City of Light & Shadow (3 page)

  Carla determined to find the city watch, to alert the Kite Guard, to rouse the Assembly, to mobilise the Blade. The people of Thaiburley needed to be warned, they had to be told the unthinkable truth, that the Rust Warriors had returned.

 
 

 
 
 

Tom couldn't breathe. Coldness enveloped him, pressing in on his chest, sapping warmth from his body and strength from his limbs. Bitter chill nipped at his cheeks and hammered at his ears and forehead, to set searing pain dancing behind his temples. He tried to suck in air and found only icy water – more cold, this time drawn inside his body. He was drowning.

  Frantically he thrashed, straining to reach the surface which had to be somewhere above him. Yes, there! His head breached the boundary between the elements and he emerged gasping and spluttering, dragging his arms out of the water.

  "Tom!" Someone called his name. He blinked, wiping his eyes and face with clumsy numbed hands. A name fell into place:
Mildra
. She was there, wrapping something around his body. Instinctively he grasped it, finding soft warmth which his fingers sank into as they fastened on the swathe. A towel, all fluffy and soft and warm. Mildra was trying to wipe his face with one corner of it.

  "Come on," she said, placing an arm around his shoulders and urging him to stand. "Let's get you out of there. He was sitting in the water, he realised. Was it really so shallow? Felt much deeper when he first came round.
Of course
it was shallow, this was the ice tank.

  He was shivering violently now, his legs mere pillars of ice. In fact, he'd lost all sense of feeling from the waist down and needed to lean on Mildra for support while he halfclambered and half-fell out of the submersion tank.

  "Thaiss," he muttered, forgetting himself for a moment, "Why the breck does it have to be so cold?"

  "The cold is an essential part of the process," said an older, strangely accented woman's voice. "As you well know."

  Looking a great deal healthier than the gaunt figure that he and Mildra had revived just days before, the living goddess strode towards him. She was moving a lot less stiffly as well. Her long silver-grey hair had been tied back so that it fell past her shoulders in a ponytail, while the pale blue onepiece she'd worn during her centuries-long sleep had been replaced by a much darker black-blue outfit with white trims. Combined with the serious-looking black boots she wore, the effect was very much that of a military uniform.

  "Doesn't m-mean I have to l-like it," Tom replied, his teeth chattering as shivers coursed through his body in violent spasms.

  "Like?" the old woman said, pausing to stare at him with arched eyebrows. "Whoever said that you or indeed any of us has the luxury of
liking
whatever role life allots us, hmm?"

  "No-nobody," he conceded. Whatever this walking fossil was – aged human, eternal goddess, the living dead, or ancient spirit in human form – she could learn a thing or two from Thaiburley's Prime Master when it came to teaching methods, that much was for certain.

  Tom automatically lifted first one foot and then the other, allowing Mildra to slip soft furred and instantly warm garments over his feet, drawing them up his legs. Realisation of two things struck him simultaneously. The first being that this was a Thaistess waiting on him as if she were some servant girl, the second that he was stark naked.

  Fortunately the numbing cold and assorted distractions had prevented the otherwise inevitable reaction to having a woman he was attracted to so close to his exposed genitals – evidently "frozen stiff" was merely a saying, at least in this instance. Even so, he reached down hurriedly to grasp the hem of the soft-furred one piece garment with both hands, his fingers thick and clumsy, still tingling with the return of circulation.

  "Thanks," he told her, "I can take it from here."

  She raised her eyebrows and showed him a hint of a smile, a welcome reminder of the friend he knew. In recent days such glimpses had become all too rare. Tom didn't really understand what had changed between him and Mildra, but there was no question that she was acting differently towards him. They had grown so close during the long trip from Thaiburley to the icebound Citadel of Thaiss, a closeness that culminated in their intimacy in the meadow of flowers just days ago, a memory which still burned fresh in Tom's mind. A real bond had formed between them, one which had proved strong enough to survive any embarrassment over indiscretions provoked by the flowers' aphrodisiac pollen, but which seemed to have frayed dramatically since they arrived here. And he had no idea why.

