Page 67 of The Book that Broke the World

Arpix

They started their trek as a group and soon became a straggle, limping their way across the margins of what had once been the Dust but currently was something considerably more habitable and perhaps even more difficult to walk across. Arpix, like most of the others, had worn his shoes out years before. The scraps of leather around his feet were held together with dry sinews and optimism.

Arpix took what Clovis called “point,” leading the way, or at least following Wentworth. He had their hoe with him and poked at any suspicious patch of ground, wary of the creatures Livira had called dust-bears. He’d never seen one, but they were things that you tended only to see while they were eating your legs. The few travellers to reach the plateau had all spoken of the ambush predators in fearful tones. Wentworth seemed oblivious to the danger, and Arpix wasn’t sure whether that meant the cat was skilfully navigating around their pits or was simply unaware of the threat.

Every now and then Arpix asked Wentworth to pause while the stragglers caught up. There were no skeer in evidence but that didn’t mean anyone should leave the orb’s protection zone. At any time, a skeer flier might drop from the sky without warning.

For the first few miles the skeer who had followed them from the plateau had attempted attacks from almost every angle. Arpix was pleased to discover that when they blocked the way it took no effort to drive them aside with the orb’s aura. If the skeer had been able to hem them in, it would have been an unequal pushing match. At Meelan’s insistence, Arpix had tried the obvious experiment, advancing at speed without warning to see if the skeer would be engulfed and killed, but each time they moved aside without any apparent injury.

Jost, who had been loath to move in the first place, had finally been motivated by the idea of a return to the library, the source of her authority. Also by the fact that she stood no chance if they left her alone. Even if the plateau’s protection had remained, the woman was clearly unequal to the labour required to feed herself.

It was Jost who demanded that Arpix give her the orb so she could trap the skeer somewhere they couldn’t escape from and thus reduce them to piles of offal like the one Wentworth had pulled too close. Arpix politely declined and pointed out that no such topology lay within many miles of their position.

Eventually, the skeer divided into two groups and went on ahead, both seemingly aimed at the closest mountain where their hive hugged the library entrance. They had no problem outpacing the humans and injured canith. Arpix listened to the muttered speculation about what kind of reception would be waiting for them in the valleys and gorges ahead.

Kerrol and Evar essentially carried Clovis between them, though pride kept her legs moving for most of the way. An uncomfortable memory plagued Arpix every time he looked back at the canith trio. Livira had escaped the Dust with three soldiers, including one who had died of his wounds on the journey. The other one had had a broken arm or something similar, which echoed Kerrol’s injured shoulder. Only Malar had escaped without serious injury, though he still bore the scars of the battle on his face.

It took all day to reach the valley that once led to Crath City. The scar of the old road still marked the ground, even after two centuries. Arpix guessed that his hometown had suffered a gentler doom than most of its predecessors. His people hadn’t reached the fire limit that Yute had spoken of, a common or garden war had burned their city down to the foundations before they’d had the opportunity to re-create the fire of the ancients and burn themselves down to the bedrock. And the canith who had done it clearly hadn’t lasted too long before the skeer they’d been retreating from had found and obliterated them in turn.

Arpix walked on, his feet sore from the unaccustomed miles. Unexpectedly, Jella had kept him company at the front. He should have expected it. The library had shaped the girl, playing on her timid nature and desire to please everyone. But the harshness of the plateau had carved most of that away and revealed a young woman with greater reserves of stamina and courage than the rest of them. She might still flinch from a scorpion or the rawness of an open wound but faced with the far greater challenge of survival against the odds, Jella had demonstrated a fearlessness that put his own worries to shame. She had taken on the environment with both hands and made a better job of the fight than Arpix and Meelan.

“Penny for your thoughts.” An old saying Jella had found in a book and was fond of using.

“You’re overvaluing what goes on in my head.”

“I’m sorry about the canith. Clovis, I mean. I know you like her.”

“I don’t—” Arpix swallowed the denial. He did.

“I always said it would take a warrior to batter down your walls.”

“She’s a fighter, that’s for sure. Don’t count her out yet.” Arpix pressed his lips together and held his face stiff against the unfamiliar emotion threatening to twist it.

“Salamonda says we’re going from the frying pan into the fire.”

“She likes her kitchen analogies.”

Jella snorted. “The plateau was a lot like a frying pan. Flat. Hot.”

“And the fire?”

“You know.” Jella gave him a sideways look. “Yute’s bringing us back into his war.”

“Well, to be fair, it’s not really his war. He spent hundreds of years just watching over the city and shelving books. And the canith rolling over Crath’s walls... that had nothing to do with Irad and Jaspeth or whatever you want to call them. I mean, if it hadn’t been for Livira we wouldn’t even know there was a war...”

“You know I’m right.”

Arpix wondered if Jella was channelling Carlotte; there was definitely something of her old friend in the forthrightness on display. And she was right, probably. Yute wasn’t calling them back to be librarians again. Arpix wondered what the mysterious deputy and his equally strange wife were planning, now that the uneasy compromises they had supported had ended in disaster and fire. He trudged on for a long dusty while before surprising Jella with an answer to her first question.

“I’m thinking that this would be so much easier if there were a dark lord who hated the world and wanted to tear it down. We’d all line up against that one.” He reached for a favourite saying of his own that he’d dug up from a tome probably every bit as old as the one Jella found hers in. “Honourable men may differ. That’s our curse here.”

—

As the arms of the mountain started to reach around them, they saw their first skeer since the warriors had abandoned them out on the plains. Small bands of skeer runners flanked them, high on the slopes. Overhead, fliers flitted across the paling sky like errant dragonflies. Ahead the hive loomed ever larger. It was easy, from a distance, to consider it an oversized wasps’ nest. Closer in, though still miles off, and the mind began to strain to encompass quite how oversized it was. The architects and builders of Crath City had for decades stretched their imagination and their skills ever higher, piling their rocks more artfully until golden spires seemed to threaten the very sky itself. But the organic mass the skeer had adhered to the mountainside overtopped any of the fallen towers from Arpix’s time. Quite how such a thing could have been built, apparently without tools, Arpix had no idea.

Wentworth idled his way relentlessly up the valley, often saving his legs by passing through a brief-lived portal to gain a few hundred yards. He waited for them, half-asleep atop a stray boulder that winter had prised from the heights and left for spring to find in the valley.

“He’s taking us right to the nest, isn’t he?” Meelan asked.

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