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Chapter 8

There was an iridescent mist bathing the mountains today. It swirled around my strapped ankles like tendrils of heaven reaching down to soothe the warm, dusty rocks. It was the sort of day we used to enjoy in the fields. The sun was a blur of spring warmth, affording the workers a degree of respite from the usual searing heat. But the mountain mist was also deceptive, ready to lead any hunter to his swift demise given any lapse in concentration.

Unus paused to kneel beside a scorched Venus flytrap. We’d passed this way a few days ago, when the plant was green and budding.

‘Close,’ he pronounced with difficulty.

I nodded briefly, gesturing up the trail. Unus followed my gaze, his single pale eyebrow forked and anxious. We all knew why. Lake was roaming closer to the village with each passing day, and whether she was friend or foe, we had to find her.

Eli frowned. Art and the rest of the Council had heralded his return as nothing less than a miracle. There was a full day of celebration, and while my jubilation was no less real, it was shadowed too. My twin was back, but there was a new quietness about him, as though he carried the weight of the ocean inside. I recalled his image smiling inside Prince Phaethon’s eyes, and I couldn’t help but wonder whether it was more significant than I had first realized. Once I mustered enough courage to ask about Aelia too, but he only shook his head. I didn’t press him – I knew the answers would come in their own time.

And Mum’s reaction was worth all the unanswered questions in the world. She was still fragile, but hadn’t stopped smiling since Eli followed me into the treehouse that morning. She glowed as though a thousand sunbeams had coalesced inside her all at once.

‘I knew you’d come home … I said you’d come … I knew you’d come home … I said you’d come,’ she repeated.

But no one stopped her.

And if Eli’s return had provided some semblance of hope, Prince Phathon’s deal had provided a grim focus. I wasn’t ignorant to the irony of a mythical prince with an Oceanid army at his fingertips, challenging a feral Outsider to rid the world of a monster, but knew enough to understand there were rules. It had been my legacy from the start after all. I could only hope our deal would stand, and the Oceanids would stand beside us when we needed them. I glanced at my quiet brother. Perhaps we stood more chance than I realized.

‘Tal … look?’

Unus paused again and threw a long look around, before returning his attention to his feet. Eli and I caught up to find him staring at the mangled hindquarter of an ocelot, strewn across the shaley path. It was clear it hadn’t died from natural causes. I glanced up into Unus’s blue eye, barely visible beneath huge flushed folds of squinting flesh.

‘It’s fresh,’ I confirmed, racking my brains for any other animal that may have had the power to rip a body apart in this way.

Only a larger mountain cat would come close, and those I’d encountered would never leave half a carcass for another creature to finish. I turned the unfortunate animal’s remains over and something hard and ivory rolled away. Frowning, I picked it up and held it aloft, so it glinted in the sunlight.

‘Looks like someone is losing their milk teeth,’ Eli signed.

I stared in fascination. It was about the size of my fist, ivory-white, and tapered to a perfect razor-sharp point. Carefully, I reached out and tapped the tip of the tooth on a spiny cactus plant. Instantly its tough exterior skin split open, spilling its soft pulp and inner juices down over its spiny prickles until they pooled at our feet.

‘Bigger teeth … bigger draco,’ Unus remarked, his eye stretching as round as a rice bowl.

I frowned, assessing the steep mountain pass. ‘Which is why we can’t wait,’ I muttered, refusing to think about the promise August had extracted before he left.

The higher we climbed, the steeper the trail, and the more frequently we needed to rest. We reached the mid-peak summits without too much trouble, and though we were still within a few hours’ hike of Arafel, the air was noticeably thinner. There was also less animal life the higher we climbed, while mountain shale grew more crumbly underfoot. I fought to suppress the dark memories pushing to the forefront of my mind, and focused instead on the stark cries of the golden eagles circling above our heads.

Within a breath, I was back in Isca Pantheon with August, looking down on the main dome floor as Octavia’s regal two-headed eagles dived past.

‘The haga are two-headed – it’s a Roman thing,’ he joked.

Gritting my teeth, I spun on my feet and looked for Unus. He’d dropped a little way behind. His face was flushed, and his usual lumbering rhythmic pace had slowed. I glanced at Eli anxiously.