  Images assaulted his mind's eye as he straightened from pulling up the clothing. A bewildering array of memories not his own, their sudden eruption causing him to stagger, disorientated for a moment.

  "Are you all right?" Mildra asked, steadying his arm.

  "Yes, I'm fine," he assured her, pulling away, embarrassed by his feebleness and reacting before he considered how this might look to Mildra. "It's just all these things that keep swirling around in my head," he added, suddenly afraid that his actions might distance her still further.

  The old woman, whom he still had trouble thinking of as the same goddess to whom so many temples had been raised in the City Below, was beside him now, looking into his eyes and frowning, though whether with concern or disapproval he couldn't be sure. "Give it time," she told him. "Your subconscious will already be working on coherency, pulling the various fragments of imposed memory together." She was walking away again, saying over her shoulder, "Another session or two, three at the most, and it will all fall into place, you'll see."

  Tom didn't bother trying to mask his horror, turning to Mildra and mouthing
three at the most
? This had been his second stint in the ice tank and he'd hoped it might be the last.

  The Thaistess grinned and gave Tom's arm a reassuring squeeze before hurrying after her goddess, who had to be the most unlikely, not to mention sprightly, deity Tom ever expected to meet.

  Since their arrival and the old woman's awakening – she really did seem to be the Thaiss of legend despite Tom's reservations – they'd been kept constantly busy, driven by the goddess's conviction that Thaiburley stood on the brink of disaster. To Tom it felt as if he were being shunted from one teacher to the next, his life a constant round of lessons. Back in the city it had been the Prime Master, then on the road their self-styled leader Dewar set about teaching him how to use a sword, and now that he'd reached the river's source as instructed a whole new load of lessons were being pummelled into him, even more difficult to understand than the old ones. What was it with everyone wanting to educate him all of a sudden? He'd done fine with breck-all learning up until now.

  The ice tank was part of what Thaiss described as a "crash course". While he was submerged and all but unconscious, information was fed directly into his brain – weeks of concentrated lessons crammed into hours. Quite where the cold came into things he wasn't sure, but Thaiss assured him it was essential, slowing bodily functions and focussing the mind. Who was he to argue with a goddess? She claimed that only by being subjected to the ice tank could he hope to absorb the wealth of intimate detail needed to save the city.

  
Him? Save Thaiburley?
Ridiculous. Yet she insisted that he was the city's only hope. Tom had always found it hard to accept the Prime Master and others telling him he was special back in Thaiburley, but now here he was half a continent away hearing much the same thing. Maybe all these folk really did know something he didn't; though, if so, shouldn't he
feel
special in some way? Instead he continued to think of himself as an ordinary street-nick swept up in events he didn't fully understand, things that someone like him had no right being a part of.

  Apparently, one of the Prime Master's motives in sending him on this journey was the hope that Tom might grow into his abilities and responsibilities. He
had
changed, he knew that; maturing in all sorts of ways, though not perhaps in the directions his mentor had intended – memories of the flower meadow crossed his thoughts again. Therein lay the worry that niggled away at his innermost thoughts and fuelled his self-doubt. Tom was afraid that even after all he and Mildra had been through he was still going to disappoint those who believed in him, that he was destined to return to Thaiburley a failure rather than the saviour people anticipated. He winced as a new montage of images cascaded through his thoughts. He'd be a brecking knowledgeable failure though, that was for sure.

  Tom didn't follow after Mildra and the goddess, not immediately. Instead he sat by himself, allowing the last of the cold and the damp to seep from his body, leached away by the wonderfully soft clothing Thaiss had provided, which somehow absorbed moisture while remaining dry and warm against his skin. As he sat there he did his best to assimilate this most recent torrent of knowledge, determined to follow the advice the goddess had given him first time around by relaxing and allowing the memories to come to him rather than chasing after specifics – a habit which experience had taught him brought only frustration.

