A pillar of fire burns through the hazy atmosphere inland, illuminating snow clouds and sending colourful swirls of flame dancing through the air. Clouds boil, steam billows, and then the sound of the staggering explosion reaches them.

'Back to your Blades!' Cove commands. It is the last order he issues, and they are the last words the Bladers will hear.

Along the beach, out of sight around a headland where it stands amidst a sea of molten gla.s.s and drifting gas, the Engine erupts. Cove lives long enough to see the land itself rising, and the sea rising with it, as though the world is punching a fist from beneath to destroy some travesty.

Then all is fire as, in the majestic beat of Aeon's heart, Alderia's offensive force is wiped from the face of Skythe.

Venden as he might have been, tall and smiling in his Guild of Inventors graduation robes. At his side stood his Guild invention, a mechanism whose use was hidden, but which impressed Bon nonetheless. There was craftsmanship in its construction, and a gentle pride in the way Venden stood close to it, not quite touching. Perhaps it would win him a scholarship, perhaps not, but Bon was as proud as could be. Venden opened his mouth but could not speak, because this was not real.

Milian Mu as might have been, a smiling woman with love in her eye and a carefree demeanour. She sat beside Venden at the ceremony and had tears on her cheeks, thankful tears at what they had in their son, and in each other. There were no doubts here, and no shield between her dark secrets and the long, happy life ahead of them. Bon reached out to hold her hand, but she was not there.

Leki appeared across the Guild parade ground, a thin, fleeting shadow peering between the upright graduates and their many and varied inventions. Bon saw her and raised a hand to wave but Leki showed no sign of seeing him. She was motionless and not breathing a a statue, raised in honour of something none of those present knew a and the shadow of something protruding from her head chilled Bon's heart.

He looked to Venden and tried to catch his son's eye, but the boy was looking elsewhere.

He turned to Milian, but she was subsumed in sadness once more, and already falling away from him.

Bon closed his eyes on the vision, slowly, so that he retained a final glimpse of the young man and the two women he had loved.

And he opened his eyes onto a world in ruin.

Fire and ice. The two did not belong together, but as Bon staggered across the clearing to a pile of fallen trees at its edge, he struggled against them both. Fire stretched the skin on the back of his neck and probed his clothing, seeking flesh to seed itself in. It rose behind him like a solid wall at the end of the world, and though he guessed it to be several miles distant, it almost scorched the life from him with every breath he took.

Through the heat fell chunks of ice. Green and opaque with age, he had seen its like before. Deep in the land, where Aeon had lured them, Skythe's frozen depths had been an ill.u.s.tration of the hurt it had suffered centuries before.

Now the land was erupting and the ice raining down, and another hurt ensued.

Snow had ceased falling. Warm rain came down in its place. Trees had tumbled, some snapped off high up, others seemingly shoved by the same heavy hand that had flung Bon through the air. Reaching the shelter of the pile of fallen trees, he hunkered down behind them to a.s.sess his wounds.

There were many, but none appeared life-threatening. Lacerations, grazes, bruises, some cuts were filthy with mud, others seeping surprising amounts of blood. But now was not the time to tend himself. Chaos had taken Skythe, and the coast lured him.

Leki had told him to go that way.

Leki. She was gone. Whatever she had done inside that Engine, the resulting explosion had punched a hole in the land and set the air aflame. There was no sign of Aeon, and no indication that magic a that obscure force, blackened soul of an evil thing a had succeeded in manifesting. She had done Aeon's bidding, but at such a price.

Bon headed south through the fire-lit night, across a landscape that had been shattered and reshaped by the Engine's explosion. The further he went, the less he felt the effects of the huge fire. Ice still rained down around him, but in smaller chunks and quant.i.ties. He scooped melted snow to drink, and picked fruit from tumbled trees to eat. He had no way of telling whether what he ate was poisonous or not, but he did not care. If Skythe deigned to kill him after all this, there was little he could do to protect himself.

As morning dawned and the sun smudged itself against the smoke-filled sky, Bon collapsed in a heap to rest. He found a small cave in a rugged hillside, and though he sat warm and sheltered from the outside, he could not sleep. From the north came the sounds of thunderous impact, transmitted through the ground to kick up at him, as if the world itself was ripping open and spewing out its frozen guts. And to the south-east blazed another incomprehensible fire where another Engine had exploded. Miles across, miles high, there seemed to be an unnatural life to the blaze that Bon knew he must evade.

Stunned, numbed, he leaned against the cave wall and watched the colours of destruction dancing at the entrance.

After a small rest he set off again.

