“No!” Fogwill cried. “Listen to me!”
Carnival plunged into the void.
“Gods!” Fogwill rushed to the door and pulled frantically at a bell cord. “A disaster, a disaster. If she finds that syringe we have nothing. Why did you tell her, Dill? Why?”
Rachel rubbed her shoulder and winced. “What the hell does it matter anyway? Let her have her goddamn potion.”
At that moment Captain Clay and Mark Hael burst into the Sanctum. Rachel’s brother surveyed the scene. “What happened? Where is she?”
Fogwill explained.
“Last we’ll see of her,” Clay said. “Good riddance.”
The Adjunct kept pacing this way and that in nervous circles. He dragged his hands over his scalp repeatedly, as though he still had hair. “No,” he protested. “We have to find the syringe before she does. It’s all we have left now!” He stopped pacing. “Dill, you have to go—you have to stop her, now, before it’s too late.”
“He’s not going anywhere,” Rachel said.
But the fat priest ignored her. Pacing again, while his hands traced patterns in the air before him like jewelled butterflies, he muttered to himself, “She won’t kill him. She didn’t harm him before. He’ll be safe while he’s unarmed.”
“You’d send him to Deep, unarmed ?” Rachel said, shocked.
“He’ll need light,” Fogwill said, “a storm lantern.” He turned to Clay. “Fetch a lamp.”
Clay hesitated.
“A lamp! He needs a lamp.”
The temple guard captain nodded, then left the Sanctum.
Rachel placed a hand on Dill’s shoulder. “You don’t have to do this,” she said, then to Fogwill, “You can’t make him do this. You’ll send him to his death!”
The Adjunct’s pace faltered. “I don’t have any choice!” he snapped. As he gazed at her, Rachel saw the truth of it in the ghostly pallor of his skin, the pleading, pain-filled eyes, the bitter, crushing weight of his decision etched into every line of his face.
God, Fogwill, you’re suffering. But why? What can’t you tell us?
But his look had been enough to convince her. “All right,” she said. She marched over to the rim of the aperture. “If he has to go down there, then I’ll go with him.”
Mark Hael snorted. “Been learning to fly, dear sister?”
“He can carry me.” She peered into the darkness, then swung to face Dill. “You’re strong enough.”
Dill lowered his sword until the tip of the blade touched the floor. The gold hand guard gleamed dully in the candlelight. Somehow it was dented. “Rachel,” he said, “I don’t know.. I can’t…”
“You can,” she said.
“Can what?” Captain Clay had returned with a storm lantern, a frown creasing his grizzled brow.
“My little sister insists she wants to go with him,” Mark Hael explained.
“Here, lad,” Clay’s expression remained grave as he placed the storm lantern in Dill’s free hand, closing the angel’s fingers around the handle. “It’s well full of oil—the best we have. Burns bright. There’s extra wick and flints stored in the base of it too, case you need them.”
Dill’s wings slumped. He stared at the lantern for a moment, then raised his eyes to meet Rachel’s. They glowed whiter than she’d ever seen before.
“I’ll protect you, Dill,” she whispered. “I promise.”
“Rachel, this is insane.” Her brother strode towards her. “We don’t have time for this.”
Her eyes held Dill’s. “I trust you,” she said. “Catch me.”
“Rachel!” Mark Hael lunged for her, too late.
She had stepped back and disappeared into the abyss.
Abrittle silence. Dill’s heart momentarily ceased to beat. Adjunct Crumb froze. Mark Hael and Captain Clay did the same. No one moved.
And then a shriek of joy came from the depths. “The bitch nearly hit me.” Carnival’s laughter echoed through the high chamber.
Suddenly Dill felt himself being wrenched forward. The aeronaut commander had grabbed his chain mail and was forcing him towards the edge. “Help her,” he said. “Go!”
Dill struggled against the man’s grip, his heels slipping on the polished floor. “No, I…”
But Mark Hael dragged him forward effortlessly. “You must.”
The dark void drew closer, utterly cold, utterly dead.
“Please.” The angel’s eyes were now blazing white. He would have screamed but he couldn’t find enough air in his lungs to expel. His wings lashed uselessly, too weak to halt his progress towards that terrible darkness. His hands were flailing, both lantern and sword swinging wildly.
