“I'm beginning to understand why Abner Hill hid his booze,” Mina muttered.
Rachel was trying to listen for their approaching foe, but she couldn't hear anything above the din from within the saloon. Fog shrouded much of the night beyond this tiny island of noise and light, though she spied the sheer dark cliff of Dill's torso filling the sky behind them. His forearms hovered in the gloom like vast and hellish barges made from bone.
As Oran glanced where she was looking, she beckoned him to follow her around the crowd still huddled outside the inn. A group of younger men was passing sacks of meal and bales of hide through one of the downstairs windows, while others dragged cords of firewood around to the rear of the building. Rachel slipped past them, heading towards Dill's wrist. Four whores sat on the stoop, drinking from earthenware bottles, and watched her pass.
“We need to get the rest of the women and children safely inside,” Rachel said. “And we need all your men out here, sober and ready for a fight.”
Oran scratched the scar on his forehead. “Won't make any difference whether they're sober or drunk,” he said. “They can't fight an arconite and hope to survive. But if they have to fight, then let them have a moment of revelry first.”
They reached the end of the island, where Dill's bony thumbs loomed before them like strange white gateposts. In the darkness overhead, Rachel could just make out her friend's massive jaw. She cocked her head and listened…
Regular thuds and crashes marked Dill's progress through the forest. But now Rachel could hear other sounds—like an echo of Dill's footsteps—issuing from the misty night close behind them.
Mina came and joined them. She had Abner Hill's musket propped against her shoulder, the barrel pointing skywards, the stock gripped in one slender glassy hand. “It's gaining on us,” she remarked.
“What did Basilis have to say?”
The thaumaturge shook her head. “This particular foe is beyond him.”
“Does Hasp know what's going on?”
“He's asleep on the pantry floor. I locked the door to stop anyone else from barging in. For their safety as much as his own.”
Rachel eyed the other woman's musket. “What do you plan to do with that?”
Mina shrugged. “I wasn't leaving our only hand-cannon in a saloon full of drunken men.” She shifted the weapon from one shoulder to the other. “Our guests let Mr. Hill and his wife out of their room. After screaming about the loss of his whisky, someone told Abner about the promised gold. Now he's serving the drinks himself and keeping tabs.”
Rachel sighed. She had no intention of using Cospinol's gold to get their so-called army drunk, but she didn't have time to deal with Abner Hill right now. “Can Dill outrun Menoa's arconite?”
“No. He's no quicker or stronger than any of them.”
Oran scratched at his stubble. “Then we fight and die here tonight,” he said, yawning.
Cospinol's will determined the buoyancy of his great wooden skyship, while Anchor's will determined his own impossible strength. During the thousands of years of their unlikely partnership both master and servant had achieved a balance whereby they worked together in harmony. The heavier the Rotsward became, the greater the strength Anchor found in himself to tow it behind him.
In the confusion after the portal snapped and Anchor found himself falling towards Hell, the accustomed harmony with the skyship took some moments to reassert itself.
The rope jolted against Anchor's back in midair, bringing him to an abrupt halt before propelling him skywards again. Behind him the Rotsward shuddered and toppled forwards, a great mass of interconnected masts and spars. Suddenly both man and skyship were weightless. The rope snapped taut again and then slackened. Anchor heard it whining behind his ear like a living thing. The Maze surged up to meet him at a sickening rate: the canals like bloody scrawls; the partially drowned temples, arches, and crooked steps; the mounds of rotting black masonry dumped into a crimson slough.
The vessel plummeted from the sky like some vast and ancient torture ship expelled from Heaven. Those warriors whom the Failed had not destroyed now glared feverishly about them and howled amidst the skyship's gallows. Thus exposed before Hell's fiery light they made a barbarous army indeed, blue-faced and ragged madmen plucked from so many forgotten wars.
John Anchor had slain every last one of them, and many of their souls now coursed through his veins. Corpses, bound to the Rotsward as thoroughly as he was. He could not gaze upon them for long before the cramps in his heart forced him to turn away.
The surface of Hell wheeled into Anchor's field of view: windows glittering in the curved side of a mound; open doorways creeping through obsidian walls; twisted iron pillars and redbrick facades; gurgling fissures; arches; stone; blood.
And then he hit.
Bloody stonework exploded under him. He plunged into a room and smashed through the floor below. Another room, another floor. Anchor gripped his knees against his chest and closed his eyes. He had the sensation of passing through pockets of air separated by parting membranes. Down and down he fell, like a cannonball dropped into a house of cards.
Deep underground he thumped heavily against a final solid surface and came to a stop.
Anchor groaned and opened his eyes.
He had fallen through twenty or more separate dwellings. Directly above him numerous layers of ragged holes formed a shaft of sorts, terminating in a distant circle of red sky overhead, where the end of the rope disappeared from sight. Each of the many levels of ruptured floorboards had already begun to bleed. Drips fell from the broken edges and cascaded down from room to room, spattering the floor around him. From overhead came the sound of moaning.
He sat up.
