Iron Angel (30 page)

He addressed Harper. “You set off the Screamer?”

Slowly, the engineer tilted her glass head.

“Then you saved me some honour,” Hasp remarked. “We archons generally like to fight our own battles. How many of the Blind remain for me to kill?”

“Two hundred thousand.”

The god grunted. “Enough to make a good song of this day.”

“You know they won’t kill you.” Hasp would suffer a far worse fate than death. “Where is the angel who fell from Deepgate?”

“I slew him. His soul gave me the strength to rattle this little army of Menoa’s.”

She knew he was lying, but said nothing. Her sceptre would soon locate her quarry.

The god extended his wings, now thin and ragged and clogged with grime. He took a step forward on trembling legs. He could hardly stand upright. Then he scratched the tip of his sword through the pile of rubble on which he stood, sketching a line in the dust.

His eyes narrowed on Harper again. “I see a starving woman trapped inside that Mesmerist thing,” he said. “She wears the uniform of a Pandemerian engineer, but she doesn’t look happy to be in there.” With some effort he raised his sword. “Come here and I’ll set her free.”

Harper didn’t move. All around her the Legion of the Blind clambered over piles of their dead comrades as they crept nearer to the diminishing castle and the solitary archon standing in its doorway.

“Two hundred thousand!” Hasp yelled. Wincing in pain, he hefted his blade high over his head, spun it, and brought it crashing down through the skull of the nearest demon.

Then he staggered back and leaned against the doorway, sucking in desperate gulps of air. “That’s one,” he cried.

Clutching their rescued eyes, Menoa’s horde crawled closer.

18

THE SOUL COLLECTORS

D
ILL’S FEATHERS WERE sodden and clogged with gore. He couldn’t now have flown even if he dared to risk it. He was slumped in a shallow pool, gasping for breath and gazing up at a black shape flitting across the sky.

Another one of Menoa’s spies?

Walls hemmed him in on three sides. He had found an alcove off one of the Maze’s countless canals. But there was no shade here. And no sanctuary. Faces peered out at him from the stonework.

Trust the walls,
Hasp had said.

Dill found it hard to follow that advice. The Mesmerist dogcatchers seemed to pursue him wherever he hid. Most often they came when the mists grew dark, the time Dill had taken to calling night. He’d hear their clickety-clack teeth and he’d be forced to flee again, dragging his leaden legs through the sucking red fluid. It flowed always from the broken buildings, the ones the Icarates had smashed through.

Sometimes Dill crawled through the rooms the Mesmerists had destroyed and left empty, the shattered, bleeding houses and apartments—but the memories he had in those places weren’t his own, and they frightened him.

Where was Hasp now?

In the seven days since he’d fled, there had been no sign of the god or his castle. Had it only been seven days? Time had no meaning here. Often the days lasted much longer than they should have. He might have been running for a month, or a thousand years. The Legion of the Blind had not pursued him. Had they captured Hasp or presumed Dill to be dead?

Either way, there were other dangers.

A doorway was following him.

He had encountered it that morning. A rectangular gap between two square columns, it had seemed to offer a way through a wall separating two parallel canals. Pits in the stone lintel had the appearance of tiny eyes, while longer gouges opened and grinned like mouths. It had whispered to him as he passed.

Step through. Quickly, little crow.

Dill
had
stepped through only to find himself back where he had started. Somehow the doorway had turned him around. In his confusion, Dill had splashed a hundred yards along the canal before he realized he was retracing his own path. The doorway had laughed and slid along the wall until it was out of sight.

But now, as the shadow in the sky moved out of sight, he heard the doorway’s voice again. And it wasn’t speaking to him.

It’s up ahead. A hundred yards on the left. A little white crow. Follow me, hurry.

Dill peered out of the alcove. Three Icarates flanked a sphere of human bones which they rolled through the shallow waters between them. They were hurrying along the canal towards Dill’s hiding place. Their anemic armour fizzed and lit up faces in the surrounding dark stones, forcing ghosts to blink and look away. The doorway moved ahead of them, revealing flooded rooms and passages as it slid along the wall. Fluid gushed over its threshold like water over a weir.

There he is!

Returning to the open canal terrified Dill, but there was no other way out. He fled the alcove and ran from the Mesmerist priests and their sphere, thick fluids sucking at his feet.

The doorway raced ahead of the Icarates, zipping along the canal boundary wall until it reached Dill. It kept pace with him, and through it Dill saw yet more roofless ruins, canals, and sumps beyond the wall.

