Plumes of smoke hissed from the Processor’s innards as the skeletal giant continued to clamber out of the Forming Oven. Its skull and wings towered over the pit, the creature’s newly forged bones and tendons glistening with oil and plasma. Engines thumped heavily in its ribcage as they pumped arcane chemicals and blood through the network of pipes intertwined throughout the whole of its body. It was dragging hundreds of chains behind it, the links still glowing red from the ovens in which they had been forged.
Now free of the Forming Oven, the arconite stood on the Processor summit, unfurled its vast wings, and roared.
Even from up here, Harper could see that those wings were useless, naught but tattered grey flesh—an affectation the Icarates had created to help bind the archon’s soul into this mechanical body. Even months of torture could not entirely cleanse an angel of the memory of its living body. Of all Hell’s creatures, only an angel could not be altered by the sheer force of Menoa’s will. In death, they retained something more than ordinary mortals, something that resisted even the king’s formidable powers of persuasion.
And so the Mesmerist leader had resorted to this barbarism, this fusion of the physical and the metaphysical that bound an archon’s soul to metal and bone.
The Icarates took up the automaton’s chains and guided it to the edge of the Processor and down a ramp to join its eleven brothers in the vast holding area. This pen formed an open quadrangle amid the Mesmerist city, among those great black ziggurats and towers, rising like shards of obsidian, which stretched for as far as the eye could see. Red mists rose from a thousand flensing machines, while Menoa’s queer mix of slaves, warriors, and priests plied the deep canals in barges or crawled, limped, and rolled along thoroughfares. A pack of liver-skinned dogcatchers left a Ziggurat of Worship and splashed through one of the shallower canals, howling and clicking their teeth as their masters drove them onwards. Many such packs had been dispatched lately as King Menoa increased his hunt, not just for archons, but for pieces of the shattered god.
Harper flew to the top of the Processor and down through one of the smaller Icarates’ doorways. She passed through corridors of blue wires and sulphurous pools from which hands reached up to clutch at her. Yet in this current shape she was quick enough to elude their grasp.
In time she came to the Bastion of Voices.
It was a high chamber constructed of translucent lozenges, each one forged from a soul of rare insight. In the center of the room the king’s twelve Prime Icarates sat motionless in a circle of thrones arranged upon a dais, listening solemnly to the whispers from the glass. Tubes ran from valves in their bone-coloured armour and disappeared into the black glass floor, where further ancient seals had been engraved. Unlike most Icarates, these lords did not wear helmets. Their ancient faces had the pallor and texture of dead fish-flesh, while their eyes and mouths had been sewn up with copper wire.
Harper could not understand the whispers all around her, yet the voices became still more subdued as she approached. Her presence here had clearly not gone unnoticed.
The engineer tried to find her own voice, but her current shape was still new to her. She made a startled clicking sound, and then settled on the floor before the dais.
The arconites now equal the Prime, the voices of the chamber announced. We have achieved everything Menoa has commanded. Twelve giants will walk upon unblooded ground, each of them as powerful as a mortal army. Our thoughts are their thoughts. Relay the king’s message and retreat, insect. War is at hand.
Harper tried to speak again, but no sound came out except a fibrillating scratch. Her bristled limbs twitched in frustration. Her carapace made a noise like dry paper rustling. Why had Menoa not issued her with a throat to declare his demands?
He neglected to provide you with a throat, the chamber said, to prevent you from lying. Your mind is glass to us. It is enough to merely recall Menoa’s conversation with you.
So Harper remembered her audience on the king’s balcony, and through her thoughts the Bastion of Voices came to understand what Menoa expected it to do.
At last the chamber said, Tell the king we will construct a body for another iron angel, but warn him that there is much to do. Ore must be gathered from Pandemeria in abundance; a thousand souls will need to be re-formed; it will be necessary to harvest blood and bone from the flensing machines.