‘I don’t think Cyclops’ circulatory systems are designed for altitude,’ he signed. ‘Anyway, it’s well past midday … time we turned back.’

He met my rigid look warily. He could sense that another sleepless night was one too many. I had to find her, even if it meant staying out all night.

‘Tal, I promise … we’ll come back tomorrow.’

His signing was almost persuasive, and then an ominous shuddering stopped us all in our tracks. It was chased by a barrage of sharp stones raining down on the pathway just ahead of us. Small avalanches of slippery mountain shale weren’t unusual, but something told me this freshly dislodged debris wasn’t due to the variable weather. We jumped back as another torrent of hardened topsoil and shale cascaded down. It was closer this time. Unus shuffled in front of us protectively, but I could feel his fear. A Cyclops was stronger than ten men, but pitching brute strength against a hormonally charged adolescent Hominum chimera wasn’t likely to end happily.

‘Wait here with Unus!’ I signed to Eli, knowing Unus’s wheezing would slow them both for a couple of minutes.

Then without waiting for a response, I turned and flew up the edge of the falling debris as lightly as I could. The trail was lined with boulders, their narrow crevices providing scant protection for the mountain’s hardy plants. Occasionally, foragers would bring a basketful back to the village for Raven to use in herbal compresses or medicines. Today though, my eyes were trained on the jagged mountain path that disappeared up ahead. I’d seen this mountain’s summit once before, could just recall the haze of shaley paths and treacherous passes I’d pushed to the back of my mind. We had every reason to turn back – except the air was filled with the faint scent of smouldering ash.

With blood thumping in my ears, I continued upwards until the trail met a near vertical, creviced wall. Scanning the rock, I spotted a shelf about five metres above my head. It was a short easy climb providing the rock was stable. There was no time to waste, and I scurried up the jagged surface as swiftly as I dared, so conscious Eli and Unus would catch up at any moment, just when she was close at last. Dark to dark. I gritted my teeth, unable to deny the truth clawing up my throat with each hand and foot hold – she knew I was near too.

I peered over the top cautiously, and was surprised to find a wide, barren mountain shelf, lined with piles of fallen rock and shingle. It looked barren enough, but somehow I knew it wasn’t. There was a waiting in the air, an anticipation of the kind that forces every nerve to strain beyond comfort, and today it was because of the looming black cave set about twenty metres away to my right. A cave that looked as black and uninviting as any of Pantheon’s tunnels.

And though it couldn’t conceal any strix, I knew that Lake in draco form could incinerate one hundred of the mythological flesh-eating birds with a single, violent breath if she chose.

I crept forward, aware the eagles overhead had quietened, as though they too were able to sense a menace reaching through their spiralling thermals. I wasn’t sure what I was hoping to achieve. I was hopelessly ill-equipped to challenge Lake in any form. She was the most successful of all Cassius’s trials – brutal, powerful, and more than capable of reducing a girl from the forest to dust – and yet, my leather-clad feet kept on stealing forward anyway. I just had to gaze into her yellow, double-lidded eyes, and know she felt it too.

Then I glimpsed her, or rather I glimpsed her breath, hanging on the cool air just outside the cave. I froze, my chest tightening. I hadn’t set eyes on her for more than three months, when she unwittingly helped us escape the research centre by incinerating it. August and I had only escaped by squeezing inside one of the life-support canisters, but her abject fury had imprinted on me for ever. There was no doubting the astonishing myths about Hominum chimera’s strength and abilities were not to be dismissed. She possessed a nature that was different to every other creature I knew, natural or otherwise.

‘There’s an ancient myth that Hominum chimera is capable of triggering a sequence of natural disasters, culminating in the eternal fire of damnation.’

It was spine-tingling, a tale worthy of Grandpa’s book of mythology, beyond probable – and yet wholly believable too. I could sense her truth, as she could sense the difference in me. And that was my best hope, her instinct for our blood connection – and what it truly meant.

‘Lake?’ I called, watching tendrils of steam slowly float away in the early spring sunshine.

I pressed my teeth together. My voice sounded surprisingly steady for a forest girl approaching a legendary chimera, who was probably hungry too. Momentarily inspired, I felt in my leather rations bag for whatever food I had remaining – some smoked cheese and a hunk of rye bread. It would have to do.

