Etherwalker (30 page)

The angel realized she was being toyed with and decided to let it slide. Enoch liked that about her.

She raised a finger, then sighed and lowered it. “So once you arrived in the desert, you noticed all your skinny friends were hanging from iron posts and decided to hop up and join them?”

Rictus smiled and gave Enoch a lidless wink, a gesture the specter had mastered which involved an interesting choreography of brow and cheek muscles.

“No ma’am. I was brought here by Váli.”

It was an odd, foreign-sounding name, like something from a dead language.

Sera just smiled and nodded. Waited.

She can be patient through one of Rictus’s jokes. I like that.

Rictus cleared his throat, realizing that the game was over. Which was good because Enoch had been through some of the hardest days of his life. His head hurt and he was thirsty. As happy as he was to see his friend alive—or at least mostly alive—this wasn’t the best time for light talk.

“At least, the Swampmen call him Váli. They’ve got this thing for old Germanic names—something from before the machine times. The Germans thought their gods were messed-up whack jobs who could be selfish and lusty and violent. Not the perfect, loving gods we dreamed up afterward. The Swampmen feel like it was the all-powerful tek gods—your folks, Enoch—who ruined things. In fact, that and your friend’s pretty wings may be why they decided to bring you here for sacrifice rather than just killing you outright for crossing their sacred lands. Their hatred is like a holdout from the bad, old neo-luddite days after the Schism.”

Rictus tapped at the box at his chest.

“You’re lucky you didn’t have one of these. Anybody more . . . closely tied to tek from the fallen gods—say, someone kept alive by microscopic robots weaving organic polymers into their dying flesh—is given to Váli. He lives at the center of the desert, but he travels the Path of Agony whenever a new specter is delivered. I was his most recent ‘gift.’

“Váli is a monster. That word doesn’t have as much meaning as it used to, back in my day. But even in a world thick with witches and manticores, he is terrifying. Váli is . . . something that the Swampmen revere. He is the sum total of all that they hold most sacred. Biology without restraint. Strength without steel.

“And,” said Rictus, “I am going to kill him.”

He pointed towards Enoch’s swords, ignoring the stunned look on his friend’s face.

“Are you using those?”

Enoch blinked and then reached around his side to unhitch his
derech
. It was nowhere near as long as Rictus’s massive blade, but it was at least a more similar weapon than the curving
iskeyar
. Rictus took the sheathed short sword—it almost looked like a dagger in his long fingers—and strapped the scabbard around his bony hips.

“Yeah, keep the bendy one,” he said, grumbling. “I’m half-tempted to march back to that stinking swamp and root around for Caroline.”

“Caroline?” Sera asked, now utterly lost. “Your guitar?”

“No, no, no, no. Caroline is no name for a guitar, silly. Caroline was my sword.”

Rictus exhaled breathily, eyes closed.

“My guitar was named Tess. And I
am
going back to get her after I cut Váli into little pieces. The swampfolk will leave me be if I’m wearing their god’s ears as a new pair of boots.”

Enoch knew that Rictus couldn’t be turned once he was in a mood like this one. But he knew that Sera would probably try. The angel was trying to instill some order on the situation.

“I know that you’re angry, but . . . but if this monster has been able to capture hundreds of other specters—”

“One hundred and twenty-nine,” interrupted Enoch. “One hundred and twenty-nine other specters.”

She rolled her eyes and continued. “—if this monster has been able to capture so many other specters, what makes you think you can kill it? The Swampmen think this ‘Vah-Lee’ is a god for a reason, Rictus. Besides, we are out of water and Enoch’s ears are bleeding from snuffing out all of . . .” Here she trailed off, apparently unsure if this would be offensive to Rictus.

The specter just waved his hand. “Don’t worry about it. He was doing them all a favor. Truth is, another few weeks up there and I would have lost it as well.”

Enoch looked up at Rictus. “How many more? How many more are there?”

Rictus shrugged. “Pretty sure I was the most recent addition. You see any more behind me?”

They all turned to see. Nothing but empty girders climbing the dune behind him.

Enoch blinked his eyes. “You . . . you’re right. There should be a sequence of eight following Rictus here. The pattern is . . . is ended.” His mind had begun to ache just thinking of that circular sequence again. He tried to shrug it off but found his stomach rising at the thought of that endless, unrepeating pattern . . . 

“Good thing, too,” said Rictus, interrupting the thought. “You should see how the Path of Anguish responds to a new tenant. The girders all shake, lift into the air, and grind sideways back and forth across the path. All the specters start screaming—pretty disturbing stuff, even for the undead.”

Enoch had been so relieved about his vigil coming to an end that he almost missed what Rictus said.

“They what? The girders move? I thought they were anchored below the sand.”

The specter rolled his eyes. “I forget that this must all seem so meaningless to you primitives. Yes, Enoch, they move. The girders you see were once part of a complex transport system. The hooks me and my brethren decorated are just the broken ends of a glorified conveyor belt. Its original purpose was to deliver materials to the factories and silos that used to honeycomb this place.”

Enoch couldn’t believe what Rictus was saying. He had been using his ability to kill specters all along this path—never once had he sensed any machinery beyond their synthetically beating hearts.

Rictus grabbed the boy’s hand and placed it on the warm metal girder behind them. Mesha leaped to the ground and began sniffing at the base.

“Follow the girder to its roots, kid. And then follow those even deeper.”

Enoch closed his eyes and looked. Yes, the girder was nothing more than simple metal . . . but . . . following the static lines of the steel shaft deep into the sand, Enoch saw a simple machined joint—a spring-bearing elbow. And then a piston supporting the elbow. And then a linked panel, and another, and another layered over each other like the scales on a serpent’s back all the way back to the root of the following girder. The girders were like spikes along a flexible spine of metal, and yes, there was a trickle of electricity thrumming through all of it.

