Authors: Jay Lake
Mainspring (39 page)
“Perhaps we should take our rest now,” he said quietly.
“Up,” she said. “I think I can stand.”
She could not, so he took her on his back again and stumbled onward.
MORE WALKING
. The minutes stretched like days while the hours passed in seconds. Hethor finally lost the sense of time that had stayed with him as long as he could remember. He surrendered it to fatigue, despair, and the endless brass coil of this journey, always an armspan away from the whirling face that marked the axis of the world. Even amid the loss and surrender, his feet kept moving.
. The minutes stretched like days while the hours passed in seconds. Hethor finally lost the sense of time that had stayed with him as long as he could remember. He surrendered it to fatigue, despair, and the endless brass coil of this journey, always an armspan away from the whirling face that marked the axis of the world. Even amid the loss and surrender, his feet kept moving.
The walls closed in again. Honest stone pressed tight. The space robbed the diffuse light of its power, so his descent became a winding tunnel that constantly seemed likely to pinch Hethor and Arellya within its rounded grasp. He considered throwing himself over the rail, wondering whether the quick, sharp fall would be better than the endless walk, but he was not yet so desperate.
So he walked.
Step by echoing step.
Downward.
His feet hurt.
His back hurt.
His head hurt.
His body stung from a hundred cuts.
Arellya was a millstone upon him.
Hethor made the inscription from the tablet his marching rhythm, stepping on every beat, saying the words with his breath. It was as if he could conjure strength and endurance by main force.
“The heart of God ⦔ Step.
“Is the heart of the world.” Step.
“As man lives ⦔ Step.
“So lives God.” Step.
“As God lives ⦔ Step.
“So lives the world.” Step.
It made of his entire body a prayer, and carried Hethor through his dark hours while Arellya quietly shuddered her pain on his shoulder.
HETHOR CAME
round a turn in the stairs to see a whole new cavern extending below him. The light was brighter here. The walls seemed lined with fungus, an infinite folding vista of glistening color and sickly sheen. Ribbons of spores moved through the air like eels in tropical water. He stopped to look, arresting his pace for the first time in hours. Was there a city down there? Did people live here, even in the depths of the Earth?
round a turn in the stairs to see a whole new cavern extending below him. The light was brighter here. The walls seemed lined with fungus, an infinite folding vista of glistening color and sickly sheen. Ribbons of spores moved through the air like eels in tropical water. He stopped to look, arresting his pace for the first time in hours. Was there a city down there? Did people live here, even in the depths of the Earth?
There was no end to the wonder and manner of men to be found in God's Creation.
After an indefinite time, he met the third guardian of their descent.
William of Ghent.
The sorcerer had survived Hethor's push into the spinning brass fields of the underworld, but he had not survived them well. The old arrogance was goneâlost with the classic beauty of his face. The red-brown hair was now a dirty yellowed white that grew in patches. One ice blue eye was puckered shut. A livid scar seamed William's face below the missing orb. The other seemed clouded though a spark glowed within. He stood as though his body were a curse rather than a blessing.
But when he spoke, it was with the same honeyed tones of sweet reason and contempt that Hethor had first heard condemn him to death in the little room beneath the viceroy's court in Boston. “I see your persistence has outweighed the combination of your other virtues, young Hethor.”
“William,” Hethor said. He eased to a sitting position on the stairs. This was not a fight he could win at blows, or even with the magic of Creation. William of Ghent was taller, stronger, older, more experienced, and more powerful than he. Hethor was certain that was still true,
even now when William was far from the height of his social position and physical grace.
even now when William was far from the height of his social position and physical grace.
Hethor concentrated on sliding a sleeping Arellya off his back and twisting so that he could hold her in his lap. As she was no bigger than a child, this was easily done. If he was going to die at William's hand here deep beneath the Earth, he preferred to see her face.
“A gentleman to the last,” said William. “If only your reasoning had kept pace with your deeds.”
“There is nothing wrong with my thoughts.”
“Hethor ⦔ William sounded sorrowful, just as Master Bodean might have done. “If you had listened, and considered the evidence to hand, we might now be standing in a very different place.”
“I did what I could.” Hethor felt his breath rattling in his chest. Was the infinite walk taking its ultimate toll on his body?
“But you did not do what you should.” With a visible effort, William knelt to bring himself to Hethor's level. They were eye-to-eye now, William two steps down. “You were taken in by a tale told by an idiot, one of Heaven's castaways. Your precious Gabriel was no more than a winged savage gifted with speech. A genius of his kind. Still, he is nothing but a debased angel.”
“No.” Hethor refused to believe that, refused to countenance such an idea. He had come too far, seen too much, to believe an error. “The world does run down. It will be the death of us. The tremors of the Earth have already slain far too many.”
“Of course the Earth is running down,” said William. “God abandoned His Creation from the first, if ever it was His. The Clockmakers are with us, Hethor. They will see our distress and return to reset the clockwork of the world. Thus will man be free of the chains of Heaven and set into a state of nature so that we can find our own way.”
“You have argued this before. You are no more sensible now.” Hethor flapped his hands at William. “Begone.”
“I am right. You are wrong. I have evidence, which you lack.”
“The heart of God is the heart of the world,” said Hethor. “As man lives, so lives God. As God lives, so lives the world. He has not abandoned us. He is everywhere among us.”
“Everywhere and nowhere,” William whispered. “Which is to say, He is absent. We must chart our own path free of the tyranny of Creation and invariant fate. You and I could have freed the world together, set it on a new path.” William rose to his feet, his voice pitching higher. “Instead you seek a rewinding of the Mainspring, to do again what that fool Brass Christ did two thousand years past. Let it run down, man! Let the world run down so that the Clockmakers will return.”
