But summoning daemons was dangerous in many ways. A man didn’t always know exactly what he was getting. He might fish for a minnow and find a shark on the line.
Crake had made calculations, based on the findings of other echo theorists and his own ideas. He’d identified a range of frequencies where he’d be likely to find what he wanted. Then he commenced the hunt proper.
The echo chamber began to vibrate and whine as he searched along the bandwidth. Daemonism was as much about feel and instinct as science. Crake closed his eyes and concentrated, turning the dials slowly.
There it was. That creeping sensation of being watched. He’d found something. Now he had to catch it before it slipped away.
He set up new resonances, starting high and low and then moving them closer together, feeling out the shape of the entity. He stopped when he felt the resistance of it.
The reaction was more pronounced now: a cold shiver, a slight feeling of vertigo and disorientation. He had to keep his eyes open. When he closed them, he started tipping forward.
He looked at the dials. The thing was huge, spread right across the subsonics.
Let it go, he told himself. Let it go. It’s too big.
He had it now, though. There was no way he could hold on to something like that with his standard equipment. It would simply phase into a different frequency and escape. But with the echo chamber, he could keep it pinned, pounding it with confusing signals that all interfered with one another.
He could get this one. Forget the golem, forget everything else. He just wanted to see it. Then he’d send it back. But just to see it!
Excited, riding on a fear-driven high, he worked the dials feverishly. He set up more vibrations, seeking the daemon’s primary frequencies, narrowing and narrowing the bandwidth until he matched them. The daemon was shifting wavelengths, trying to escape the cage, but he shifted with it, never letting it get away from him. The closer he came, the less space the daemon had to wriggle.
The air was throbbing. The echo chamber pulsed with invisible energies.
Spit and blood, this is working! This is actually working!
Once he had it fixed as best he could, he stepped away from the console and went to peer inside the echo chamber. Through the porthole in the door, he could see that the sphere was empty. But he wasn’t disheartened. Inside, perspectives bent out of shape, and the air warped in eye-watering contortions. Something was coming. He could hardly breathe for terror and fascination. Leaning close to the thick glass, he tried to see further inside.
A colossal, mad eye stared back at him.
He yelled, falling away from the porthole, his heart thumping hard enough to hurt. That vast eye had surged out of nowhere, surfacing into his reality, burning itself on to his consciousness. He saw it now, impossibly huge, belonging to something far bigger than the echo chamber could contain.
There was a heavy impact, and the echo chamber rocked to one side. Crake sat where he’d fallen, transfixed. Again, the sound of a giant’s fist pounding. The echo chamber dented outwards.
Oh, no. No, no.
He scrambled to his feet and ran for the console. Get rid of it, get rid of it, any way you can.
Another impact, sending a shudder through the whole sanctum. The electric lamps flickered. One tipped over, crashing to the ground. Crake lost his footing, stumbled onwards.
And then he heard her scream.
The sound froze him to the bone. It was more dreadful than anything he could imagine; more dreadful than the thing in the echo chamber. His world tipped into the primal, inescapable horror of a nightmare as he looked over at his niece, standing there in her white nightdress. She was just outside the circle of resonator poles, transfixed by the scene before her.
He’d never know how she’d got the key to the wine cellar. Perhaps she’d found an old copy in some dusty, hidden place. Had she been planning this moment ever since? Had she been unable to sleep, so keen was she to see the secret wonderland of toys where her uncle Grayther worked? Had she set her clock to wake her, hoping to sneak down in the dead of night when she thought he wouldn’t be there?
He’d never know how or why, but it didn’t matter in the end. What mattered was that she was here, and the daemon was uncontainable. The door of the echo chamber flew open, and the last thing he knew before his life changed for ever was a hurricane wind that smelled of sulphur, and a deafening, unearthly howl.
When his senses returned to him, the sanctum was dark and silent. A single electric lamp remained unsmashed. It lay on its side near the echo chamber, underlighting the looming shape of the armoured suit, which was still connected by cables to the dented metal sphere.
Crake was disorientated. It took him several seconds to understand where he was. His mind felt scratched and sore, as if rodents had been scrabbling at it from the inside, wounding his senses with small, dirty claws. The daemon had been in his head, in his thoughts. But what had it done there?
He realised he was standing. He looked down, and saw in his hand a letter knife with the insignia of his university on the hilt. The knife and the hand that held it were slick and dark with blood.
There was a clicking noise from the shadows. Red smears on the stones. He followed them with his eyes, and there he found her.
Her white nightdress was soaked in red. There were slits in her arms and throat, where the knife had plunged. They welled with rich, thick blood, spilling out in pulses. She was gaping like a fish, making clicking noises in her throat. Each breath was a shallow gasp, and her lips and chin were red. Her brown hair was matted into sodden wads.
Her eyes. Pleading. Not understanding. Dazed with incomprehensible agony. She didn’t know about death. She’d never thought it could happen. She’d trusted him, with a blind, unthinking love, and he’d turned on her with a blade.