He was in an elegant drawing room with tall sash windows and antique Pandemerian furniture. Two identical elderly women stood looking at him, their faces white with either powder or shock. Each looked like a mirror image of the other in their hummingbird-blue high-necked frocks. Knots of tightly bunched grey hair sat upon their heads like little skulls.
“Ladies,” Anchor said.
The twins looked at each other, then cupped their hands over their breasts and looked back at the intruder. “Are you the plumber?” said one of them.
“I don't think he's the plumber, Clarice,” the other woman replied. “Just look at him!”
Anchor stood, brushed dust and fragments of debris from his arms, and then stepped out from underneath the shaft to avoid the cascading droplets of blood. The two women took a step back from him.
The big man grinned. “No need to fear John Anchor, ladies. I've no quarrel with you.” He took a look around. “So this is Hell, eh?”
Cospinol had told him how the souls grew rooms around themselves like snails grew shells. This chamber must be one such place, a living, sensate extension of the spirits within. He nodded at the windows. Behind the glass lay a plain brick wall. “Your neighbours like their privacy, eh?”
One of the ladies said, “Neighbours? Don't be absurd. We don't have any neighbours. The Buntings isn't a tenement, sir. We have ninety acres.”
Her twin piped up, “No doubt he hit his head in the fall, Marjory.”
They shriveled their lips at him.
Anchor shrugged. He had no interest in undermining their delusion.
One twin glared disapprovingly at the hole in the ceiling. “Someone will have to repair that, you know.”
“My apologies, ladies,” Anchor said. “I'll go and fix it now.” With that he leapt up and grabbed the bloody edge of the hole and pulled himself up.
A large bed occupied most of this next room. Propped against pillows lay an enormous woman with masses of black and white hair extruding all about her head like the tendrils of some creeping fungus. Indeed the whole room evinced decay, for tongues of patterned wallpaper hung from the walls, and black mold spattered the skirting. A smell of vinegar lingered.
“I've been hurt,” she said. “Someone hit me on the head while I was
sleeping.”
“Sorry, madam.” Anchor got to his feet. “That was me. I fell through your soul. The pain will go away after a while.”
“Have you seen Dory?” she said.
Anchor shook his head. “No, madam.” He jumped up and grabbed the floor joists of the room above.
“Dory said she'd come by, but I haven't seen her in ages,” the woman persisted. “I don't know what's become of her.”
Grunting, Anchor heaved himself up onto the next level. He looked down to see the twins still standing under the hole. He gave them a wave.
“Don't you go rummaging through the attic,” shrilled one of them. “Our costumes are up there, and they mustn't be unpacked. They're very fragile.”
“Who's that?” said the woman in the bed. “Dory? Is that you?”
So many potted plants filled the third room that it looked like a garden. Walls of naked brick supported trellises covered with green vines. Some old chests of drawers and wooden tables stood around the edges, but pots of yellow, pink, and red blooms adorned every flat surface and even the floor itself. At first Anchor thought the room was empty but then he spotted a young man curled up in the corner. In one hand he held a pair of shears, and he appeared to be unconscious.
Anchor walked over and crouched to feel for a pulse. Then he shook his head. These people were all dead, of course; if they had a pulse, it would be because they remembered having one and not because blood still flowed through their veins. Nevertheless he propped the young man up and gave him a gentle shake. “You all right, lad?”
The young man opened his eyes and peered at Anchor. “I must have fallen,” he said. “Where am I?”
“You don't know where you are?”
“No.”
“Good. Then I've done you a service.”
Anchor left him alone and went back to the edge of the open shaft. He looked up to see that some of the holes above him had already begun to close as the consciousnesses within began to reassert their influences upon their environments. Down below, the twins' room was sliding away at a walking pace, underneath the bedridden woman's chambers. Those two spinsters had evidently decided to move.
“John!”
Alice Harper's head had appeared at the uppermost entrance to the shaft. Now she was looking down at him. “Are you all right?”
“This is a very strange place,” he called back.
“Stranger than you realize,” she said. “I need to talk to you.”
He clambered up through the remaining chambers with barely a glance at the occupants within, then swung himself up out into open air. A fierce gale slammed into him. Harper waited on a nearby stone shelf, from where she could see far across the Maze. Her red hair whipped about her pale face.
From up here Anchor could see that they were standing upon the summit of a strange conglomerate of souls. It looked as if an entire Pandemerian street had been compacted together into a rude lump. But this mass of dwellings altered shape continuously, as facades stretched and compressed against neighbouring stonework. It was crawling across the surface of Hell, devouring walls under its shifting foundations. In its wake it left a shallow trench of subterranean rooms now ripped open and exposed to the flooded labyrinth surface, as streams of blood rushed into these open wounds and gurgled down through any spaces revealed amidst those smashed quarters.
Harper turned her head away from the force of the wind. “Can you hear them?” she said.
“Hear who?”
“The voices in the wind.”
Anchor listened. After a moment he heard what sounded like human voices—very faint—amidst the howling air, as though the wind had carried the cries across a great distance. He could not make out what they were saying, nor even catch enough of their words to recognize the language.