Leaving the silent Icarates upon their thrones, Harper took to the air again and retraced her path through the Processor. Outside, the newly forged arconite, still glistening and steaming from the Forming Ovens, was being chained to the floor of the holding area among the rest of its kin. These twelve giants squatted on the ground, their bony arms wrapped around their knees, in complete subservience to their Icarate masters. Flocks of airborne shades had already come to feed upon their great tattered wings, attracted by the living blood within them.
As Harper’s own translucent wings buzzed like those of a dragonfly, she wondered how she had allowed herself to become a part of all this madness. After all, she had come to Hell for another reason entirely.
The king was waiting for her on his balcony. He stared at her, and for a moment Harper felt his presence scour the inside of her mind. Then the feeling was suddenly gone, leaving her empty and shaken. He said, “You wish me to restore your original shape?”
She didn’t have to answer him. He already knew.
Menoa scraped one of his glass claws across the top of the balustrade, and Harper felt her nerves flare as her body began to change again. Her exoskeleton crackled with energy then burst apart, spilling out convulsing innards which swelled and took on new forms. All around her the world seemed to shrink as she grew in size. Multiple views blurred together into one solid image. She sensed her wings dissolve and the tiny fibrous limbs re-forming into human flesh. She knew Menoa had returned her voice when an agonized scream finally burst from her throat.
But then the king raised a hand, halting the transformation process.
She cowered before him, a thing of shivering misshapen flesh, and tried to keep hold of her sanity.
“Perhaps I should place you inside a witchsphere,” Menoa said evenly, “to share eternity with eight mortal sisters. You would see…wonderful sights.”
“I’ve done…everything you’ve ever asked of me,” she gasped. Something on her shoulder burst, drenching her twisted back. “Has my service displeased you?”
He chuckled. “No, but stasis bores me. You have the potential to be so much more than you are.” He strode towards her, his claws extended like a brace of scalpels. “On your world, am I regarded as a butcher or a visionary?”
Despite her crippling agony, the king’s question was absurd enough to make Harper suppress a laugh. This monster cares about how others perceive him? The thought occurred to her before she had a chance to stop it, and yet Menoa did not appear to have read her mind. He was waiting for her reply.
“My Lord,” she said at last, trying to control both the pain and the cynicism in her voice, “perceptions of you change frequently.”
Evidently this pleased the king, for he made another gesture that restarted Harper’s transmutation. She cried out again as her limbs bent into new shapes.
“Good,” Menoa said. “To confound our enemies we must never cease to adapt.” His black glass mask shone in the bruised light. “While your service to me has occasionally been reluctant, Alice Harper, it has nevertheless been satisfactory. You Pandemerians have grown used to stagnation, yet you understand the traps and dangers of the living world so much better than my Icarates. Now I require more from you.”
As Harper’s body continued to change, she realized that something was wrong. Her arms and legs felt…unusual. She was already a foot taller than she ought to be, and this transformation showed no signs of halting. What was King Menoa doing to her? What was she becoming?
The king turned away again to stare out across the Maze. “Your new form will surprise and delight you,” he said.
1
6
DILL
IN DILL’S DREAM he was fighting amid a whole crowd of people. Men and women of all ages jostled him and yelled and brawled with one another. Fists flailed all around him. Boots kicked him in the shins and stomach. Greasy fingers grabbed his hair and yanked him down towards wet red earth. He broke free for an instant and found himself staring up at a featureless grey sky. Then someone stumbled against his wings, and Dill fell back under the crowd. A knee struck him on the temple, driving him deeper into the morass. He clutched at a ragged, sweat-soaked shirt, but its owner tore the shirt away and stamped on the angel’s face. Dill looked beyond the boot up to a grizzled, grinning face, and a broad white chest, muscled like an ox.
Then powerful hands hauled him upright.
“The trick of surviving a portal,” roared a deep voice from behind the angel, “is not to let the other bastards smell your fear. That, and to smash their poxy faces in at any chance you get. Hah!”