They were standing now over the edge. The abyss reached up to him, a rising well where every one of Dill’s nightmares lurked. It sapped the last of his strength, seemed to drain his life away. His knees buckled. His stomach lurched. “I can’t,” he protested feebly.
“Save her!” Mark Hael yelled, and shook him.
Dill stared into the abyss. She was lost to him and he hated her for it. He hated her because there was nothing he could do to help her. He knew that if he stepped into that darkness he would die. The void below was everything and nothing: an emptiness that encompassed his whole life. It would consume him utterly. How far could Rachel have already fallen? Did it matter? He could not hope to save her. He was weak, clumsy, and foolish, a liar, a betrayer, and a coward—the antithesis of everything an archon should be. He was nothing .
Yet she trusted him.
Dill stepped into the darkness.
23
THE ABYSS
BLACKTHRONE ROSE IN layers of jagged escarpments and wrinkled gullies, gleaming hot and blistered in the sun. Veins of yellow and green trickled around scattered glints of crystal. The quarry at the base of its southern slope had bitten deeply into the mountain itself, opening a gaping crescent of metal cliffs. House-sized boulders and hills of scree broke against the base of the grinning rock, but they were like so many pebbles and mounds of grit in the shadow of the Tooth.
The Tooth towered over the quarry. Yellow streaks marred its smooth white hull. Sand drifts a hundred feet high smothered the base of one side and partially obscured the river-wide trails in the packed earth behind. A dusty scoop like an enormous jawbone jutted from the front, beneath rows of cutting wheels on retracted mandibles. High above the cutters a strip of windows flashed violently, and higher still blackened funnels punched up from the roof, wrapped in gantries and stairwells.
Devon eased the ship’s wheel around. “Now, that,” he said, “is one big tooth.”
Presbyter Sypes’s eyes fluttered open, then closed again. He resumed snoring.
Signs of habitation were evident below. Work had been done to clear some of the sand around the vast machine, to give access to the shade below the hull. Trails led up the surrounding sand drifts and disappeared into a line of rag-covered holes a quarter of the way up one side. Rope ladders hung from holes higher up, but the Heshette themselves were keeping out of sight. Devon knew better than to assume that they were unaware of the warship’s presence.
He spoke into a trumpet on the control deck. “Purge the ribs, Angus, slowly. We’re going down.”
After a moment a hiss issued from the envelope overhead and theBirkita began to descend.
Devon spun the wheel to bring the warship round in a circle above the quarry. A clutter of stretched-hide roofs and poles came into view, packing the shade between the far side of the Tooth and the cliff wall. Animal tracks pocked muddy earth around them.
A spring? Of course, Blackthrone traps the rain.
But still nothing grew in the poisonous earth. The machine was just a temporary home to the Heshette and their animals, a harsh oasis between the seasonal plains around Dalamoor and the bandit villages west of the Coyle.
The warship descended, and Devon swung her away from the cliffs to bring them back around the Tooth’s crown.
“More lift, Angus,” he said
into the trumpet.
Another hiss. They dropped two fathoms.
“I said lift, man. Not purge. Lift.” Devon’s voice was steady, but the vibrations from the engine shook his hand on the wheel. The quarry floor unfolded below, rose quickly to meet them.
The cliffs loomed closer. Devon throttled the starboard propeller and wrenched the rudder hard to port. The warship rolled slightly and began to nose away from the rock. Cables pinged overhead.
“Lift, Angus.”
Angus’s voice came through another trumpet. “Drop dead.”
“Unlikely,” Devon said. “I would walk free from any crash. This course of action will do nothing but kill you and the priest.”
A barrage of tinny obscenities erupted from the engine-room trumpet. Another hiss, and suddenly they were dropping even faster.
Damn him to hell.
The ground came up at them. Devon nudged the front of the envelope away from the cliffs. Through the portside windows he saw massive funnels rising quickly past. They were now between the Tooth and the rock face, falling too quickly to manoeuvre safely past the huge machine.
“Lift, Angus, or you’ll never see another drop of serum.”
