Mainspring (31 page)
Authors: Jay Lake
“Believe what?”
“You take the ⦠clockwork of the universe ⦠as evi ⦠evidence of God's plan.” Malgus' breath hissed some more as he fought pain and gathered strength to
speak again. “It shows only ⦠the mechan ⦠istic universe. Uncaring. An illusion. Even the Clockmakers have turned ⦠their faces ⦠from the world.”
speak again. “It shows only ⦠the mechan ⦠istic universe. Uncaring. An illusion. Even the Clockmakers have turned ⦠their faces ⦠from the world.”
“You and I crossed the gear atop the Equatorial Wall,” Hethor said, almost wringing Malgus' hand in his. “That was no illusion.”
“God's love. God's plan.” Malgus tried to sit up. “Your belief will doom you. Trust William of Ghent. The white bird. It ⦠he ⦠he ⦠he will call back ourâ” Malgus coughed, then vomited blood.
William of Ghent?
Too late for that man. For good or ill, Hethor had struck a blow against the sorcerer, though he doubted a fall into the brass had killed such a powerful man. More the pity that was. “What of William?”
Too late for that man. For good or ill, Hethor had struck a blow against the sorcerer, though he doubted a fall into the brass had killed such a powerful man. More the pity that was. “What of William?”
Malgus' breath heaved; then his body stilled. A little brass spring popped from his mouth to strike the stones with a high ringing before it rolled to a stop in a pool of the navigator's blood.
Arellya squatted next to Hethor. “Your guide is dead.” Her whistling clicks coalesced into language for him even as she spoke.
“Yes.” He still held Malgus' hand, which was already cooling. He was afraid to think overmuch on what the spring meant.
A mechanistic universe was the ultimate extension of Rational Humanism, excluding the absent God, or even His indirect agency in the form of the Clockmakers. It was the most arrant heresy to think that the gears that drove the world were in no wise of God.
Wasn't it?
Arellya tugged on Hethor's arm. “We should go.”
Hethor looked up, his eyes blurred and peppered by tears. Around the edges of the plaza, the tall, proud sorcerers and witches of the cyclopean city paused in their circlings. The locals, who had before gazed through Hethor like so much air, now stared at him and his correct people as if they were live coals on a sitting room carpet.
“The harbor,” said Hethor. “There is no help for me
here. Either the Jade Abbott was mistaken, or Malgus was.” Alternatively, Malgus had turned traitorâthe name of William of Ghent the last words on the late navigator's tongue. “No matter. There are no Sages of the South who will advise me.”
here. Either the Jade Abbott was mistaken, or Malgus was.” Alternatively, Malgus had turned traitorâthe name of William of Ghent the last words on the late navigator's tongue. “No matter. There are no Sages of the South who will advise me.”
“To the harbor we shall go,” Arellya replied. “But we must move soon.” She called the young males together. Two were badly injured in their fall from Malgus' pillar of punishment, several more limping and stumbling. “Kiklo and Barshee must be carried. The rest of you ready your spears. We take the fighting road back to the harbor.”
Hethor stirred. “Malgus. We must take Malgus. Hero or traitor, I will not leave him lie here.”
“This is a strange and wondrous place,” Arellya said, urgency in her voice for the first time since Hethor had come to understand her speech. “In death he will be strange and wondrous. We must move fast, Messenger.”
“Malgus and I are not correct people,” Hethor said, picking his words carefully even among the rattling of spears as the young males formed up around him and Arellya. “God has asked us to care for our souls in our own way. I will bury him, and say a memorial prayer.”
Arellya held his gaze for a moment. She then shrugged and counted off four more males to carry Malgus' body.
Running in a mob, they jogged toward the gated exit from the market. The folk of the city lined up along the route Hethor and the correct people must take, but did not move to interfere.
We made this thing happen,
Hethor thought.
Our choices continue to drive us forward.
He did not rightly know what they would do upon reaching the harbor. Take to a ship, perhaps, or even that airship, though he despaired of working any such vessel with this correct person mob trying to serve as crew.
Hethor thought.
Our choices continue to drive us forward.
He did not rightly know what they would do upon reaching the harbor. Take to a ship, perhaps, or even that airship, though he despaired of working any such vessel with this correct person mob trying to serve as crew.
