a steady downpour, made it easy to judge just how big an area the heavy air now covered. It was huge, a grey dome where ordinary drops suddenly became a grey blur of needle-hard darts. They weren’t allowed to go close enough to hold a hand into it, but Kendall could see the impact, the way those darts churned and stitched the ground. The whole of the world thrummed and was pulled by the weight of that air.
And everywhere were angry people. The cordon of militia, dripping and scowling as they blocked a road but not the fields beside it. The miserable clumps of townsfolk returning to view the wreck of their lives before the next expansion. The Hand and Sentene mages, faces hidden by hoods they’d attached to their uniforms, silently surveying a magical problem so immense they couldn’t even go near it, let alone fix it. And the Kellian.
Angry Kellian were scarier even than the crab-thing. They were all grey and unseeable in the rain, but so intensely there they were like storm clouds lowering. They didn’t frown or mutter or anything like that, but energy, a coiled readiness for action, rolled off them until Kendall could hardly stand to be near them. Even Sukata felt like someone who might turn and rip your head off at any moment, if she decided you were to be held to account.