He was so taut that his muscles ached, poised to throw the Ketty Jay into full reverse the instant that anything emerged from the murk.
‘Ten . . . Five . . . Zero.’
‘Zero?’ Frey asked.
‘Five . . . Ten . . . The needle has changed direction. Now it’s pointing behind us. Twenty . . . Twenty-five.’
‘Let me have a look,’ Frey said, and snatched the compass from Crake. The needle was pointing directly behind them, and the numbers were counting up towards ninety-nine again.
‘Um,’ he said. Then he handed the compass back to the daemonist. ‘Well. That’s a puzzle.’
‘Perhaps those numbers didn’t mean distance after all,’ Crake suggested churlishly, for Jez’s benefit. Jez didn’t reply. He went back to reading them off. ‘Ninety . . . Ninety-five . . . Now the numbers have reset to zero, and the first needle has joined the other three.’
‘I suppose that means we’ve gone out of range.’ Frey suggested.
‘But there wasn’t anything there!’
‘That’s fine with me.’
Jez called out a new heading, and Frey took it.
‘You might see a—’ she began, when Frey yelled in alarm as the flank of a mountain emerged from the fog. He banked away from it and it slipped by to their starboard side.
‘—mountain,’ Jez continued, ‘but there’ll be a defile running out of it.’
‘I didn’t see any defile!’ Frey complained, annoyed because he’d suffered a scare.
‘Cap’n, I’m navigating blind here. Accuracy is gonna be less than perfect. Pull back closer to the mountain flank.’
Frey reluctantly did so. The mountain loomed into view again. Jez left her station to look through the windglass.
‘There it is,’ she said.
Frey saw it too: a knife-slash in the mountain, forty metres wide, with uneven walls.
‘I don’t much like the look of that,’ he said.
‘Drop to nine hundred, take us in,’ Jez told him mercilessly.
Frey eased the Ketty Jay around and into the defile. The mountains pressed in hard, narrowing the world on either side. Shadowy walls lay close enough to be seen, even in the mist. Frey unconsciously hunched down in his seat. He concentrated on keeping a steady line.
‘More contacts,’ said Crake. ‘Two of them.’
‘Two needles moving?’
‘Yes. Both of them pointing directly ahead.’
‘Give me the numbers.’
Crake licked dry lips and read them off. ‘First needle: distance ninety and descending. The other number reads fifty-seven and holding steady. Second needle: distance . . . ninety also, now. That’s descending too. The other number reads minus forty-three. Holding steady.’
‘Minus forty-three?’ Jez asked.
‘A little minus sign just appeared where that blank digit was.’
Jez thought for a moment. ‘They’re giving us relative altitude,’ she said. ‘The first set of numbers show the distance we are from the object. The second show how far it is above or below us.’
Frey caught on. ‘So then the ones ahead of us . . . one is fifty-seven metres above us and the other is forty-three metres below?’
‘That’s why we didn’t see anything the last time,’ Jez said. ‘We passed by it. It was thirty metres above us.’
Frey felt a mixture of trepidation and relief at that. It was reassuring to believe that they’d figured out the compass and could avoid these unseen things, at least. But somehow, knowing where they were made them seem all the more threatening. It meant they were really there. Whatever they were.
‘Crake, keep reading out the distances,’ he said. Crake obliged.
‘Twenty . . . ten . . . zero . . . needle’s swung the other way . . . ten . . . twenty . . .’
Frey had him continue counting until they were out of range and the compass reset again.
‘Okay, Cap’n,’ said Jez. ‘The bottom’s going to drop out of this defile any minute. We come down to seven hundred and take a heading of two-eighty.’
Frey grunted in acknowledgement. There was enough space between the mountain walls for a much bigger craft to pass through, but the constant need to prevent the Ketty Jay from drifting was grinding away at his nerve and giving him a headache. He dearly wished he hadn’t indulged quite so heavily the night before.
Just as Jez had predicted, the defile ended suddenly. It fed into a much larger chasm, far too vast to see the other end. The fog was thinner here, stained with a sinister red light from below. Red shadows spread into the cockpit.
‘Is that lava down there?’ Frey asked.
Jez craned over from the navigator’s station and looked down. ‘That’s lava. Drop to seven hundred.’
‘Bringing us closer to the lava.’
‘I’m just following the charts, Cap’n. You want to find your own way in this mist, be my guest.’
Frey was stung by that, but he kept his mouth shut and began to descend. The fog thinned and the red glow grew in strength until they were bathed in it. The temperature rose in the cockpit, drawing sweat from their brows. They could feel the radiant heat of the lava river flowing beneath them. Pinn came up from the mess to complain that it was getting stuffy down there, but Frey barked at him to get out. For once he did as he was told.
Frey added aerium at seven hundred metres to halt their descent, and pushed onward along the length of the chasm. Visibility was better now. The mist offered hints of their surroundings. It was possible to see the gloomy immensity of the mountains around them, if only as smudged impressions. To descend a few dozen metres more would bring the lava river into detail: the rolling, sludgy torrent of black and red and yellow. The heat down there would be unimaginable.