It was the daemon’s revenge, for daring to summon it from the aether. It had been cruel enough to leave him his life and wits intact.
Crake hadn’t known that pain and despair and horror could reach the heights that they now did. The sheer intensity of it was such that he felt he should die from it. If only the darkness would come back, if only his heart would stop! But there was no mercy for him. Realisation smashed down upon him like a tidal wave, and he staggered and gagged, the knife falling from numb fingers.
She was still alive. Alive, begging him to make the pain stop, like some half-broken animal ruined under the wheels of a motorised carriage. Begging him to make it better somehow.
‘She’s a child!’ he screamed at the darkness, as if the daemon was still there to be accused. ‘She’s just a damned child!’
But when the echoes had died, there was only the wet clicking from his niece as she tried to draw breath.
What overtook him then was a grief so overwhelming that it drowned his senses. He was seized by an idea, mad and desperate, and he acted on it without thought for consequence. Nothing else was important. Nothing except undoing what had been done, in the only way he could think of.
He scooped her up in his arms. She was so light, so thin and pale, white skin streaked with trails of gore. He carried her to the echo chamber, and gently placed her inside. He pushed the door shut. Despite the abuse it had suffered, the lock engaged and it sealed itself. Then a weakness took him, and he fell to his knees, his forehead pressed against the porthole in the door, sobs wracking his body.
She was lying on her back, her head tilted, looking at him through the glass. Blood bubbled from her lips. Her gaze met his, and it was too terrible to stand. He flung himself away, and went to the control console.
There, he did what had to be done.
Jez had seen men cry before, but never like this. This was heartbreaking. Crake’s sobs were deep, wild, dredged up from a depth of pain that Jez couldn’t have imagined he held inside him. His story had become almost impossible to understand as he neared the end. He couldn’t even form a sentence through the hacking sobs that shook his whole body.
‘I didn’t know!’ he cried, his face blotched and his beard wet with tears. His nose was running, but he didn’t trouble to wipe it. He was ugly and shattered before her. It hurt to see him so. ‘I didn’t know what I was doing! Only it . . . it didn’t work like I thought. The tra . . . the tra . . . transfer wasn’t perfect. She’s different now, she’s not . . . like she was . . .’ He gasped in a breath. ‘I just wanted to save her.’
But Jez couldn’t give him pity or sympathy. She’d hardened herself too much. She saw the tragedy of him now, but if she let herself forgive him, if she gave in even a little, there would be no going back. He could perhaps be excused the crime of stabbing her, if he wasn’t in his right mind. But what he’d done next was nothing short of diabolical.
‘One thing,’ she said. Her voice was so tight that it hardly sounded like her. ‘Her name.’
‘What?’
‘All this time, you never told me your niece’s name. You’ve avoided it.’
Crake stared at her with red eyes. ‘You know her name.’
‘Say it!’ she demanded. Because she needed just this final closure, before she could walk away.
He swallowed and choked down a sob.
‘Bessandra,’ he said. ‘Bessandra was her name. But we all just called her Bess.’
Thirty
Orkmund’s Address - A Familiar Object - Frey Puts It All Together - ‘Gotcha!’
By midday, a crowd had gathered outside Orkmund’s stronghold.
In a rare moment of architectural forethought, the stronghold had been built in front of a large square which was employed for the purpose of meetings, markets and occasional executions or bouts of trial-by-combat. A wooden stage, now groaning under the weight of spectators, stood in the centre for just this purpose. Another, more temporary one had been erected just outside the stronghold, and was guarded by burly men with cutlasses. This would be Orkmund’s podium.
Frey pushed through the press of bodies, with Malvery clearing the way ahead. Pinn and Jez came behind. Pinn had been subdued by his confinement in the Ketty Jay the night before, and Frey had extracted promises of good behaviour today. He charged Malvery with enforcing them, knowing how the doctor liked to bully Pinn.
It was fun to torment the young pilot now and then, but Frey knew how much it meant to him to see Retribution Falls before they left. Just so he could say he’d been. Just so he could tell Lisinda of his adventures, on that day when he returned in triumph to sweep her into his arms. Having asserted his authority, Frey was happy to give Pinn a little slack.
The stronghold was constructed in a squared-off horseshoe shape, with two wings projecting forward around a small interior courtyard. It was dull and forbidding, with square windows and iron-banded doors. Its walls were dark stone, streaked with mould. A place built for someone who had no interest in flair or aesthetics. A fortress.
Surrounding the stronghold was a ramshackle barricade of metal spikes and crossed girders, eight feet high and surmounted by wooden watchtowers. The watchtowers were manned by rifle-wielding pirates, who scanned the crowd below them, no doubt deciding who they’d shoot first if they had the chance. In the middle of the barricade was a crude gate, a thick slab of metal on rollers that could be slid back and forth to grant access to the courtyard.
