The Hanging Mountains (32 page)

‘Angel says run.’

‘Yes, so you keep repeating.’ Sal couldn’t keep a lid on his exasperation. It would soon be dark, and he didn’t want to be stuck on the ground with three unpredictable man’kin any longer than he had to. ‘Will you talk to them, find out what they’re up to? They say they came here to liberate a moai —’ he pointed at the hole where the stone had previously sat ‘— but they won’t say why. Maybe you can make sense of this.’

The great stone head swung silently, as though on massive, internal gimbals, to face Shilly.

‘Angel says the sense is this: there is no sense. There is only what is.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ asked Jao.

‘My question exactly.’

Shilly waved them both silent. ‘I raised you from the bottom of the lake,’ she said to the gargoyle, ‘but you didn’t stick around. You ran here to meet the Angel.’

‘
We ran here to meet you.’

She blinked. ‘Why?’

‘
You know us.’

‘I don’t know you. I picked you at random.’

‘Angel says there is no random.’

‘Then what is there? Some grand design?’

‘Angel says there is no design or sense or random. There is only what is. You know us. That
is,
Shilly of Gooron, and so it is
—
like the things you dream.’

Her dark skin went a shade paler. ‘How do you know that I dream? How do you know my name?’

‘It is, so we know.’

‘But how?’ Sal could see Shilly struggling for a way around the break in comprehension. ‘Is it like a memory? A memory of the future?’

‘Angel says there is no future. There is only now.’

‘Yes, that’s right. All times are one to you. Does that mean you know me in the future?’

‘You know. You dream.’

‘Can you tell me what my dream’s about?’

‘You know. You dream,’
the gargoyle repeated.
‘Angel says run.’

‘Why do you keep saying that?’ She flexed her stiff leg irritably. ‘And anyway, I
can’t
run.’

‘Angel says
—’

‘Don’t you dare.’

‘Angel says there are ways of running that don’t require legs, just as there are ways of hearing that don’t involve ears.’

The surprisingly long sentence was followed by an odd moment in which all three man’kin turned their heads to the east, as though at a noise Sal couldn’t detect. They held that pose for a heartbeat, then began to move. The two smaller man’kin turned and lumbered down the hill, along the Angel’s ragged path. The Angel man’kin took three giant, lopsided steps around Shilly, Sal and Jao, then began to lope after them.

‘Wait!’ Shilly called. ‘You can’t just leave!’

‘Looks to me like they’re doing just that,’ said Jao dryly as the giant form vanished into the shadows at the very bottom of the ravine. The sound of its progress — less noisy than it had been on the way up, since it had already flattened most of the trees in its path — faded into the distance.

When it had gone, the Panic female turned to her two human companions. ‘Are you going to fill me in on what just happened?’

‘As soon as we work it out,’ Sal promised, ‘you’ll be the first to know.’

* * * *

Shilly cursed herself for not thinking quickly enough as the balloon ascended through the mist. The sun had long vanished from sight, plunging the ravine into utter darkness. How Griel navigated, she didn’t know, but he did it much more carefully than earlier. The fog was cool and clammy against her cheeks and ears. Sal’s hands on her shoulders reassured her somewhat, but didn’t touch a deeper core of dissatisfaction.

They had learned next to nothing from the Angel. Instead of blathering on about memory and the future — always a fruitless task with man’kin — she should have pinned it down to specific issues, or tried at least. What else did it know about the Homunculus and the twins, which other man’kin called ‘the One from the Void’? What was it trying to save the moai from? What did it mean by
that which comes?

The balloon slowed and drifted to port. At Griel’s command, Jao flashed a shuttered mist globe at Erged and Highson. An answering flash indicated that they had been noticed. Griel swung the balloon in close to the treetops.

When the two of them had settled into their seats, Sal outlined what had happened below.

‘The Angel?’ Highson’s expression was invisible in the gloom, but his incredulous tone allowed her to picture it perfectly. ‘Here? Remarkable! And you don’t think it was a coincidence?’