I threw the meagre offering into the mouth of the cave, and backed off warily. There was a thick silence before a heavy dragging, then a savage burst of steam followed by silence again.

I hesitated, as the shadows inside the mouth of the cave appeared to dance and cavort. Somehow I knew she was looking straight at me, while making short shrift of my meagre offering. Her double-lidded liquid amber eyes were narrowing, contracting and assessing – was I predator or prey? Or something else entirely.

‘Lake … it’s me, Talia,’ I offered steadily.

My legs felt oddly weak, and there was a strange creeping cramp spreading out from the pit of my stomach. I forced myself to scramble up onto a large flat boulder anyway. I had to face her now, before I lost my nerve completely.

It felt better being higher, although I knew Eli would say I was breaking cardinal rule number one: always present yourself lower than the animal you’re trying to pacify. Somehow though I knew it wasn’t the right way for me and Lake.

‘You have to remember me? Max and I? We came to find you from Arafel …? You were hiding with Atticus and the Prolet children beneath the Dead City? Remember? We were with you – in New Arfel – when you were taken – by … Cassius’s aquila?’

Then there was another violent projection of steam, the colour of Bereg’s mulberry wine, and then a raking noise – the sound of heavy claws digging into a hard rock floor. Every cell of my body tightened. She recognized Cassius’s name. There was hope.

‘We followed you to Pantheon, to try and rescue you! Max and I were forced into Ludi Pantheonares to face the Minotaurus. And we only escaped with Unus – the Cyclops’ help … I was injured but we managed to escape through the tunnels beneath Pantheon only to be hijacked by Cassius and his guards at the cathedral. There was a fight, Lake. We lost … so many.’

‘… Tal!’

Unus’s voice broke my concentration, and somehow the warning note in his tone told me exactly what to do. I dropped and flattened out on top of the boulder, just as a burst of searing red heat passed over my back with scarcely a gnat’s length to spare.

Instinctively, I rolled away and slid down into a crevice as a second burst of her fury enveloped the entire side of the boulder. From my sheltered position, I could see only Unus and Eli’s incredulous expressions, but they were enough. I took hold of the stone edge, and pulled myself up until finally I had a clear view of the spiny-tailed mythological legend dwarfing the dark hole behind her. It was Lake.

And she made the mountain look feeble.

Clearly draco-chimera adolescence involved huge growth. Although her five metres had already seemed big at the research centre, now she had to reach at least twenty metres into the sky, and I couldn’t even see the tip of her tail, which disappeared into the darkness behind. She was still ash-grey with spiny titian scales, but they’d tapered into menacing arrow-points that stretched all the way down the back of her thick, muscular back and hind quarters.

I swallowed the rock in my throat, mesmerized by her new adolescent appearance.

New veins of regal purple traced a visible path from her neck, all the way down her torso and into the tops of her powerful forelegs. But it was her double-lidded honey eyes that stole all my attention. They were older, hungrier – angrier. But they were still eyes that didn’t belong on such a vast, serpentine creature. They were hers. Lake’s eyes. And they were eyeballing me intently.

‘We came to look for you, Lake!’ I entreated, as she opened her huge scaly jaws and spilled her rage into the chilled mountain air.

‘With Pan! We came with Pan!’ I added hoarsely, my eyes streaming.

An eerie, smoky silence suddenly filled the air. Lake paused, lowering her great spiny head so it was level with the top of my boulder. And it could have been her proximity, or the late sun glinting off the shale, but I fancied there was a reddening to the underside of her amber eyes, almost as though she associated the name with pain.

‘He traded his life to save us … so we could come and find you,’ I whispered.

Her purple scaly nostrils vibrated with barely contained aggression, and this time I could tell she was listening, that somewhere in her hybrid, mixed-up mind, she remembered.

‘Pan knew about our blood, he knew we shared a connection,’ I begged, my throat feeling like razor blades. ‘Lake?’

I extended my hand, but a familiar rumble filled the air before I could finish, and as Lake swung her thick leathery head back to identify the source of the noise, my heart sank.

Unus and Eli had caught up, and were clearly intent on distracting Lake from incinerating me. I scowled furiously, shaking my head, but it was already too late.