Step through me—I’ll help you to escape,
it teased.

“Leave me alone.”

The doorway cackled wildly, then slid back along the wall the way it had come. Dill glanced over his shoulder. The Icarates were gaining on him.

The canal opened into a wide circular space. From here, dozens of narrower channels branched out in every direction. Dill chose one at random and hurried down it. The channel split in two; he took the right fork. A hundred paces further the passage divided again. Now Dill turned left. He tried to vary his route but keep his progress in the general direction of the First Citadel. Although he could not see the great building itself, the skies over it were dark with the smoke from King Menoa’s war machines.

Finally deep inside this labyrinth of channels, Dill ducked into another alcove, and slumped against the far wall, exhausted. For a long time he listened hard for the voice of the errant doorway.

Nothing.

But then he heard other sounds. From the other side of the wall came the rumble and splash of something rolling through shallow water, followed by the aetherlike crackle of Icarate armour.

Dill had taken a long and twisted route only to end up mere yards from his pursuers. Now only a foot of stonework separated him from the Mesmerist priests and their cage of bones. He heard them pause on the other side of the wall.

Dill froze.

Where was the doorway?

Something metal clicked. There was another pause. A low hum. And then Dill heard the bone-cage move on again. He breathed.

He turned around to find the doorway facing him. It occupied one of the side walls of the alcove, and its tiny dark eyes all seemed to be fixed on the angel. As soon as Dill saw it, it cried out:

Back here! The white crow is hiding here!

The doorway slid around the alcove, moving to the rear wall where it now formed an opening between the angel and the channel in which his pursuers were approaching.

They came through the doorway with tridents.

Dill backed away as two Icarates stepped into the alcove. Sparks burst from their armour and showered the waters around their boots, raising a smell like scorched meat. Their iron weapons hummed; their eye lenses and copper mouth-wires shone. The remaining pursuer rolled the bone-cage up close to the doorway, but that hideous sphere was much too large to pass through this narrow gap.

The doorway giggled.

The first Icarate raised his trident.

But Hasp had taught Dill how to fight. He had shown Dill how to manipulate his soul to create weapons and armour. And Dill used his new skills now.

He willed himself a shield. A light steel buckler flashed into existence, already strapped to his knuckles.

The angel punched, slamming the shield into the trident before the Icarate could complete his lunge. The buckler deflected the heavy iron weapon, forcing it wide. One of its forks connected with the shaft of the second Icarate’s trident.

And a concussion shook the air.

Dill took a step back as both tridents sparked violently. The Mesmerist priests’ bodies jerked once and suddenly became rigid. Smoke hissed from their armour.

Wicked crow! You’ve ruined their armour.

The doorway was shrieking, shuttling rapidly back and forth along the wall in agitation.

Dill studied the two Icarates. They remained completely immobile.
They can’t move without their armour?
He grinned and stepped closer to the doorway. “Let the other one through.”

The doorway hesitated, but then it began to race back and forth along the wall with an even greater urgency than before.
No!

Dill changed his shield to a sturdy iron pike. He clutched the shaft in both fists and drove the weapon downwards through the moving doorway, forcing the point hard against the ground opposite.

With a loud
clang,
the doorway came to an abrupt halt against the shaft of the pike. It slid left, and then right, but it could not move its side columns past this new obstruction. Dill had skewered it. He beckoned to the remaining Icarate.

It approached the doorway with a hammer.

Dill felt pressure mounting on his pike as the doorway struggled to free itself. It was pushed hard to the left, trying to move the pike. Dill maintained his grip, using every ounce of his strength to hold the weapon firmly in place. The tip of the pike scraped across the ground, but he gasped and held on.
Just a moment longer.
His arms were shaking. The doorway shuddered and heaved against the pike.

The last Icarate ducked inside the doorway.

When the Mesmerist priest was halfway through, Dill willed his pike to disappear. Faced with a complete and immediate lack of resistance to its enormous efforts, the doorway abruptly shot away along the wall, carrying the hapless Icarate with it. Unable to shed its momentum, it struck the adjoining wall at tremendous speed. But while the doorway could pass through solid stone, Menoa’s priest could not.

Pieces of the crushed Icarate fell to the floor of the alcove, sparking briefly before they died.

Dill moved on.

The doorway continued to hound his every step. Enraged at being tricked, it shrieked and yelled and announced the angel’s presence to anyone who might have been around to hear it.