‘Contacts,’ said Crake again. ‘Ahead and to the left a little. We - oh, wait. There’s another. Two of them. Three. Three of them.’
‘There’s three?’
‘Four,’ Crake corrected. He showed Frey the compass. The needles were in a fan, all pointing roughly ahead. Frey frowned as he looked at it, and for a moment his vision wavered out of focus. He blinked, and the feeling passed. He swore to himself that he’d never again drink excessively the night before doing anything life-threatening.
‘Any of them directly in front of us?’
‘One’s pretty close. Twenty metres below. Oh!’
‘Don’t just say “oh!” ’ Frey snapped. ‘Oh, what?’
‘One of the needles moved . . . now it’s changed back . . . now it’s gone back again.’
‘What you mean, it changed?’ Frey demanded. He wiped sweat from his brow. All this tension was making him feel sick.
‘It moved! What do you think I mean?’ Crake replied in exasperation. ‘Can you stop a moment?’
‘Well, why’s it changing? Is there something there or not?’ Frey was getting flustered now. He felt a fluttering sensation of panic come over him.
‘There’s more than four of those things out there,’ said Jez, who had got up from her station and was looking at the compass. ‘I’d guess it keeps changing the needles to show us the nearest four.’
‘There’s one thirty metres ahead!’ Crake cried.
‘But is it above us or below us?’ Frey said.
‘Forty metres above.’
‘Then why tell me?’ he shouted.
‘Because you told me to! ’ Crake shouted back. ‘Will you stop this damn craft?’
But Frey didn’t want to. He wanted to get this over with. He wanted to be past these invisible enemies and away from this place. There was a terrible feeling of wrongness stealing over him, a numbness prickling up from his toes. He felt flustered and harassed.
‘What the bloody shit is going on, Crake?’ he snarled, leaning forward to try and see what, if anything, was above them. ‘Someone talk to me! Where are they?’
‘There’s one, there’s three in front of us, one behind us now . . . umm . . . two above, thirty and twenty metres, there’s . . .’ Crake
swore. ‘The numbers keep changing because you’re moving! How am I supposed to read them out fast enough?’
‘Just tell me if we’re going to hit anything, Crake! It’s pretty damn simple!’
Jez was staring in bewilderment. ‘Will you two calm down? You’re acting like a pair of—’
But then Frey recoiled from the window with a yell. ‘There’s something out there!’
‘What was it?’ Jez asked.
‘We’ve got one twenty . . . ten metres ahead . . . it’s below us though . . .’ Crake was saying.
‘It looked like . . . I don’t know, it looked like it had a face,’ Frey was babbling. His stomach griped and roiled. He could smell his own sweat, and he felt filthy. He wiped at the back of his hands to try and clean them a little, but all it did was smear more dirt into his skin. ‘The ghosts!’ he said suddenly. ‘It’s the ghosts of Rook’s Boneyard!’
‘There aren’t any ghosts, Cap’n,’ Jez said, but her face was red in the lava-light and her voice sounded strange and echoey. Her plain features seemed sly. Did she know something he didn’t? A blast of maniacal laughter came from the mess, Pinn laughing hysterically at something. It sounded like the cackle of a conspirator.
‘Of course there are ghosts!’ Frey turned his attention back to the windglass, trying to will the mist aside. ‘Everyone says.’
‘Two of them are behind us now,’ Crake droned in the background. ‘One ahead, one passing to the side.’
‘Which side?’
‘Does it matter?’
Something swept past the windglass, a stir in the mist. Frey saw the stretched shape of a human form and distorted, ghastly features. He shied back from the windglass with a gasp.
‘What is it?’
‘Didn’t you see it?’
‘I didn’t see anything!’
Frey’s vision was slipping in and out of focus, and refused to stay steady. He burped in his throat, and tasted acid and rotten eggs.
‘Cap’n . . .’ said Crake.
‘I think something’s wrong,’ Frey murmured.
‘Cap’n . . . the second set of numbers . . .’
‘What second set of—’
‘The numbers! They’re counting up from minus twenty towards zero! It’s coming at us from below!’
‘Cap’n! You’re drifting off altitude! You’re diving!’ Jez cried.
Frey saw the altimeter sliding down and grabbed the controls, pulling the Ketty Jay level.
‘It’s still coming!’ Crake shrieked.
‘Move!’ Jez cried, and Frey boosted the engines. The Ketty Jay surged forward, and a split second later there was a deafening explosion outside, slamming against the hull and throwing Crake and Jez across the cabin. The craft heeled hard, swinging to starboard, and Frey fought with the controls as they were propelled blindly into the red murk. The Ketty Jay felt sluggish and wounded. Frey caught a glimpse of the compass on the floor, its needles spinning and switching crazily.
They’re all around us!
Crake started shrieking. ‘Daemons! There are daemons at the windows!’ Frey’s vision blurred and stayed blurred. There seemed to be no strength in his limbs.