A metal gauntlet lashed out across Dill’s left shoulder and punched the grizzled brawler in the face, shattering the big man’s nose.
His rescuer was a huge angel clad in old, battered steel armour. A giant, he towered over everyone else, including the man he’d just struck. Wild grey hair flew about his shoulders as he lifted his now limp quarry and then threw him far into the crowd.
The battle-archon laughed. “We’re all ghosts here, lad, trapped in the same lousy dream. The battle is merely a contest of will. Now watch this! You can find weapons if you use your wits.”
He stooped and grabbed the ankle of an old woman who had fallen. She wasn’t moving. Grinning, the archon swung the woman like a club, smashing a path through the terrified crowd. Spatters of blood flew everywhere. “You see?” he boomed. “Easy as you like.” Then he tossed the old woman’s bloody corpse away like a soiled rag and said, “Aye, aye! There’s a better one.” Now he picked up a soldier dressed in rusty chain mail and proceeded to use him like a mace.
“The armoured ones are best,” the archon yelled. “It nips a bit when you get hit in the face by a body wearing a hauberk.”
Dill paused to catch his breath. “Who are you?”
“Just an old dead god,” he said, “sent to watch your back and make sure you reach Hell in one piece. Look at that fellow! Fancies himself as a pugilist, I reckon.” He pointed to a scrawny man who had one arm wrapped around a young woman’s neck and was desperately beating her in the face. “Think you can manage him on your own?”
Dill’s first punch split the thin man’s lip. His target looked up, dazed, then he saw the two angels, dropped his victim, and tried to force his way back through the crowd. A haggard greybeard with feverish eyes took him down before Dill could get another blow in. The battle-archon’s laughter roared out across the panicked scrum. There was space around them both now. The archon’s blue eyes, full of humor, looked down at Dill. “You don’t get dreams like this in Heaven,” he said, “which is why I never liked the fucking place. Come on, we’ll be through the portal soon. It would be a shame to waste another moment.”
And so they fought together. Or rather, the battle-archon smashed through the crowd like a bull through barley, and Dill kept close behind him, kicking and punching whenever the opportunity arose. Everyone became a target. Fists pummelled flesh on all sides. Blood and sweat soaked the young angel’s tattered mail shirt. Elbows shoved him this way and that as the crowd ebbed and surged, but he kept on fighting.
It was a battle without the clash of weapons or war cries or curses, an oddly silent brawl save for the occasional grunt or moan. Overhead the sky darkened to the colour of lead and then of onyx. The participants were by now exhausted, yet they remained determined. Something drove them to fight, and none would yield, because there was nowhere for them to go, no space to retreat to.
Dill fought on. He fought breathlessly in the growing darkness, wanting to impress his new companion. He broke noses and pulled at lank, stinking hair, and delighted in the thrill of it.
Men pushed past or fell and disappeared. He punched leering faces until he could no longer tell one from another. The crowd became a blur, a single beast with ten thousand eyes and teeth and sweating limbs. He kicked and kicked at it, and broke its bones. But it had so many bones. It was endless.
And it never stopped fighting back.
The young angel took as many blows as he dealt. Bruises soon throbbed on his chest and arms. His knuckles bled. He saw his own feathers being stamped into the mire underfoot. Sweat poured freely from his brow till it filled his eyes. He could not say how long he battled…
Abruptly, he woke up.
Dill realized he had arrived in Hell again. Nothing was different except, perhaps, that this time there was less space.
He found himself trapped in a viselike gap between two encroaching walls. Rough stone pressed his cheek, his ribs, and his wings, pinning him in place. He could not turn his head. He wiggled his boots, but sensed nothing but air underneath him. Had the gap between the walls been a few inches wider, he might have plummeted.
To what?
His death?
But he was already dead. He remembered this clearly from the first time: the gloom, the wait, and then the transformation. Dill couldn’t see anything but the wall just an inch from his face, its scarred stone illuminated by a peculiar grey light. Whenever he moved his eyes, the light moved, too. His own gaze was the source of the illumination.