They passed out the gate and into one of the curving streets. The correct people headed left without hesitation. Hethor was unsure of even that choice. Glancing back, he
saw Malgus' body following him, chest high as the dead navigator rode on the shoulders of the correct people. Beyond Malgus and the last bobbing spears, the tall sorcerers followed. Their pursuers poured out of the gate at a quick pace that managed to still seem unhurried.
saw Malgus' body following him, chest high as the dead navigator rode on the shoulders of the correct people. Beyond Malgus and the last bobbing spears, the tall sorcerers followed. Their pursuers poured out of the gate at a quick pace that managed to still seem unhurried.
Hethor could have sworn he had never seen this street before, that this combination of buildings and alleys and tall, narrow doors was novel, but he had to believe Arellya and her people. They jogged, humming in time to their steps, all of them watchful.
The next massive gate approached on their right. The sun was westering over the ocean. Hethor's little band ran through blocks of shadow from the taller buildings. This gate's passage lay in deeper shadow, and as they turned into it, Hethor thought for a moment he saw the gleam of watchful eyes waiting in that temporary darkness. But they passed through unmolested, though the locals following behind continued to swell in numbers.
Running down the next avenue, Hethor sensed the pace of the correct people faltering.
“What is it?” he asked Arellya.
“The gates have moved,” she said. “We will keep following this road, for there is no other.”
The gates have moved?
How was that possible? The whole city was built in circles, like an archery target, but it seemed inconceivable that it could somehow rotate on the central axis.
How was that possible? The whole city was built in circles, like an archery target, but it seemed inconceivable that it could somehow rotate on the central axis.
Sorcerers,
Hethor thought. He had already been convinced they were sorcerers and magicians in this city. This was proof that eldritch power was at work here.
Hethor thought. He had already been convinced they were sorcerers and magicians in this city. This was proof that eldritch power was at work here.
Another gate loomed on their left, this one completely unfamiliar to Hethor. Arellya and the young males took the turn without hesitation. These shadows were even darker, filled with sufficient menace to give the correct people pause, though even as they missed a step or two, they surged on through. The gateways were ten paces wide, enough for the group of them to pass, but still a funnel to choke and slow their progress.
Nothing substantive lurked there either, but a mob of the locals waited on the next street to block their passage left. Arellya swung right instead. Another mob waited there. She did not break her stride, but shouted something Hethor found unintelligible. The young males lowered their spears and bent their bodies, racing to surge around Hethor and Arellya to place them in the center of the correct people's charge, next to Malgus' body.
The sorcerers and witches were still silent, silent as the stones of their city, and their line stood unflinching as the correct people charged. Hethor wanted to shut his eyes, to hear the eerily quiet rush forward, the slapping of hairy feet on stone opposed only by the faint rustling of robes, counterpointed by the combined clockwork of a thousand hearts. The sight made his heart quail. The silence terrified him. He expected to hear the shrieking and screaming that any European charge would have entailed.
The correct people met the sorcerers' line, spears flashing off a brilliant glare, the first few of the hairy men screeching and collapsing. Their momentum carried them through a sheet of fire more like lightning than flame.
The stench of burning hair and coppery blood flooded Hethor's nostrils even as he stumbled over bodies large and small.
The mob flowed backward, away from their line of advance, the correct people still not slowing their pace. Hethor knew they were lost, that the moving walls or gates had defeated even the unerring sense of direction of Arellya's people. But he could not tell that from the behavior of those around him.
Four, perhaps five, correct people had fallen at the hands of the sorcerers' fire. The rest seemed unconcerned, almost as if they had not noticed. They had not lost hope. Hethor had been told why this was, how they saw death, but still he did not understand it. He continued to run with them though his lungs were beginning to burn and his legs ached with the pace.
Another gate, the shadows deeper this time. Eyes gleamed within that darkness as well, large and yellow. Fangs glittered beneath some of those eyes, crystal knives waiting for Hethor and his escort.
This time the guardians were real, or at least more real than before. The first rank of correct people shrieked. Some threw up their spears to ward their faces, but the mass pushed on through with dogged momentum. Eyes leered, fangs slashed, and a foetid breath, rank as the crocodile's or the night wind off the salt jungle, blew through the gate. Hethor had the impression of some vast strength, a beast with a hundred heads coiling throughout the dark of the world; then they were back in another street.