  If he could start making sense of it all now, perhaps he could get away with just one more session in the ice tank rather than the two or three Thaiss had so casually suggested. In a strange way, the bits and pieces he was already able to glean both increased and decreased his awe of their host.

  Assuming that all these images and history were true, Thaiss and her brother genuinely
had
been responsible for building Thaiburley. Tom witnessed vast machines of impossible size straddling peaks and canyons. Monstrous drill bits hewed into the face of a mountain, while beams of raw energy melted and blasted away rock that had withstood the elements for millennia. Tom knew that he was witnessing time compressed, that the work of months passed before his mind's eye in seconds, the years in minutes. As he watched, the city of Thaiburley steadily took shape before him.

  It wasn't just machines doing the hard graft. Armies of workers in bright orange overalls swarmed over everything like ants, and there were others: figures in powder blue gowns who were often there, directing and organising. The robes might have been bulkier and longer than he was used to but these could only be arkademics, or their forefathers. On a couple of occasions he saw these blue-robed figures take a more active role. A small group of them would stand together with hands raised, and from their palms energy poured out; blinding light that disappeared into the now honeycombed depths of the mountain. He had no idea to what purpose this energy was unleashed but it was impressive all the same. Was that really an example of what the founders could do? Was that what
he
could do if he only knew how? The idea seemed absurd.

  Seeing history compressed like this brought home just what a colossal undertaking the building of Thaiburley had been, and as he watched the city take form Tom felt awed that anyone would ever attempt such an undertaking, let alone succeed.

  He caught glimpses of Thaiss several times, and of her brother; once even, a fleeting view of a Jeradine, its presence a surprise. What part had the bipedal reptilians played in the founding of Thaiburley? Thaiss looked younger – confirming that this was no "eternal goddess". She aged like everyone else, if a good deal slower.

  In the final scenes, as the City of Dreams he recognised began to emerge from the face of the mountain with miraculous speed, Thaiss became a constant feature – an observer in the foreground, overseeing the work, often grasping a staff as tall as herself, the crown of which ended in a cylinder of what appeared to be swirling energy. Never static, the staff's top broiled and flashed, a stunted pillar of light ranging from gold and orange to red, bound within clasps of silver metal. Beyond these clasps, there was no obvious container to hold this writhing of light.

  The intertwining energies were mirrored in a far larger object which Tom witnessed being installed towards the end of construction by two of the monstrous machines working in tandem. With the roof still only half formed, a huge column was lowered with great care into what looked to be the centre of the city. Scale wasn't always easy to judge, but it seemed to Tom that this column was two or three times as wide as a man was tall and longer than any twenty men put together. He had no doubt that this was the core, the heart of Thaiburley which the Prime Master had spoken about, the element that the arkademics and the healers and the seers and even Tom himself drew upon when using their talents. Despite the hulking size of the two great lifters involved, there seemed a great delicacy in the way they handled this kaleidoscopic pillar, as if it were something immensely fragile. Looking on, Tom couldn't escape the feeling that the changing patterns of colour and shape the column displayed had some underlying purpose, that they represented communication of some sort, albeit beyond his understanding. It seemed to him that here was something alive, and caged.

  The column disappeared in short order, lowered into the heart of the half-sculpted city. Within a handful of breaths Thaiburley was finished. The City of a Hundred Rows stood proud, all new and gleaming and beautiful.

  Tom had grown up knowing that his home was vast, and had gained some sense of just
how
huge the night he ascended the walls, but seeing it like this brought home the full scale of the place for perhaps the first time in his life. He felt humbled at the thought of the ambition and effort that had gone into the city's founding, but he was also vaguely troubled. As yet these memories had no context. He still didn't know
why
Thaiburley had been built or how long ago all this had happened. That was the problem with this form of forced but disjointed learning; it lacked logical progression. As a result, the more he discovered the more the questions mounted, a great heap of them gathering to taunt him.