Lake wasted no time in swinging her huge reptilian body around, her heavy thrashing tail sweeping across the top of the boulder and nearly taking my head off in the process. And as I bolted out from behind her, I was conscious of her titian spines flushing with deep scarlet blood, staining their dark jagged points cruel and hard.

‘Move!’ I bellowed, sprinting across the top of the rocks.

She settled her gaze on Unus, her eyes narrowing to slits, and opened her brutal jaws to reveal violent canines, designed with one purpose in mind. In that split second I understood. She was the mother of all mythical creatures and here was one of her kind, actually daring to challenge her. And while Unus possessed the strength of ten hunters, he was still paltry defence against an adolescent Hominum chimera.

‘Get down … Unus, get down!’ I yelled, flying towards them as Lake closed in from the opposite side, the ground shaking with her every colossal step.

Eli was trying, heroically, to force Unus to his knees, but I could see he was struggling.

I scowled as a snippet of Aelia’s medical knowledge floated out of the whirlwind in my head.

Cyclopean arteries and limbs are especially thick; they have low blood pressure and are pretty inflexible …’

‘He can’t … Lake, he can’t kneel!’ I yelled, just as she reached forward with one of her powerful, regal claws and knocked Unus flat onto his back.

He landed with an almighty crash, his face swiftly staining purple as breath deserted his ill-designed body. He looked up in utter bewilderment as I ran out in front of his plate-feet, and spun to face Lake’s wide-open jaws.

‘No!’ I yelled furiously, throwing my arms wide as she teetered, before swinging her colossal weight back.

And in that moment I don’t know who was more amazed. Lake, because I’d dared to defy her – or me, because she actually listened and reacted.

Eli stepped in beside me, calm glued to his face, as Unus recovered enough to start slowly dragging himself backwards. But Lake’s surprise was short-lived. And as reality returned, her giant head sank once again towards the ground, jowls drawn back in ugly contemplation, haunches high and arched. The frenzied look was back in her double-lidded eyes, and even though Eli had begun to sign, they were locked on me alone.

‘We aren’t here to hurt you, Lake,’ I forced out, so conscious of our vulnerability, and yet determined to reach the little girl inside, wherever she was. ‘We’ve come to help, and to ask for yours in return. Cassius is raising an army, waging a war on the outside … and we … Arafel, the Outsiders … we need your help.

‘You are Hominum chimera, mother of all mythical beasts, and the most ancient of all creatures described in the Voynich. But you are also Lake, a loyal friend with the bravest, truest heart I’ve ever known.’

She tilted her head so suddenly, Eli and I had to jump aside to avoid a sharp stream of boiling acrid steam.

‘Cassius wants to control you,’ I continued stubbornly, ‘to use you as a weapon to change the outside world. But there is another way. A way to live freely, to live the life you deserve on the outside … Help us, Lake. Help us stop Cassius, help us free the Prolets – your people … and Max.’

I finished on a whisper, and though Eli was signing fast, translating my words as swiftly as I spoke, I could tell she was so different from Brutus, the griffin and the vultures. Because for once, the only control in the world was standing right beside him.

And I knew Lake understood every damned word, and not because of anything she was doing, but rather because of what she wasn’t doing. Her giant scaled head was still angled to one side and though her honey eyes were blazing, there was something else too.

She was listening.

Somehow it was working.

Just as a new sound cut the air, a groan I only half-recognized as belonging to Unus it was so shot through with shock. In that moment we all shared the same instinct – draco, Cyclops and Outsiders alike – to turn our gaze upon the valley at the bottom of the North Mountain slopes. Towards Arafel.

And I barely acknowledged Lake’s last violence as she shook out her draco wings, each one the length of three stallions, and thundered off the mountain shelf – because my sights were locked on a serpent much closer to home. A serpent that took the last of my hopes, and crushed them to ash before my darkening eyes.

Arafel was in flames.

Chapter 9

I felt only the scorching jaws of a dark curse. As acutely as though it were slowly gorging itself on my own feral heart. Raw and bloody, bite by bite.

Instinctively I slowed as the charred skeleton of Arafel’s forest rose up before us like a giant desiccated spider; its appearance as alien as Pantheon’s Eagle aircraft disappearing over the North Mountains peaks.