Angus did not reply. Devon swung the wheel hard to starboard. He slammed both elevator levers back, then cranked the propellers full.
Engines rumbled, then roared. The bridge shuddered. To port, the shadowed hull of the Tooth rushed upwards. Cliffs hemmed them in to starboard. Clouds of dust billowed through the front ducts. Devon coughed and blinked furiously, trying to see through the bridge windows. The ground was close, rising. He felt the bridge tilt.
“Last chance, Angus,” he shouted. It might have been into the wrong trumpet—he didn’t look, didn’t care. They were going to crash. He had to level the ship. He cut the propellers, forced the elevator controls forward.
Dust choked the forward view, a storm caught between two rising walls, dull white on one side; sharp, ragged rock on the other.
A heavy grinding sound from behind. A loud crack. Ropes fretted, twanged. Wood snapped, splintered, and they hit the ground with a bone-breaking crunch.
Devon’s chin smacked hard against the wheel. The bridge windows shattered in an explosion of glass and dust.
The warship settled with a series of long creaks and groans. The gondola listed to one side, and came to rest with a final hiss.
Devon cut the engines and turned to check on the Presbyter. Sypes’s chair had slid across the floor and rested against one wall, but the old man was still slumped there, snoring lightly.
“Incredible,” Devon muttered.
Bleating noises forced his attention back outside. Through the falling dust he saw goats bucking and kicking among piles of broken wood and torn hide. Chickens fluttered and squawked, scattered feathers everywhere. TheBirkita had landed on the Heshette animal pens. A cockerel hopped through the bridge window onto the control deck and cocked its head at him.
“Bother,” Devon said. He shook Sypes awake.
The Presbyter blinked and rubbed his eyes, then squinted at the cockerel. “Good landing?”
“We’re down, aren’t we?”
“Not the best start for your proposed alliance,” Sypes said. “I urge you reconsider. The Heshette will murder us on sight for this.”
Devon grunted, picked up his bag of poisons, and left to survey the damage. Angus, if he was still alive, could stay where he was and rot.
Extricating himself from the wreckage proved to be a lengthy process. Devon picked his way through the shattered pens, dragging aside sun-bleached poles to clear a path. Frightened goats clambered over each other as they struggled to escape, bleating incessantly.
The Birkita was in poor shape. The gondola listed at a shallow angle. Splinters of teak formed a jagged line where the aft deck had buckled. The starboard propeller hung loose and the port one had sheared, a foot shorter on both blades where it had collided with an outcrop of rock. Three of the four main aether-lights were smashed. But, incredibly, the envelope was still intact. It rested against the hull of the Tooth, hardly reaching an eighth of the way up the giant machine.
The Tooth rose like a pale citadel, its sheer walls tapering to scorched funnels high above. Underneath, rows and rows of massive wheels sat in shadowed tracks among piles of crushed rock. Fine lines had been etched into the hull in endless whorls and curls.
Some sort of ceramic? Three thousand years and there is hardly a mark on it. Light too, or the whole thing would sink into the desert. The refuse of a civilization so much more advanced than our own, abandoned here like a broken shovel.
Devon walked the entire length of the machine, looking for a pattern in its hull etchings, some clue as to how it had been assembled. He was so caught up in his observations that when he reached the scoop at the front he was startled to find the Heshette there waiting for him.
They looked like figures sculpted from sand. Sun-faded gabardines hung shapelessly about them. Dust-coloured scarves wrapped their faces. A dozen men assembled in the sunshine beyond the shadow of the Tooth, mostly armed with hunting bows and spears, but there were other weapons: clubs, bone axes, long knives, hooked swords, and bandit rapiers—weapons scavenged from a hundred conflicts.
Only the shaman stood out from the group. His long beard hung below the folds of his scarf like a frayed and knotted rope adorned with feather and bone fetishes. In one gnarled fist he clutched a bleached wood staff as tall as himself.
This is the man who shapes the minds of the tribe, who fuels their hatred. This is the man I need to convince.
The tribesmen were approaching. Devon flexed his shoulders, squared his jaw, and went to meet them. This was going to be difficult. And, he suspected, it was going to hurt.