He should have noticed. This was something easily within his range, something that now seemed obvious to him.
Why didn’t I see this?
Now that he was focused, he could see that this entire path was part of some gargantuan mechanical system. All buried beneath his feet. Enoch’s mind was already sore from his grim work during the past few days, but he could sense greater systems at work even deeper in the darkness below the sand. Massive shapes, shifting silently. Tirelessly.

Enoch stumbled, falling back into Rictus’s arms. Fresh blood dribbled warm from his ears. He wiped at his burning eyes, and his hand came away red.

“It’s . . . it’s moving down there.”

Sera put her hand on his shoulder. She turned to Rictus. “What does he mean,
moving
? Where are we? What kind of desert is this?”

Mesha hissed.

“This desert is a stain that your kind left on my home,” came an unnaturally loud voice from the dune above them, “when your bombs burnt this green land to glass.”

They all turned at the sound. Váli had arrived.

A misshapen shadow loomed over dune behind them. Váli was three times as tall as the specter and thickly built. His shape was roughly humanoid but dense and twisted in a way which seemed oddly powerful to Enoch’s blurred vision. The words “
barely contained”
came to his mind, and he wasn’t sure why.

Váli’s heavy form
writhed
with trembling, muscular tension. His skin—pink, red, and webbed with pale scars—bulged and rippled as though schools of fish fought through a current beneath his flesh. His knotted limbs trembled and shook—not with any sort of palsied weakness, but with the potent energy of a spring pressed to its limit. Enoch realized, with revulsion, that Váli was unclothed: what he had assumed to be some sort of leathery tunic was actually the monster’s twisted flesh flowing slowly across his giant frame. It was hard to make out any surface details on that viscous landscape, but Enoch thought he saw wetness gleaming from the crevasses between the waves of muscle. Eyes, mouths, and sinuous tongues slid in and out of folds.

Every inch of the monster moved and winked and licked and quivered. Váli spoke from several mouths, but the large, crooked grin on his face remained shut. Enoch saw bits of flesh stuck between jagged teeth and surmised that this one, largest mouth was probably reserved for eating. The two “original” eyes above this smiling maw were mismatched in both size and color, and they rolled inside their orbits in tandem with the smaller eyes scattered around Váli’s body. He took another step closer, and Rictus raised his blade higher.

Mesha hissed again and backed up against Enoch’s leg, nudging him to flee. Rictus unsheathed Enoch’s blade and pointed it at Váli.

“Your brain has been baking in the sun for one century too many, pal. This ‘green land’ was honeycombed with missiles, chem-bombs, and worse—enough hardware to fry the planet to a crisp, as you may recall. All because your shortsighted ancestors wanted to beat the rest of the world to digital checkmate, no matter the cost. Nuking your warmongering patch of the Old World was the smartest thing the etherwalkers ever did.”

The monster stopped and turned to regard Rictus.

“You are much more talkative than the last time I harvested you, specter. Has the
Pensanden
freed your tongue?” He spat the word “Pensanden.”

“I was here when their fire sealed this place, abomination,” said Váli. “I was deep beneath, but I could still feel the heat. My flesh boiled while everyone around me died. I watched them. I fed on their roasted bodies as I dug free.” Váli’s voice was moist and seemed to come from a dozen throats.

Rictus laughed. “It has been a while since I’ve faced something older than
me.
Even longer since I faced something uglier.
And I’ll bet it’s been a while since you’ve come up against an armed specter who was sane enough to face you head on, Váli.”

The monster stopped and seemed to consider what Rictus was saying.

The specter bowed. “I look forward to reminding you of what pain feels like. And then introducing you to death. You’re due.”

With his free hand, Rictus gently pushed Enoch back, gesturing for him to take Sera and go. Enoch wanted to resist, but he was in no state to fight. He fumbled for his
iskeyar,
but couldn’t seem to unsheathe it while his hands were so sticky with blood. His head still ached.

Why am I so powerless? Something to do with the girders . . . the specters . . . the circular pattern . . . 

Enoch gasped as another wracking pain cut through his brain. Sera gripped onto his arm tightly and started to pull him away. Mesha hopped from his shoulder and backed away, hissing at the monster at the top of the dune.

Váli opened his large, grinning mouth, and three tongues slid across his lips, across the top, the bottom, and his teeth.

“You are welcome to try, specter.” Váli’s voice was like the rumblings of a crowd of people—men, women, children—all speaking in cold, careful tones. All speaking hungrily. Dangerously. “The mudfolk have brought me countless offerings, as I have instructed them to since the Pensanden first burnt my homeland. You are not the first, nor shall you be the last to try and break my atoning round.”

Enoch’s aching head cleared for a moment, and he pulled back, resisting Sera’s hands.

“Atoning round?” he called out, voice breaking. His head pounded. “You mean the circular constant that you coded into the path? Is there some other reason for the pattern?”

Rictus scowled and moved towards the monster. “Get out of here, kid. Stop asking your damn questions and go.”

Váli snapped his maw shut with a clacking sound, exhaling from several mouths with a sound that could have been laughter.

“There are meanings within every ritual sacrifice,
Pensanden.
” The monster turned the word into a curse, and his attention was heavy on Enoch. “Some meanings add depth and power to what is given at the altar . . .”

He took a step towards the boy. Rictus tensed.

“. . . and some meanings merely to distract. To draw attention.”

The hatred in Váli’s voice was a physical force, ancient and chilling. Enoch imagined the long centuries of anguish, of singular, driving anger. Hatred was the black energy that roared through this monster’s quivering flesh, the poisonous blood which had sustained it for days without end. And that hatred was focused with dire precision on the Pensanden boy standing in the sand before him.