He walked through that day, and found the first dead Kolt just before nightfall. It wore a Spike uniform and was p.r.i.c.ked in several places with heavy arrows, but these were not the cause of its demise. It was a thin, wasted thing, limbs and torso shrivelled, face drawn, eyes sunken and picked out by birds or insects. Its mouth hung open in an endless exhalation of rage, and Bon would not draw too close. It was dead, but still exuded malevolence. He pa.s.sed it by and moved on quickly, glancing back several times while the body was still in view to make sure it had not moved.

He discovered several more dead Kolts, all in a similar state. Each was on its own, all had fallen in their drive southward, and many still clasped the weapons with which they had done so much killing. It was not the explosions that had ended these corrupted things, nor the many wounds they carried. They had simply burned out and withered away.

From the land of the dead, as he came close to the coast he began to meet the living. They were always Skythian, cowed and shy and terrified. He tried not to bother them, but he was hungry and thirsty, and they seemed adept at surviving in this changing land. He humbly accepted help from one small family, but felt no compulsion to remain with them. He was Alderian, however his heart might speak otherwise. Alderia was this land's great abuser, and when they did not kill him, he shed a tear of shame.

This land, so abused six centuries before, had been subjected to another calamity that must surely mean its end. A disaster initiated once again by the people of Alderia. When Bon's tears had dried, the shame remained, a constant presence inside. He knew he would never be able to reach in and tear it out, and he was glad for that. Someone had to take responsibility.

At the coast, little remained of the scattered communities. A tsunami had swept in from the sea and reclaimed the beaches and much of the low-lying ground inland. Everything was changed. Countless people were dead. He met few survivors, and those he did meet a all Skythian a were heading west, away from the great cataclysm that was still visible as a boiling tower of flame along the sh.o.r.e. Ma.s.sive clouds of steam glowed from the chaos within.

From the north, the thunder of ice and the fading heat of another great explosion.

Bon followed the survivors.

Three days later he found a cave. It was a mile inland, sheltered from the sea breeze by a lip of rock, and it had once been home to others. There was a fire pit close to the entrance, and inside he discovered blankets and a sleeping roll, a blunted sword, some clothing and a few basic cooking implements. They were of Alderian origin, and Bon wondered who had lived here, and what perceived crime they had committed to deserve expulsion to Skythe.

Maybe they were alive; perhaps they were dead. Either way, all that remained of them here were a few roughly painted scenes on the walls deeper in the cave. They were of a man and a woman and two small children. Bon thought they were a girl and a boy, and the images made him sad. They gave evidence of an adult desperate to record his family, lest it fade from memory.

He wandered the area, gathering wood for a fire and considering what he might eat. He was not a hunter a not yet anyway a and he could find no fruit trees, so that evening he would likely go hungry. But by the time the fire was roaring, deeper in the cave he found fat grubs emerging as the heat filtered through to them, and he cooked them wrapped in heavy leaves. They were bland but filling.

From the north came the constant thunder of change. A grinding, cracking sound, as ice rose and then flowed. It'll erase everything, Bon thought. And he decided, as he bedded down, that might be no bad thing.

Dawn broke, Bon rose; during the night he had decided to stay. He was alone again, cast adrift with memories of extraordinary people, and the incredible things they had done.

Venturing back into the cave to view those old images afresh, he thought perhaps he might begin to paint. He hoped that if anyone ever discovered his images painted onto a cave wall, they might become wise.

Pursuing, pursued, as Juda worked his way south he began to understand.

He was guided by something inside that was not wholly him. This presence sat deep and quiet, yet a.s.serted its influence. It was larger than him, and Juda fled and followed because he had no choice. To contradict was not permitted. This presence had calmed his dreams and given him proper sleep for the first time in his life, and for that he owed it a measure of loyalty.

There was little to the landscape here that he recognised, and he was several miles out to sea before he realised he had even pa.s.sed the coast. The ice he walked over was thick and jagged, and when he came across a deep ice ravine and heard water surging and withdrawing deep down, he knew that he travelled over the ocean. He had left Skythe behind.

'What will I find on Alderia?' he asked the leaden sky. It had ceased snowing, but the threat of more snow was still heavy.

The presence inside did not reply, but he could sense something of its mood. Here was patience, an ancient contemplation of time as a means to an end. Here was fury at actions that had been taken against it, and pride in the way it had escaped that intended fate. Here was madness.

