The Unmaking (The Last Days of Tian Di, #2)(46)

“What am I doing?” muttered Ander to himself. He looked very pale. He turned accusing eyes on Nell, then went a little paler and staggered to his feet to vomit over the gunwale.

“You’re going to be fine, aye,” Nell told the Shade. Her voice sounded strange to her own ears, too nasal, somehow distant. “Once we get to the Cave, you’ll be fine. Are you still awake? Are you listening to me?”

Charlie said nothing. He looked like a deflating balloon, his features soft and indefinite, his body losing its solidity. Like he was melting, coming apart. Her stomach convulsed. For a moment she thought she would be able to master it, that through sheer strength of will she could prevent the sickness from overwhelming her. Then she buckled over, clutching her stomach with a groan.

The boat raced on towards the dark cliffs, which loomed larger and larger. Her stomach lurched, knife-jabs of lightning pain shot through her bones, hot flashes and icy chills swept over her. She forgot about Charlie. She forgot about everything. She pressed her face to the boards and moaned, hands in her hair, helpless against the agony of it.

Ander was more experienced when it came to pain. He had fought many long years in the war and his body was a map of scars. In spite of being feverish, half-delirious, and wracked by stabbing pains, he dragged both Charlie and Nell into the helicopter as the cliff approached and the black zig-zagging steps opened up before them. He did not know if the awful shapes on the wall, glaring beasts and ominous watching things, were actually carved there or merely his own hallucinations, and he didn’t bother himself about it. Nell was vomiting in the back of the helicopter as he started up the engine. As they soared up and over the wall, she leaned forward between the seats. Her damp hair stuck to her face, which was white as a sheet, and her pale lips trembled.

“Canyon,” she croaked, and pointed.

At first this meant nothing to Ander. He followed her shaking finger and saw only a dark forest rising up to the right. Then he spotted the canyon snaking towards it, and he put the helicopter down on the edge of it. As soon as the rotary wings had stopped he yanked open the door, stumbled out of the chopper, fell to his knees and then flat on his stomach, where he lay still. Nell pulled open her door and fell out. She barely felt the impact as she hit the ground. Rust-coloured clouds flitted across the sky like smoke and the red sun beat down on them. She rolled onto her side with a gasp of pain and lifted her throbbing head. A good distance to the left, near the black cliffs, stood what appeared to be a great many ruins. Nell squinted, not quite trusting her eyesight. She knew these should be the Temples of the Faithful but Eliza had described them as rather beautiful and busy domes. These were collapsed, open to the sky, and deserted. She turned her head in the other direction. The canyon and the Ravening Forest. She crawled to where Ander lay on the red earth. His eyes were open and he was breathing, thank the Ancients. When he saw her, he said thickly, “What’s happening to us?”

“Get Charlie,” she said.

He staggered to his feet. Nell tried to do the same, but she couldn’t, so she remained on her hands and knees. When she looked up, Ander had Charlie slung over his shoulder.

“I spec it’s too late, Nell,” said Ander.

Indeed, the limp, greyish form hanging over his shoulder did not look anything like a boy anymore. Something ink-black floated in long threads from the wet spaces that were once mouth and eyes. Nell looked away. She crawled along the edge of the canyon, and Ander followed after her.

Charlie must nay die, she repeated in her head, over and over, like a mantra. Charlie cannay die. Her hands and knees were numb. Her vision blurred and cleared and blurred again. She longed to lie down, to be still. But Charlie must nay die, she repeated. It felt like hours, though it was not nearly so long as that, before she found the narrow trail down the side of the canyon that Charlie and Eliza had told her about. She forced herself to move a little faster, though she could not rise from a crawl. And there, there it was, the dusty ledge, the dark craggy opening in the cliff. The walls and ground of the cave were fleshy and lightly furred.

She tried to speak and found she had no voice, so she pointed into the cave. Ander carried Charlie inside. Nell looked at him as he passed – his mottled grey flesh hung soft and boneless, and still the dark strands bled from the corners of his mouth and eyes – and quickly looked away again. As the rock face ground closed over Charlie, Nell’s mind, too, shut tight. She curled into a ball right there on the stony ledge. Later she did not remember Ander carrying her back up the trail to the helicopter. He had learned long ago how to close his mind to pain and keep moving. There was a tent and various emergency supplies in the back of the helicopter. He pitched the tent in the small amount of shade the chopper offered, dragged Nell inside it, and then he too lay down at last and let this strange new world close around him.

~~~

When Nell opened her eyes, it was very dark in the tent. Her head was pounding and she was sore all over, as if she had been badly beaten. She sat up with a groan. Ander was still sleeping but she woke him to give him some water. The water refreshed them both and they crawled out of the tent. It was night. Bright comets slashed across the sky and three moons performed a slow circling dance together. To the south, the hanging gardens of the Sparkling Deluder twinkled and shone, changing shape, offering up wheels of glowing blossoms, cities of stars, leaping figures and spangled forests swaying in a gleaming breeze.

“Will you look at that,” said Ander, his voice hoarse.