‘Cap’n! Above and to starboard!’ Jez shouted.
Frey looked, and saw a round shadow in the mist. Growing, darkening as it approached. A ghost. A great black ghost.
No. A sphere. A metal sphere studded with spikes.
A floating mine.
Jez grabbed the flight stick and wrenched the Ketty Jay to port. Frey fell bonelessly out of his seat. Crake screamed.
There was another explosion. Then blackness, and silence.
Twenty-Eight
Jez Saves The Day - Legends Come To Life - The Dock Master - Some Tactical Thinking - News From The Market
Frey came to a kind of bleary awareness some time later, to find himself crumpled on the floor of the Ketty Jay’s cockpit. His cheek was pressed to the metal, wet with drool. His head pounded as if his brain was trying to kick its way out of his skull.
He groaned and stirred. Jez was sitting in the pilot’s seat. She looked down at him.
‘You’re back,’ she said. ‘How do you feel?’
He swore a few times to give her an idea. Crake was collapsed in the opposite corner, contorted uncomfortably beneath the navigator’s desk.
Frey tried to remember how he’d got in this state. He was tempted to blame it on alcohol, but he was certain that he hadn’t been drinking since last night. The last thing he remembered was flying through the fog and fretting about the numbers on the compass.
‘What just happened?’ he asked, pulling himself into a sitting position.
Jez had the compass and the charts spread out untidily on the dash. She consulted both before replying. ‘You all went crazy. Fumes from the lava river, I suppose. It would explain all the ghosts and hallucinations and paranoia.’ She tapped the compass with a fingernail. ‘Turns out this thing is to warn us where the magnetic floating mines are. Someone’s gone to a great deal of trouble to make sure this secret hideout stays secret.’
Frey fought down a swell of nausea. He felt like he’d been poisoned.
‘Apologies for taking the helm without permission, Cap’n,’ said Jez, sounding not very apologetic at all. ‘Had to avoid that mine, and you were out of action. Close thing. The Ketty Jay took a battering. Anyway, we’re nearly there now.’
‘We are?’
‘It’s actually pretty easy once you work it out,’ she said, although he wasn’t sure if she meant following the route to the hideout or flying the Ketty Jay.
He got unsteadily to his feet, feeling vaguely usurped. The sight of Jez in the pilot’s seat disturbed him. It was an unpleasant vision of the future he feared, in which Jez - now possessing the ignition code - stole away with his beloved craft when his back was turned. She looked so damned comfortable there.
Outside, everything was calm and the air had cleared to a faint haze. Though there was still a heavy fog overhead, blocking out the sky, it was possible to see to the rocky floor of the canyon beneath them. A thin river ran along the bottom, hurrying ahead of them, and a light breeze blew against the hull.
Frey rubbed his head. ‘So how come it didn’t affect you?’
She shrugged. ‘Once I saw what was happening, I held my breath. I only took a few lungfuls before we flew out of it.’
Frey narrowed his eyes. The explanation had an over-casual, rehearsed quality to it. As an experienced liar, he knew the signs. So why was his navigator lying to him?
There was a clatter from the passageway behind the cockpit, and Malvery swung round the door. ‘Allsoul’s balls, what were we drinking? ’ he complained. ‘They’re all comatose down there. Even the bloody cat’s conked out.’
‘You weren’t giving the cat rum again, were you?’ Frey asked.
‘He looked thirsty,’ Malvery said, with a sheepish smile.
‘Eyes front, everyone,’ said Jez. ‘I think we’re here.’
They crowded around her and stared through the windglass as the Ketty Jay droned out of the canyon. And there, down among the fog and the mountains of the Hookhollows, hidden in the dreadful depths of Rook’s Boneyard, they found at last what they’d been searching for.
The canyon emptied out into a colossal, gloomy sinkhole, a dozen kloms wide, where the ground dropped seventy metres to a water-logged marsh. Streams from all over the mountains, unable to find another way out, ended up here, tipping over the edge in thin waterfalls. Mineral slurry and volcanic sludge, washed down from distant vents, stained the surface of the marsh with metallic slicks of orange, green or blue. Ill-looking plants choked the water. The air smelled acidic and faintly eggy.
But here, in this festering place, was a town.
It was built from wood and rusting metal, a ramshackle sprawl that had evolved without thought to plan or purpose. Most of it was set on platforms that rose out of the water, supported by a scaffolding of girders. The rest was built on what little lan
d the marsh had to offer: soggy banks and hummocks. Each part was linked by bridges to its neighbours, and lit by strings of electric lamps that hung haphazardly across the thoroughfares.
The buildings varied wildly in quality. Some wouldn’t have looked out of place on a country estate in the tropical south. Others had been thrown together with whatever could be found or brought from the outside. They were made of wood and stone, with slate or corrugated iron roofs. Parts of the settlement were a cluster of shanty-town huts, barely fit for habitation, whereas others were more organised and showed an architect’s touch.