Eli and I picked our way, among the handful of survivors on the outskirts of the village, in silent shock. The Eagle Stealth Sweepers had dived silently and without warning, using laser fire technology to obliterate most of our forest home within seconds. No one heard them coming, and for most, there was no time to escape their individual treehouse furnace.

The air was dead, broken only by the splitting and cracking of disintegrating trees, hanging over what was left of our home village like a funeral shroud. As we entered the village community area, a handful of disparate people emerged from different directions – Komodos, Lynx, Eurasians and my people – their faces as mutilated as the landscape surrounding us. No one could give voice to the sudden and absolute devastation shattering our village home. It was too much like admitting it had happened; that somehow we had to process this horror.

There were bodies everywhere, people and animals, limbs entwined, as the laser fire had prompted that most human of responses. Raven and Mathilda lay face down by the grazing ground gate, cut down in a desperate attempt to set the grazing animals free. To give them the fighting chance Cassius had denied them.

And an ocean of blood was staining the earth beneath our feet.

The ground was sodden, rivulets converging and painting my feet with the fate of so many innocents. My mind recalled the moment we glimpsed the vampiric eyes of the basilisk in the Isca Prolet, watching and waiting. A single drop of the basilisk’s acidic venom had reduced the ironmonger’s tool to nothing but a pool of molten metal. It was just the same now, only the acid was Cassius, and the molten iron my family and friends, children and animals alike. Nothing and no one had been spared. We were staring at a massacre.

Eli regained himself first, breaking into a run that blurred into the splintered trees within seconds. It pulled me back into the moment, into conscious thought, and I flew after him, not needing to ask where he was headed.

I tried to keep my eyes focused on the unrecognizable ground in front, conscious only of a dull thump in my ears as I sprinted. The communal buildings were just a series of dusty, blackened rises, their top layer already scattering to the wind. And as I willed the violence and destruction to blur behind my eyes, I was already aware of a muted resemblance to the Dead City.

We entered what used to be the perimeter of the forest at a speed neither of us knew we possessed, but were then forced to slow. Because nothing was the same. And where before there was a network of treehouses, now there was only chilling, empty space. It was as disorientating as it was devastating. Most of the outlying homes had stood no chance against the intense heat of Cassius’s weaponry. My chest strained as though a vortex was growing inside, a whirling gut-slicing vortex. If I even gave an inch, there would be a storm to pay.

With no trees left to run through, we were forced to keep our path on the ground, circumventing any ominous smoking remains. I kept my gaze locked forward, pushing my feet until we reached the scorched embers of Art’s treehome. It was where the Council held meetings on the last working day of the month, a tradition Grandpa started when he was Village Leader.

Now I could only stare at the twisted blackened remains of a tree stump, with bile burning up my throat.

We stood together dully. There was unrecognizable debris, and the same oppressive smoke everywhere. The guilt of survival volumed up from my core, threatening to swallow me whole as I turned slowly, trying to force my clouded brain to work.

Then a voice, calling through the smog. It was a familiar voice, from behind the remains of a Norwegian fir. Blindly, I ran towards the sound, and skidded to my knees beside a trapped, skewed person. And even though she was covered in blood, and my senses were suffocated, I knew her instantly.

‘Ida,’ I whispered.

She turned her glistening head, only now the tongues dancing around her fading eyes were choked with dust.

‘Tal,’ she whispered with the glint of a smile, as I pushed my arms beneath her soaking back and pulled her close.

Then she closed her proud Komodo eyes and breathed her last.

I cradled her tightly as though that could make a difference. But I was too late, far too late. It was only when Eli took her shoulders to lower her that I realized her legs were skewed because they had been severed by the indiscriminate laser fire. Numbly, we straightened her so the division was barely visible. Then she lay there, with as much dignity in death as she had in life, and I watched as the scorched ground darkened around her body, as though it too knew it wasn’t her time, that this warrior belonged to the sun.

A quiver of her pared hand-darts rested against her still hip, and gently, I reached out to unhook the small weapons she always used with such accuracy. Each one had an immature Komodo tooth set into its tail, weighting it precisely, so it flew with the tribe’s honour.

‘I promise,’ I breathed, placing my palm over her cooling forehead the way she used to mark respect, before pushing to my feet.