Frey and the others fought their way to a vantage point as the gate began to open and the crowd erupted in ear-pummelling cheers. The floor shook with the stamping of feet. It occurred to Frey that they were standing on a huge platform that was held up by a scaffolding of girders, and that it might not be built to take this kind of weight. It would be an ignominious end to his adventure, to sink to the bottom of a foetid marsh beneath a hundred tons of unwashed pirate flesh.
It wasn’t until Orkmund climbed the steps to his stage that Frey caught sight of him. The pirate captain Orkmund, scourge of the Coalition in the years before the Aerium Wars, who disappeared fifteen years ago and was thought by most to be dead. But he wasn’t dead: he was building Retribution Falls. A home for pirates, safe from the Navy. A place where they could conduct their business in peace - with a hefty cut for Orkmund, of course.
Though he must have been in his mid-fifties, Orkmund still cut an impressive figure. He was well over two metres high, bald-headed and thickset, with squashed features that gave him a thuggish look. Tattoos crawled over this throat, scalp and arms. He wore a simple black shirt, tight and unlaced at the throat, to emphasise an upper body and arms that were heavy with muscle. He walked up to the stage with a predator’s confidence, surveyed the cheering crowd, and raised his arms for silence. It took some time.
‘Some of you know me by sight,’ he shouted. His voice, though loud, was still faint and thin by the time it reached Frey’s ears, and he had to concentrate to hear. ‘Some don’t. For them new to Retribution Falls: welcome. I’m Neilin Orkmund.’
The cheer that erupted at that drowned out anything else for a while. When the crowd was relatively quiet again, Orkmund continued.
‘I’m proud to see so many men and women here today. Some of the finest pirates in the land. Some of you’ve known of this place for years. For others, it’d only been legend until recently. But you’ve come at my call, and I thank you for that. Together, we’ll be an unstoppable force. Together, we’ll make an army like Vardia’s never seen!’
More cheers. Pinn and Malvery cheered along with them, caught up in the moment.
‘Now I know some of you are frustrated. Champing at the bit. You wanna get into action, don’t you? You wanna break some bones and smash some skulls!’
Another deafening cheer, accompanied by clapping and jostling that threatened to turn into a riot.
Orkmund held up his hands. ‘You’ve enjoyed my hospitality. You’ve dipped your beaks in the delights of Retribution Falls. And in return, I ask you only one thing: be patient.’
The pirates near to Frey groaned and muttered. Suddenly the fervour had gone out of the crowd.
‘I know you’re disappointed. No one wants to get out there more than me,’ Orkmund hollered. ‘But this ain’t no small task we’re taking on! We ain’t here to rob a freighter or steal a few trinkets from some remote outpost. We ain’t just a crew of fifty men, or a hundred. We’re a crew of thousands! And a crew of thousands takes time to gather and co-ordinate.’
There were reluctant mumbles of concession at this.
‘The time’s coming very soon. A matter of days,’ said Orkmund. ‘But I’ve brought you here today because I’ve something to show you all.’
As he spoke, a troop of armed pirates sallied out of the stronghold, guarding two dozen men who were carrying a dozen large chests between them. They carried the chests up onto the stage as Orkmund continued.
‘I know that there are doubters out there. What are we doing here? Why are we waiting? Who are we attacking, and why’s it still a secret?’ Orkmund said, prowling back and forth on the stage. ‘Well, first ask yourself: why’d you come to Retribution Falls? Why’d you answer my call, when you didn’t even know who you was fighting? For some, it was loyalty to me. For some, it was the call to adventure. But for most of you . . . it were this!’
He threw open one of the chests, and a gasp went up from the crowd.
‘Loot! Ducats! Money!’ Orkmund cried, and the crowd cheered anew, their spirits roused. He went to the next one, and threw that open, revealing that it, too, was full of coins. ‘All this, for you! Booty! A share for every man that survives, and a right generous share it is too!’ He threw open another one. ‘Now ain’t this worth fighting for? Ain’t this worth waiting a few more days for?’
The pirates howled with glee, shaking their fists in the air, driven rabid by the sight of so much money. If not for the respect they had for Orkmund and the multiple guns trained on them, they might have tried to storm the stage right then.
But while Pinn and Malvery were yelling themselves hoarse, Frey had spotted something. He turned to Jez. ‘Can you see the stage?’
She craned
to look over the shoulder of the pirate in front. ‘Not really.’
‘Come here,’ he said, and crouched down to offer her a piggy-back.
‘No, Cap’n, it’s really alright.’
‘I need your eyes, Jez. Help me out.’
Since she couldn’t think of a good reason to protest, she climbed awkwardly onto his back and he lifted her up.
‘You know, my eyesight’s not all that great, I mean it’s—’
‘The last chest on the right,’ said Frey. ‘Describe it to me.’
Jez looked. ‘It’s red.’
‘Describe it more,’ he said irritably.
She thought for moment. ‘It’s very fine,’ she said. ‘Dark red lacquer. Kind of a branch-and-leaf design on the lid. Silver clasp in the shape of a wolf’s head. Oh, wait, he’s opening it.’