As Sal repeated what the man’kin had said about the Angel liberating the moai, she told herself that, mystery or not, the incident hadn’t been a complete waste of time. They may not have found the Swarm, but they had found
something.

The knot she felt tightening around her would unravel in time, if only she kept picking at it.

‘What now?’ asked Mikia. ‘We’ve got no bait, and it’s as dark as a crabbler’s armpit out here.’

‘Let’s get the others,’ said Jao. ‘Then we’ll decide.’

Jao flashed the light at the cave containing Tom and Mawson and waited for an answer. Receiving none, she tried again.

‘He was asleep before,’ said Sal. ‘Maybe he’s nodded off again.’

‘Try calling him,’ Jao ordered.

Sal hollered Tom’s name three times, sending echoes dancing around them. No answer came.

Shilly’s gut felt tight. She had completely forgotten what she had seen earlier: a green figure sitting with Tom and Mawson in the cramped cave.

When she told the others, they were as mystified as she.

‘What would the Quorum be doing out here?’ asked Jao, her prominent brow dropping even lower.

‘Get ready to find out,’ Griel barked. ‘I’ll move us closer.’

Jao and Erged moved forward, preparing to leap across to the cliff face the moment Griel negotiated his way through the trees. They kept the light unshuttered and their hooks drawn. Shilly clutched the back of the seat in front of her, fearing the worst.

Jao jumped first, landing nimbly on all fours on the rocks. She disappeared into the cave, trailed closely by Erged.

The five seconds that followed were the longest in Shilly’s life.

Jao emerged, grim-faced, shaking her head. In her hand she held the hook Griel had given Tom.

Shilly barely breathed.
Dead?
First Kemp, and now Tom. It was too awful.

‘They’re gone!’ Jao shouted across the gap. ‘Both of them!’

‘Where?’ called Griel.

‘Hard to say. There’s no blood. No sign of a struggle. Maybe they went willingly.’

‘With the Quorum?’

Jao just shrugged.

Shilly rested her head on her hands as the two Panic climbed back aboard. Sometimes she despaired of ever understanding anything.

‘So what do we do now?’ asked Sal.

‘We keep hunting,’ Griel ground out from the darkness. ‘That’s what we do. Wherever your friends have got to and however they got there, I’m not going to rest tonight until they’re found.’

‘Out of the goodness of your heart or because you think they’re up to something?’

Griel didn’t answer. With a whir of its propeller, the balloon lifted up and away, into the night.

* * * *

The Wounded

‘Of all our senses, the heart is the least reliable. It

blinds us when we need most to see. It stops up

our ears when we need most to hear. But we

grant it influence out of all proportion and

beyond all need, because it never lies.’

THE BOOK OF TOWERS,
EXEGESIS 4:22

he knoll stood out from the surrounding forest like a bald man’s head, with a fringe of palms resembling a crown in which a colony of tiny flying insects had made a home. Getting there had taken half a day’s walk along winding, increasingly overgrown paths, up and down the hilly terrain. All of them in the expedition — bar one — did their share of lugging equipment, from stuffed packs to heavy cases slung between two people and filled with arcane paraphernalia.

Their arrival at dusk either accompanied or triggered a major swarming event, resulting in the inadvertent swallowing of more than a few hapless bugs. Skender pulled the neck of his black robe up over his nose and blinked furiously to keep his eyes clear. Even so, he was not immune. When a bug went up his nose, he coughed and spluttered and tried not to think of it wriggling down into his lungs. At least, he told himself, they weren’t biting.

When the sun faded and the sky turned dark, the swarm of insects died down. The party set about preparing the camp for both night and a wraith attack.

Skender could think of a thousand places he would rather be, but it was Mage Kelloman who voiced the concern he didn’t dare put into words.

‘Why are we getting involved?’ Kelloman asked Marmion when the journey was still in its planning stages. ‘The Swarm is the Guardian’s problem. What possible difference does it make to
us?’

‘It makes a difference because people are dying,’ Marmion had said, not hiding his scornful tone. ‘Because standing by and letting it happen would make us as bad as the things doing it.’