Dill couldn’t escape it, so he needed to find a way to destroy it. As far as he could tell, the Mesmerist creation consisted of nothing more than two upright stone columns with a lintel across the top. Yet it moved through the solid walls of the Maze like a bubble of air through water.

It seemed indestructible.

White crow,
it yelled.
Icarate slayer.
It remained a few paces behind Dill, tracing the wall of yet another long, curving canal.

What would Hasp have done? Dill reached into his pocket and took out the apple the god had given him before they’d parted. The fruit looked even smaller and more rotten than before, but tasted surprisingly sweet. It boosted his energy and confidence.

And it gave him an idea.

During his journey through Hell, Dill had passed several ruined temples, quadrangles full of monoliths and arches and rotting black stonework. Icarate holy sites, Hasp had once told him—their ancient fly-infested facades rose higher than the surrounding canals and ziggurats.

A short distance away, Dill could see one of these structures now. Red light bled through the gaping windows of a crumbling black tower—a fanglike silhouette against the hot skies.

Dill changed his course towards the ruin.

As he drew nearer, the Maze began to show obvious signs of deterioration. The walls between canals were older here, much more dilapidated. In some places they had collapsed entirely, forming ragged gaps between the channels. Steps sank down into deep wells or spiraled up around fingers of dark stone with no apparent purpose. The ghostly faces within the walls looked different, too—something odd, almost inhuman about their eyes.

The doorway grew suspicious. Each time it came up against a broken wall, it was forced to turn back and find an alternative route.

You won’t lose me in this decaying labyrinth,
it crooned.
The Maze has countless walls. There is always a way through.

Finally Dill reached the ruined tower. It rose from the center of a spacious quadrangle full of spikes of black rock. A ring of gallows had been built around the building’s foundations, although none of the nooses were currently occupied. Several walls extended inwards from the quadrangle’s perimeter, like the teeth of a mantrap, but none of them reached the tower itself. Each ended in a pile of rubble, yards from the building.

Dill examined one of these partitions. The stonework was wet, rotting; it crumbled away under his hand. He set off again, following the wall towards the tower.

The doorway kept up with him.
You won’t escape by hiding in that tower,
it said.
The Icarates perform their rituals in such places. Dangerous things lie within.

Dill reached the end of the wall, and stopped. The doorway could go no further.

You are still surrounded by walls,
it snarled.
Run and hide. I can wait forever for you to reappear. I’ll tell Menoa’s priests where you are.

But Dill had no intention of hiding. He stared at the tower for a long moment, frowning, as he pretended to weigh his options. Then he strolled a few paces back the way he had come, halted, and regarded the tower once more. The doorway was waiting, watching him to see what he would do.

Dill willed himself a hammer—an enormous iron brute of a war-hammer. He swung it hard at the wall, and the fragile stonework crumpled under the blow. The top third of the wall teetered, then fell forward and crashed to the ground. He raised the weapon again.

By now the doorway had realized what was happening. It screeched and raced back towards the angel.

A second hammer blow took out another two feet of stonework. Dill had made a jagged rift in the top half of the wall.

It was enough to stop the doorway. The Mesmerist creation could move through stone, but not air. When it reached the gap Dill had made, it came to an abrupt halt, now trapped in an isolated section of wall—an island in the Maze.

Don’t leave me,
it said urgently.
Don’t leave me trapped here.

But Dill was already walking away.

Rebuild the wall,
the doorway howled after him.
Don’t you understand? I can’t stay here forever. I can’t die! I don’t know how to die!

“You don’t know how to shut up, either,” Dill called back.

The sound of splashing brought Dill sharply to his feet. Weeks—by his estimation of time here—had passed since he’d rid himself of the howling doorway. Glutinous liquid pulled at his shins as he waded across the pool. The walls felt sticky where he pressed his palm against them for support. Eyes opened deep within the glossy stone, like reflections in a mirror, and glared at him.
Trust the walls.

Hasp had been right. No walls or steps had betrayed him. Sometimes when he listened closely to the stonework he could hear it whispering advice.
Go left here…Avoid the three-tiered ziggurat…A Mesmerist vessel approaches…
Dill wondered if they had begun to recognize the part of Iril he harbored inside. Or had the Shattered God himself found a way to communicate with the angel? Maybe it was simply that rumors had been spreading through the walls of the Maze?

Even those doorways he’d met since the Icarates’ temple had been strangely quiet and obedient.

One such doorway now led to the canal beyond the roofless room where Dill was hiding. He forced himself to stop and take a breath before peering out.