From here he could see the lighthouse. He knew that the harbor lay close to hand. The sorcerers and witches were spread out again along their line of retreat, no longer blocking the road as before. They seemed willing to let fear and darkness do their work.
Arellya barked out another command, and the correct people picked up their pace. Hethor stumbled, but caught himself, and broke into a sprint. Though his legs were twice as long as theirs, they moved with an economy and strength that he could not match. His muscles burned.
A last gate lay ahead, one more turn to reach the harbor and the escape of a boat or the airship. Even without the pursuing mob on their heels, Hethor would not have cared to remain anywhere near the city after dark. The great, terrible things that lived in the shadows would take form and pad the stone streets, hunting any who did not belong.
He had a sudden vision of the city as a living creature, its daytime people no more than fevered dreams of the thinking stones, its nighttime terrors the true embodiment of the spirit of the place.
Then they were in the gateway. Though they had passed through nothing like this on the way in, the tunnel was much longer than any of the other gates, the setting sun
a gleaming, distant dot. An army of the shadow creatures stood between them and the sun, eyes and teeth gleaming, bodies just wavering into being.
a gleaming, distant dot. An army of the shadow creatures stood between them and the sun, eyes and teeth gleaming, bodies just wavering into being.
“Light,” Hethor shouted. “Run into the sun! They are only darkness!”
With a ragged shout this time, the correct people again leveled their spears and charged the angry shadows.
It was a terrible race, full of screaming and blood. Hethor's heart seized with terror, his veins turning to ice as his boots changed to lead. This close to sunset, the monsters in the dark found their voices and roared like all the cougars of New England massed on a single hillside. It was worse than the sounds of the night jungle, worse even than the attack of the crocodile on the river, though no claw or tooth touched Hethor. Many of the correct people suffered.
They must have hope, to reach the sun,
Hethor thought furiously. His soul-magic had failed him with the crocodile, but he
was
the Messenger. “The heart of God,” he called out to the correct people, “is the heart of the world.”
Hethor thought furiously. His soul-magic had failed him with the crocodile, but he
was
the Messenger. “The heart of God,” he called out to the correct people, “is the heart of the world.”
“Heart of the world!” they shouted back.
“As man lives, so lives God.”
“So lives God!”
“As God lives, so lives the world.”
“So lives the world!”
The words seemed to have little effect on the shadow monsters, but they propelled Hethor's feet and the steps of his little war band on toward the reddening sun, until they burst out onto the dockside. The breakwater stretched to their right, the docks and airship masts to their left. The sun was a receding glare touching down on the horizon, pressing the ocean down with its weight.
Arellya raised her hand, and the correct people slowed. Hethor looked around. Where earlier they had been fifty and more, there were perhaps three dozen left. Malgus' body still rode on their shoulders. Fifteen or so dead, in the race from the central plaza to here, and even outside
the concentric walls they were still not safe. He stifled a sob.
the concentric walls they were still not safe. He stifled a sob.
“The boats,” he called out. “To the boats.”
Down the docks they ran, even the seemingly tireless correct people slowing with the burdens of their wounds and fear. Night was approaching with an almost audible rumble, the city's denizens readying themselves to strike their greatest and final blow.
The sun was a glimmering paring when the correct people reached the first of the moored ships. They were small, fishing boats or shallow scows, Hethor realized. He had no knowledge of sailing, and though the correct people were apt boatmen, they knew less than he did about the seaâtheir Great Salt River.
Running on into the fall of night, they reached a larger ship, a wide-bottomed trader like a modern version of a European trading cog out of history. Too many sails, too many skills none of them understood.
It had to be the airship, Hethor realized.
The mooring masts were at the far end of the docks, and the sun was vanishing with an air of finality. “The trees,” Hethor said, “at the end of the road.” He had no correct people word for mast or dock.
The fanged shadows boiled out behind them, howling for blood, their voices creaking with the sound of snapping bones. The fallen of Hethor's own party seemed to be swept up in the pursuit, dead correct people on their trail, keening, crying, blaming. Rivers of red flowed rapidly across the stone dock in the twilight, slippery sticky blood overtaking their flight to make them trip and slide headfirst into stone bollards or pitch screaming into the sea.
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