On Anhaga Island (The Glyst Saga Book 3) by Alex Bentley

Author:Alex Bentley [Bentley, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2021-12-19T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Four

The Death of Alys Clainh

I must have lost consciousness, because I awaken with a start, as from a terrible nightmare. The last thing I heard was my own screaming. Now I hear nothing. A strange, muffled silence, as if I am underwater.

I have such a thirst. I have never known its like, not even when I was adrift on The Fury. It as if I have swallowed a mouthful of dust or sand, but it has a mealy taste to it. My eyes are dry, too. They itch, and my vision is blurry. Aside from this, however, I feel better. There is no sign of the wet-lung. Strange that I do not feel comforted by this apparent improvement.

I sit up in Olshan’s bed, only to find I am not in Olshan’s bed. I am lying on the ground, surrounded by and covered in a layer of grey-white dust. I blink repeatedly to clear my eyes. It takes a while, but my vision improves. I examine my hands, first the backs, then the palms.

A grey-white fungus. I am covered in it. And I remember Cass’s words when I brought him back from the dead.

Tiny grey mushrooms sprouted from everything. I could feel them on my tongue. I could feel them under my eyelids when I blinked.

I try to spit them from my mouth, these tiny mushrooms, but I have not the saliva for it. I scrape them from the skin of my arm, and briefly spy my flesh beneath, but more sprout up to replace them. I scrape at the fungus on my shirt sleeve; again, it reveals the fabric beneath, but only for a moment.

I stand, and my legs are stronger than they have been since the wet-lung sapped them. But not as strong as before that. I suspect it is fear that weakens them now, not disease. Unless the fungus is beneath my skin, too. I try not to think about that, about fungus growing between the fibres of my muscles, along my bones, swimming in my blood like sea jellies.

Looking around, I see I am still in Olshan’s compound, in a manner of speaking. There is no fence, but where the fence should be is clearly defined by trees and shrubbery. But where Olshan’s garden was a thing of vivid colour, a thriving place, here everything is grey and lifeless. And where Olshan’s garden was fragrant to the point of making me almost giddy, everything here smells sodden and… dead.

And why wouldn’t it? Why wouldn’t it smell dead? This is, after all, a dead heaven. Our dead heaven, laid to waste by the Gravene. I have seen it before, through the terrified eyes of Eftas Hilder. This is the heaven that had to fall so that the Gravene could take our world.

I recall the words of Madec Teeg.

First, the Gravene sends the Cwalee to the world, to drain it of its Glyst. The Gravene goes away for a time and forges from the leeched Glyst a weapon. The Bord-e-Lak.

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