Then we flew as though our feet could defy gravity. And as the desiccated landscape blurred, all I could think was that if the Eagle Stealth aircraft had reached our white oak, I’d failed Mum in the same way I’d failed Grandpa. And that hurt was just too much for any one body to contain.

Eli pulled ahead of me, his longer legs giving him the edge over the charred ground. We hadn’t spoken on our flight down the North Mountains, leaving Unus far behind on the slopes, but I knew we were both thinking the same thing. We’d left Mum when she needed us most. She wouldn’t have understood what was happening, and she wouldn’t have had the wherewithal to run if there had been chance to escape. The thought stole my air, making my feet leaden as the silent forest blurred like a monument to itself.

Then, suddenly, our feet were plunging into denser foliage, and I found myself holding my acrid breath until it hurt. Our treehouse was the first to be built in the middle of Arafel’s forest, whereas most of the newer treehouses had been built nearer the village centre, where the laser fire had been concentrated. Dare we hope? The foliage was definitely greener, though the indiscriminate path of laser fire was still visible. It was the tiniest ray of hope, but I clung to it fiercely until Eli slowed in front of a familiar willow bough.

My chest thumped painfully as I approached, my brother’s silhouette looming through the dust like a dark angel. And then we were back, standing at the edge of our clearing, staring up at the old white oak that had sheltered Thomas and our ancestors through the worst storm mankind could devise.

It was still there.

Or at least most of it was. One of the large supporting boughs had been split off by passing laser fire, leaving the edge of our living room exposed, but the rest was there, its silver-white bark a beacon of hope among all the grey.

‘Mum?’ I whispered, my eyes streaming. ‘Mum?’

My anguish exhaled forcibly as I scrambled forward, willing myself up there, willing Mum to be OK. Before a sudden, bruising grip on my upper arm yanked me back into the foliage.

‘What?!’ I hissed as I regained my balance, only to find his other hand clamping down hard over my mouth.

Then I saw his expression. He was staring straight ahead, and there was something in his fixed stare that flooded my limbs with fresh dread. Yet I couldn’t not look. I forced my gaze to level with his, and scowled through the eerie, particle-choking air.

And then I understood. Because she was there, just past the dust and devastation, just beyond the shadow of our treehouse. Mum.

Mum was standing, unprotesting, as some kind of metal frame box closed around her, a box connected by a glinting silver cord to the open underbelly of an Eagle aircraft.

They were taking her.

The words repeated dully in my head before reality bit back. Then cold fury snaked through my limbs and I fought like a caged medusa to show I didn’t care, that I knew he was trying to save us, but that it didn’t matter any more. There was no way I could stand here and watch them take her the way they took Grandpa. I had to try to stop it. And somehow, whether it was a moment’s weakness, or some brief understanding that there was no survival worth her loss, his hold loosened. It was all I needed and I was away in a flash, pelting past our treehouse, across the open ground and towards her.

‘Mum!’ I grated hoarsely, as the cage swung just out of reach of my gut-twisting leap.

I landed in a heap before turning my burning face skywards.

‘Cassius!’ I bellowed into the air. ‘Fight me! You goddamned son of a cowardly death-adder bastard! Do you hear me?’

Panic was clawing up my throat, blinding me as Mum’s frail figure grew terrifyingly smaller.

‘Or are you too scared to face me after the cathedral? Cassius …!’

A second grill was over my person in a breath, and it was only then that I realized the metallic frame was lined with a transparent material. It was a fortified box, much like the canisters in the research centre, and it sucked me in with intense force. Stealing my breath. Dulling my consciousness.

‘Mum,’ I moaned desperately.

And as my senses dimmed, I was vaguely aware of a broken face far below, of a dark hole looming closer, and the mechanical clatter of a hatch closing. Then there was motion, but it didn’t matter because through my dimming eyes I caught a glimpse of her. Beside me. And whatever she was facing, I was right beside her. Facing it too. Grandpa’s eyes blurred before mine, he was smiling so sadly.

‘I tried,’ I pleaded, as the world dimmed to a faint pink spot, and all I could think was that, sometimes, winning wasn’t about fulfilling prophecies or defeating monsters.

That sometimes, it was about knowing when to lose.