Memories crawled through the back of his mind like flies.
Trapped between walls…
And a smell?
The scent reminded him of beeswax. The more he thought about it, the surer he became. All at once the smell seemed to intensify, growing stronger until he was absolutely certain: it was the scent of polished wood.
He recalled this from before.
And a surge of panic overcame him.
Dill struggled wildly against his prison, bucking and shifting his shoulders. He failed to free his body, but he managed to lift an arm.
There, at the end of his index finger, grew a tiny white shoot.
Dill’s place within the Maze would grow from his own body. He was about to re-experience the torturous process that had haunted his dreams since his last return to the world of the living.
It would mean unbearable pain.
As soon as he thought about the pain, he felt it. The shoot atop his finger began to nip like a wasp sting. Dill cried out. He scraped the white stem against the wall, and gasped. He could feel the roughness of the wall through the shoot. It had now become a living, sensitive extension of his body.
This sensation brought with it a flood of darker memories.
He yelled in frustration, then pushed the stem against the wall, bending it back on itself.
It broke off and fell away into the darkness below, leaving a bleeding stub on his finger. Dill shivered at the pain and sucked his finger until the bleeding ceased. Even the wound tasted of beeswax.
He felt more shoots growing from his toes, pressing into the inside of his boots, but he couldn’t reach these. All he could do now was wait.
Time passed.
At some point Dill must have fallen asleep, because he was suddenly aware of opening his eyes and realizing that some sort of change had occurred. His body felt strange, awash with odd sensations. The previous pressure on his wings and chest had gone.
The walls had moved backwards a yard or so. He was standing on the solid wooden floor of a tiny stone cell.
Or rather, he was attached to the floor. A mass of slender white tendrils had grown out of his boots, bursting through the leather like the roots of a tree. These shoots had buried themselves in the wooden floorboards on which he stood, fixing him to the spot.
A flash of memories returned.
Dill moaned. The floorboards had not been punctured after all. They were extensions of the roots themselves. Each tendril had hardened and flattened as it had grown outwards, turning from white to the colour of deeply polished oak. He
had grown a floor under his feet.
He could not move his trapped feet, and so he collapsed forward onto his knees with a wail of utter despair. And then a curious thing happened. It felt as though he had struck a part of his own body. He could feel the pressure of his own knees through the wooden floorboards, the weight of his body pushing down. The grain of the wood was as tactile as his own skin.
Dill knelt on the floorboards that were not floorboards, and gazed feverishly around the tiny space. Where the planks met the wall, a skirting board had partially formed. He could sense the texture of the stonework behind it.
The angel was turning into a room.
It was all too much for Dill. He sobbed and smashed his fists against the floorboards, then winced at the pain it caused him. He tried to pull his feet free, but they would not shift. Eventually he lay down and wept.
At some point he slept again.
This time he woke up to find himself lying on the floor of an elegant wood-paneled chamber. Tall shutters covered the windows. A crimson and black patterned rug lay upon the waxed floorboards. There was a bed, a heavy carved four-poster draped with dark blue velvet, a poppywood sideboard supporting a vase of white flowers, and a dresser with three oval mirrors. On the dark paneled walls hung a dozen or so portraits of people Dill did not recognize. They were young men and women dressed as Deepgate commoners: maids and potboys and labourers. They were all staring at him. Dill found their gazes unnerving, and he looked away. From his position on the floor, he spied a tall doorway leading to another room—as large and richly furnished as this one.
A strange sensation crept over him, the same queer feeling he remembered from before. He could feel the grain of the floorboards under his palms, while at the same time he felt his own hands pressing down, as though he now had four hands, each pair pushing against the other.
In desperate panic he glanced back round. The tendrils that had grown from his heels and toes had thinned and darkened, becoming as hard and black as reeds. They still connected him to the floorboards. This opulent chamber was still a part of his body. It had simply grown around him.