After a dozen steps he found out just how much.
There was no parley, no negotiation, no trade of insults. There was only pain.
An axe slammed into his chest. Devon landed on his back.
The man who’d thrown the axe didn’t shout or run. He didn’t break his stride. The scarf around his head hid whatever expression of hate or satisfaction he wore.
Devon pressed fingers to his chest and they came away bloody. He wrenched the axe free and stared in disbelief at the blood glistening on the sharpened-bone blade. Then he struggled to his knees. “Now look here,” he said.
None of the Heshette uttered a word. But the weapons came hard and fast.
A stone glanced off Devon’s temple. A second axe drove high into his shoulder and opened half his neck. Arrows hissed. One struck his thigh, another tore a strip from his cheek, another pierced his stomach, another ripped through his ear, another grazed his scalp, another thumped into his lung. Something heavy smacked against his skull and the world reeled.
Devon was confused. He wanted to shout Stop, but a second stone struck him clean on the forehead. As he crumpled, the Tooth’s massive hull slid across his vision like a dirty, bone-coloured sky.
Still the blows rained. Metal and stone struck him, ripped him, beat him back into the sand. He heard constant thuds all around. A spear entered his groin. He grabbed it and pulled himself upright, tore the weapon free. Knives thumped into his shoulders, his belly, his chest, his neck, and he was looking up at sky again. Something broke a rib: he heard the bone snap, clear and loud in the desert silence. He tried to stand, but a heavy weight cracked into his arm and the force spun him round.
Devon turned back. The Heshette were raising and aiming bows, picking up rocks. He looked down at his ruined body. Flesh hung in strips from bloody wounds. A shard of bone pierced the flesh at the back of his arm. Blood darkened the sand at his feet. His breaths came wetly. He opened split and swollen lips, ran his tongue over a loose tooth. Fluids gurgled inside him when he tried to speak. A knock to the head blurred the vision in his right eye. He reached up and found the shaft of an arrow there, jutting from the eye itself. He snapped off the shaft. Behind his skull, he located the tip, grabbed it, and pulled it through
.
Small pieces of his brain clung to the wood.
The pain crept almost tenderly upon him, like an itch he wanted to scratch. It circled the tips of his fingers and trembled on his skin. He sucked in a breath and the pain found him, and tore at him. It howled in his blood and his skull and his tongue and his teeth. It clamoured and clawed behind his eyes and screamed in his ears.
Devon began to laugh.
Darkness. Dill could see nothing. He couldn’t see his outstretched hands or his chain mail rattling against his chest as he dived deeper. He plummeted with his wings folded tight against his back, a scream lodged in his throat. Cold air rushed up at him, streamed through his fingers, ripped tears from his eyes. He screwed them shut but it made no difference. Everything was black. With every heartbeat he was falling deeper into death. He opened his eyes again and let the tears flow freely.
“Rachel!” he cried. The void swallowed his voice before it even reached his ears.
Fear begged him to stop. The abyss couldn’t go on for ever; he would hit the bottom sometime. But he had no choice. If he stopped he’d be just as alone in the dark and Rachel would surely be lost. And he couldn’t go back—not without her.
I trust you.
In his mind he saw her face. The image stirred in him a desperate hatred: hatred of himself, hatred of the Battle-archons who had gone before him. Hatred of everything they had been and he wasn’t. He screwed his eyes shut again.
He dived and dived, and screamed and screamed, “Rachel! Rachel!”
The abyss sucked him under like tar; it filled his lungs, leached into his flesh and his mind until it became everything. Dill’s terror was absolute.
Catch me.
How could he catch her? She was falling somewhere below, or above, or a foot to his left or right. How could he expect to find her in this? He was blind. And she was dead. She had been dead the moment she threw herself into the abyss.
I trust you.
Those words were wrapped around his heart and wouldn’t let go. They would still be wrapped around his heart when he died. Dill opened his eyes, tears trickling from the corners, and stared into nothing. Rushing air forced his lips open and he screamed again. An army of ghosts waited for him below. Would her spirit already be among them? Would he see them before he felt the slam of rock that ended his own life? And then?