Juda shivered, but the shadow inside warmed him. It came forward, brief and powerful, to give him a glimpse of what it was, and what he had become ... and he was awash with more magic than he had ever dreamed of. I am everything I always sought, and all that I wanted to be. Yet he had never felt so wretched. The immense and dreadful half-formed mind hid within his own, and he found hints of the truth. Perhaps it was letting him see this, perhaps not. But once seen he could not unknow.

His time in that old broken Engine had been centuries beyond counting, not days. Hidden away and protected, he had been a vessel for the hiding thing after its full re-emergence into the world had been sabotaged and halted. And now that ages had pa.s.sed, and Alderia had moved on to whatever fraught future its false G.o.ds might have inspired, he was walking across the frozen sea to visit.

Juda carried the seed of Crex Wry. He would find someone, or something, in which to plant it. And then the people of the world would cower in fear of new rumours of old G.o.ds.

extras

about the author.

Tim Lebbon is a critically acclaimed, award-winning author of fantasy and horror novels and also writes screenplays. He has won the British Fantasy Society Award four times for his novellas and novel-length works and the Bram Stoker Award for his short fiction. His New York Times bestselling novelisation of the movie 30 Days of Night also won him a Scribe Award. Tim writes full-time and lives in Monmouthshire.

Find out more about Tim Lebbon and other Orbit authors by registering for the free monthly newsletter at www.orbitbooks.net

interview

Have you always known that you wanted to be a writer?

I've always known that I wanted to write. But it wasn't until my late teens that I even entertained the idea of being a writer.

I've written stories since I could hold a pencil, and before that I probably told them. a.n.a.lysing why that's the case is something I no longer do ... not because I'm afraid of questioning the urge to tell stories, but because there's no easy answer. My grandmother always had a saying about why people are like they are: 'It's the way their parents put their hat on.' That might partly be the case here, because my folks always encouraged me to read from a very early age, and one of the first TV programmes I ever remember watching was Doctor Who. I always loved using my imagination, and stretching it, and that meant that I naturally loved telling stories. I did so all through my teens, starting dozens of novels, finishing a few. And then it struck me that because I loved doing this so much, maybe it's what I could do for a living. That took some time to achieve, but the efforts to get there are a large part of the reward.

But I also believe that people are wired a certain way notwithstanding any outside influences. Some people are born sports-people, or scientists, and some are born with a driving urge to tell stories.

You've now written two fantasy novels for Orbit. How does Echo City compare to The Heretic Land, and do they address similar themes?

The theme that runs through both novels is how religions and beliefs affect society, sometimes for good, sometimes bad. Both involve societies in decline. Both follow groups of people who might be able to save the day. But there are also big differences ...

In Echo City, most of the action takes place in or below the city of the t.i.tle. It's a very, very big place, but still I wanted the sense of confinement to be claustrophobic and unsettling. The idea that a civilisation could believe that their city was the whole world I found fascinating a similar to flat-earthers, or even people who believe we are a unique, inhabited island in a dead universe (I don't believe that at all ...). Of course, most of my characters suspected that there was more beyond the toxic desert surrounding the city, even though recorded history denied this. And it is these people who confront the unknown with courage and open-mindedness. Oh, and there's also a big monster approaching the city from way, way down, where its oldest histories lie ...

In The Heretic Land, it's a very big world in which events unfold, with wide tracts of virtually uninhabited land, all of it ringing with a sad history. There's not that sense of physical enclosure, although there are still blinkered beliefs and unwillingness to entertain wider, more startling possibilities ... but not within my heroes, of course. They're the ones who see the light, and who struggle to keep it shining.

Although I'm perhaps better known as a horror writer, The Heretic Land is actually my sixth fantasy novel. They're all dark and grim, and I think my fantasy writing will always be informed by my horror-writing background. Fairies? Unicorns? If I do ever use them, they'll definitely have their dark sides.

Did the idea for The Heretic Land come to you fully realised or did you have one particular starting point from which it grew?

Very few of my books come to me fully realised. That's a huge part of the enjoyment of writing for me a if I knew the whole story before I'd even written the first sentence, I wouldn't get nearly as much enjoyment out of writing. Often at the end of the book my writing speeds up, because I'm keen to get to the end to see what happens! That was the case with The Heretic Land as much as anything I'd written. I've always been interested in the idea of sleeping and/or fallen G.o.ds (an idea I explored before in my novel Fallen). And I'm fascinated with the perception of G.o.ds, and the idea a so beautifully articulated by Arthur C. Clarke a that a being sufficiently advanced might be viewed as a G.o.d. I wanted to explore that idea, and the world of The Heretic Land built up around that. But it's as much about humanity's use and misuse of religion, as it is about the subjects of such beliefs.