‘And because you need the Guardian’s help, I suppose. Let’s not forget that.’

‘Of course not. If we want them to help us, we have to earn it. That’s perfectly reasonable to me.’

‘Perfectly venal, I would’ve thought. You’re talking about the end of the world, aren’t you? A civilised person would willingly help, not have to be badgered into it.’

‘A person such as yourself, for instance.’

Kelloman pursed his lips and looked away. He had no comeback, having been carried to the site on a litter, complaining of weakness after his encounter with the wraith. Skender had been appointed his attendant and was forced to walk beside his litter, listening to an endless spiel of discontent. If there was one thing the mage liked less than a forester, it seemed, it was a Sky Warden, and being forced to co-operate with Marmion and the others rankled at every turn.

But Kelloman had no choice now. He had proved his worth and would not be allowed to back out of the hunt, no matter how much he tried. The Guardian had appealed to his vanity in the end, painting him as a force to be reckoned with against evil-doers and monsters. He had puffed up at that, and been reluctant to open himself up to charges of cowardice if he chose not to join the hunting party.

Once the insects settled down, the camp rapidly took shape. A ring of tents surrounded the knoll, under cover of the ferns. All those not participating directly in the experiment would sleep in light armour, and all would be armed. No one knew quite what to expect, so they prepared as a matter of course for anything.

Skender took the opportunity to escape Kelloman by helping unload the carts and backpacks. Not only did the foresters excel at growing trees rich in the Change, but they had developed an impressive array of biological tools with which to apply it. A crate of skull-sized growths as hard and dry as almonds and as black as ebony hummed with stored energy, grown and harvested from a species of tree particularly strong in the Change. A dozen tall poles, each composed of three branches coiled around each other, stood in for the crystals or stones used by wardens and mages. The potential each stored in the dense fibres and cells of the still-living wood was as powerful as a fully charged light-sink and had to be moved carefully. If one were to explode, it could easily kill the person handling it.

While the foresters had no distinct Change-working caste — much like the Panic Heptarchy, Skender had learned — two practitioners of chimerical plant husbandry had been allocated to the group. They explained how the poles and other grown artefacts could be utilised to channel and focus the Change around the knoll. Marmion paced out the knoll and its leafy surrounds, indicating where holes should be dug and charms laid. The perimeter formed by the poles would protect everything — tents and all — from the forest outside.

Skender kept himself busy sweeping the ground around Mage Kelloman’s chosen site of any loose dirt or stone. As he worked, he kept his eyes down, telling himself to keep his mind on the job. It didn’t matter what other people thought of him. He was doing the best he could. No one could ask for more than that.

When everything was in place, Lidia Delfine called the group together. Under the light of glowstones provided by Kelloman and mirror lights improvised by Marmion, Banner and Eitzen, twenty people met to discuss how best to deal with the wraiths.

‘The perimeter is in place,’ she said, coming to the point directly. ‘Once it’s activated, nothing will get in or out without our knowledge, so the chances of being taken by surprise are minimal. Still, I want lookouts at eight points within the perimeter, watching in three-hour shifts. At the slightest sign, raise the alarm. The same goes for everyone. Don’t be afraid to shout. I’d rather have a dozen false alarms than be taken off-guard once.’

She handed over to Marmion, who stood in the centre of the cleared area on a very solid heavy box and spoke loudly to everyone gathered.

‘I want to remind everyone of our objectives tonight. They’re twofold: firstly, to attract the Swarm, so we can confront them, and secondly, to do what damage we can while we have the chance. We can try to talk to them, try to warn them away from the forest if we can, but in the end force is likely to speak louder than words.’

Skender listened with the rest of them, unable to avoid filling in what Marmion wasn’t saying. Only a quarter of those on the knoll had been present that morning, during the planning session with the Guardian. Only a quarter knew just how many uncertainties they had to negotiate.

How do we know they’ll come?
Marmion had said in response to criticism of his plan.
Well, we know the Swarm likes blood. We can use that to our advantage. But blood is everywhere. How can we be sure they’ll want
ours?