Harper reached into her tool belt and took out a black circular lens. “Non Morai,” she explained. “See for yourself.”
Anchor peered through the lens, and into what looked like another world entirely. Seen through the dark glass disc, the crimson landscape appeared green. Winged creatures filled the skies, batlike figures with gaunt faces and red grins. They swarmed around paler yellow lights, like wisps of glowing lace, and they appeared to be herding these lights towards the surface of Hell.
He yanked the lens away, and the scene returned to normal—naught but an empty red sky. Yet when he raised the glass disc again, the winged figures and their gossamer charges reappeared, wheeling in their thousands against the verdant heavens.
“I spotted them shortly after we left the portal,” Harper said. “They're steering souls here, to this particular part of Hell.”
Anchor had encountered Non Morai before, but never in such numbers. On earth such phantasms often haunted scenes of violence, battlefields and places where men had been murdered. Human thaumaturges sometimes employed them to gather souls. “Why? Is Menoa behind this?”
The engineer looked doubtful. “Menoa uses Iolites for aerial work and his Icarates to collect souls,” she explained. “Besides,” she pointed down towards a point on the surface of Hell, “there's that to consider.”
Anchor looked. At first he couldn't see what Harper was indicating, but then he spotted it. The Midden on which they stood was creeping away from a strange object on the surface of the Maze. It looked like an iron funnel rising from a crush of bloody stonework. Its huge maw, almost large enough to swallow a house, expanded and contracted continuously like a mouth. He raised Harper's spirit lens again and saw a swarm of Non Morai flitting around that opening, guiding soul lights inside.
“Why bother to travel far across Hell when there are countless souls trapped in the walls all around here?” Harper said. “These Non Morai are capturing newly arrived spirits—the souls who haven't yet become part of the Maze.” She continued to watch as the queer opening consumed scores of lights. “When Menoa wants souls, his Icarates simply smash up swaths of the Maze and take them. Whoever or whatever built that funnel is being a lot more subtle. It's like they don't want to draw attention to themselves.”
Anchor grunted. “Then why drag us here?”
“When the portal broke, the Non Morai would have rushed to claim all those newly released souls. We just happened to be caught up in their gale.”
The tethered man lowered the spirit lens and grinned. As far as he was concerned, this could be regarded as an act of aggression against the Rotsward, and was therefore justification for a battle. However, he doubted that Harper or Cospinol would agree to a de-tour. They had bigger boars to fry. “Wouldn't take us long to go down into that funnel and have a look,” he said.
She looked away, shrugging, but to Anchor it seemed that she was feigning indifference. Did she actually want to go down there?
The Soul Midden jerked under Anchor's feet, and then tilted gently backwards. He peered down over the forward facade in time to see the base of the great creeping conglomerate flow up over another one of the low Maze walls. Stonework rippled, and broke into an irregular arched colonnade. The columns between these arches bent and then stepped, insectlike, over the wall, reforming into a solid facade on the other side. The Midden consumed a huge chunk of the wall and then moved on, ever further from the strange funnel.
A shudder ran through the great skyship rope, and Cospinol's voice entered Anchor's thoughts. No, John. As confident as I am in your ability to defend us, I see no reason to seek trouble. We don't know what's down there.
Anchor grunted. “Well, we can't ride this thing all the way to the Ninth Citadel.” He stomped a heel down. “At this rate, it could take centuries, even if we could be sure we're going the right way.”
“Time moves at different speeds here,” Harper said. “A century here might pass as a day on earth, or an eon. But you're right about finding the right direction.” She plucked one of the many silver and crystal Mesmerist devices from her belt and studied it. After a moment she looked up and nodded towards a point on the horizon, lying beyond endless whorls of black st
one, broken temples, and conical ziggurats. “The Ninth Citadel lies over there.”
“Then let's go.” Anchor flexed his huge shoulders against the rope. “Breaking the portal gave us a good advantage, eh? King Menoa cannot even be sure we made it into Hell.” He grinned. “We can catch him with his trousers down.” He made to climb down the side of the Midden.
Harper stopped him. “John.” She inclined her head to some point beyond him.
Anchor turned.
The Rotsward filled the entire sky above, like an impossible wooden city, a vast crosshatched nest of rotting timber and ropes woven around the dark heart of the skyship's hull. Cospinol's gallowsmen hung there in the thousands, their queer assortment of armour shining dully in the riotous crimson light. Many had been slain by the Failed, and some ropes held naught but heads or torsos or pieces of unidentifiable flesh. Those few hundred who had been cut loose and survived the battle in the portal now clambered amidst the joists or hung onto upright beams to keep themselves from being blown clear. The Non Morai gales formed a vortex around the mountainous vessel, a raging torrent of air that seemed to be full of fleeting shadows.
“Not what I would call relying on the element of surprise,” Harper observed.
Anchor frowned. It was true—Menoa would see the Rotsward coming from some considerable distance away. After a moment he shrugged. “Ah… well,” he said. “Let the king prepare his resistance in advance. I suppose it is only fair.”