What advantages and disadvantages do you see in using fantasy as the vehicle for your stories?

The main reason I love fantasy could be viewed as both a because I get to create whole new worlds! Some might find this daunting, and often it is. But it's also one of the most enjoyable elements of writing a fantasy novel for me. I have, quite literally, a blank canvas. And although I also know that my novel is going to feature very human characters, and landscapes that are at least partially recognisable, I also know that I'll be able to create whole new races, flora, fauna, societies, religions, politics ... while at the same time commenting on our own.

And the thing is, I think the fantasy world is always so integral to the story I'm trying to tell that it would be impossible to tell it in any other way.

Do you have any particular favourite authors who have influenced your work?

There are many, and I'm sure any writer would tell you the same. But when asked this question, I always mention three particular writers from different parts of my life.

When I was pre-teen I read all the Adventure books by Willard Price, and I guess these gave me my love of adventure stories.

In my teens (and still to a large extent now), Stephen King was the main man. I sometimes go through difficult phases with my reading (maybe it's a middle-age thing), where I find it very hard to get into a book. But with King, I always know that once I pick up one of his novels, I'll be hooked.

In my mid-twenties I started reading Arthur Machen. Machen was a turn-of-the-century writer of esoteric, supernatural fiction who told some wonderful, chilling tales of wonder and terror.

Do you have a set writing routine and, if so, what is it?

My writing is built around my busy family life. My wife and I have two young children, so there's school, football, hockey, rugby, scouts, cubs, ballet. I tend to follow a normal working day a when my wife's in work and the kids are in school a but I do often work in the evenings, or sometimes at weekends if the deadlines are pressing. I'm also currently in training for a marathon and, more distant, triathlons, so there's all that to squeeze in. Anyway ... a writer's always working.

Do you have a favourite character in The Heretic Land? If so, why?

I really like Lechmy Borle (Leki to her friends). She's strong, determined, complex, and she has dark depths which only become apparent as the book progresses. It's strange that I'd choose her because she's not actually a POV character ... maybe that makes her that much more mysterious.

Some authors talk of their characters 'surprising' them by their actions; is this something that has happened to you?

I think for me it's usually the story surprising me more than the characters. My characters are carried along by the story, and as story isn't something I plot out to the nth degree, I think often they're as surprised as I am by a particular turn of events. I think that's a really good sign that the story has taken over, and it's important to give ideas their full range of scope and possibilities. Otherwise it's easy to hamper yourself a or blinker your creativity, if you like a if you try to restrain a growing, living, breathing story to previously conceived ideas. A few pages of notes cannot amount to the three-dimensional, complex world you create when the actual writing begins. I listen to the story, and sometimes it takes me in directions I hadn't antic.i.p.ated. And I love it, because, as I've said before, I'm often keen to get to the end of writing a book to see what happens.

Do you chat about your books with other authors as you're writing them, or do you prefer to keep the story in your own head until the first draft is complete?

I suffer what many close writing friends of mine suffer from a insecurity about my work. So if someone asks me what my new book is about and I throw a couple of sentences their way ('It's about a sleeping G.o.d who wakes, and the people who have an interest in why it's woken up'), I instantly go into panic mode. Is that it? What else is it about? Where's the story in that? Is it original enough? Haven't I read that novel before? What if it's rubbish? For this reason, I tend not to talk much about work in progress. There's partly that insecurity thing ... and also the fact that I hate telling a story verbally before I've written and told it on the page. For the same reason, writing synopses doesn't fill me with glee, though I understand the need for them in business terms.

If you have to live for one month as a character in a novel, which novel and which character would you choose?

Well, as it would all be made up ... I think I'd have to go for someone really, really bad. Randall Flagg from Stephen King's The Stand. That's one novel that really fed my desire to be a writer, and Flagg has always been one of my favourite bad guys, both charismatic and brutal. And let's face it, he's pretty cool too. Cowboy boots, denims ... the bad guys are always the cool ones. And I've never been cool. So yes, just for one month I'd be the Walkin' Dude.

What would you do if you weren't a writer?

I did have a day job for twenty years, but that feels like the hazy past now ... almost another life. I think because writing has always been a part of me, I really can't think far beyond it. There's nothing I'd rather be doing, and nothing else I'd really want to do. But if realities shifted and I found myself in another version of my world, maybe I'd have learned an instrument when I was younger and I'd be in a band. A rock band, of course. Although the lack of hair might be a problem. Can't head bang when you're a baldy, see.

if you enjoyed

THE HERETIC LAND.

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