“We do not need the Clockmakers.” Hethor was tired, so very tired. “We need a world that works. Following God's path, man can find his own way.”
On his lap, Arellya opened her eyes and stifled a groan.
“You are a hopeless and venal fool,” William said. “I cannot imagine why I ever sought you out. Heaven is a fraud and so are you.”
Hethor hugged Arellya and stared up at the sorcerer. “I do not know what is fraud and what is not. I only know what I must do. Please, let me pass. If you are correct, and God has indeed abandoned His Creation, all I shall do is make a fool of myself. If you are mistaken, then you might be glad to see things set to rights.”
“So pretty a plan. Such wise words.” William shook his ruined head sadly. “The world needs to be set to rights. What if you are wrong, but your interference only makes it worse?”
“Faith,” muttered Hethor, then struggled back to his feet. Arellya clung to his chest, her arms around his neck. “Have faith, sir.”
“Never.” The smile was unmistakable, even in the bloody violence of his face. “I am a Rational Humanist, perhaps
the
Rational Humanist.”
the
Rational Humanist.”
“Then at least let me pass like the gentleman you are.” Hethor bent to pick up his spear, and Arellya's grip slipped. She tumbled free from his neck. William reached to grab her, to stop her, and their hands claspedâHethor's lover and his enemy, grasping one another's wrists for a moment before she overbalanced him and they both slipped past the railing into the empty air.
Hethor was halfway to vaulting the railing after them when he caught himself.
What could he do to save her?
He could never even catch them on the way down. Only fall and watch his beloved die in the arms of a mad, mad sorcerer. Who was the Rational Humanist now?
That thought almost sent him over the rail again.
Instead Hethor sat, Arellya's spear on his lap, to fold his face in his hands and scream his way to tears.
“
THE HEART
of God ⦔ Step.
THE HEART
of God ⦔ Step.
“Is the heart of the world.” Step.
“As man lives ⦔ Step.
“So lives God.” Step.
“As God lives ⦔ Step.
“So lives the world.” Step.
The words had become more of a curse than a prayer, but what else could Hethor do? He had to go on.
If he could create flowers on the ice, he could raise his beloved from the dead. All he had to do was find her body at the center of the world and pour his holy magic into her.
Hethor imagined Arellya and William lying in a tangle on some great balcony. They would be surrounded by angels crooning a requiem. Heaven's light would play on his beloved, while William's body rotted in shadow. He would approach with the gift of life in his hand and bend to kiss her brow. At his touch Arellya would be restored. He would cheat death and ignore the old fraud that was God, all in one mighty kiss.
She would breathe. She would open her eyes. She would call his name.
Hethor stepped onward, clinging to a dream he knew to be as false as William's words.
THE DOWNWARD
walk continued for what seemed a lifetime or more. Hethor passed through fire that raised blisters on his skin and set his clothes to smoldering. He passed through ice that cracked his lips and caused his hair to freeze and break off. He passed through giant gear trains of brass set so close to the stairs that to extend his hand would have been to lose his fingers.
walk continued for what seemed a lifetime or more. Hethor passed through fire that raised blisters on his skin and set his clothes to smoldering. He passed through ice that cracked his lips and caused his hair to freeze and break off. He passed through giant gear trains of brass set so close to the stairs that to extend his hand would have been to lose his fingers.
Then he walked some more.
No further guardians troubled him. It was the distance itself and the tiny, private little hells of the journey, that should have persuaded Hethor to turn back. He needed Arellya, needed to see her face and touch her hair and leave one last gentle kiss on her cool forehead. All the rest of the world was dead to him.
When he came to the end, Hethor was surprised by it. At first he did not recognize what lay before him.
Stair and shaft emerged from another rock layer into a domed cave much brighter than he had seen since leaving the surface. Far below, miles perhaps, though perspective and distance had tricked him time and time again on this journey, the brass shaft plunged into the center of a wide, textured plain covered with curved scorings. The stairway ended in a catwalk that extended in two directions over the vast surface.
Which had to be the Mainspring of the world, Hethor realized. It was a steel coil spring set upon its side.
He was seeing it for himself. Something that perhaps no one had seen since the Brass Christâthe legendary Mainspring. And he still did not have the Key Perilous, though the scar on his hand throbbed piteously.
“Arellya, I am here,” he shouted, then pounded down the stairs again. As he descended, he saw a small dot on
the spring that must be the bodies of William and his beloved.
the spring that must be the bodies of William and his beloved.
It is so huge,
he thought. How would he ever have been expected to wind it with a key small enough to fit in his hands? The Key Perilous would have to be the size of Boston to even begin to have leverage enough to wind this spring.
he thought. How would he ever have been expected to wind it with a key small enough to fit in his hands? The Key Perilous would have to be the size of Boston to even begin to have leverage enough to wind this spring.
On he plunged, racing from step to step. Somehow the spring did not get any closer, though the ceiling receded above him. He kept his eye on the spot that marked Arellya's passing. That was where he would fall to his knees. That was where he would cry out his heartache. That was where he would lay himself down to die, releasing all the fear and pain and suffering that was in his body.
Eventually Hethor stepped off the stairs onto the catwalk. It was like being born anew, to leave that winding path of struggle for a level place. He looked up. Shaft and stair vanished into a misty darkness. Perhaps he was at the center of the world. If so, God had made it much like any other cavern, save for its size and the vast machinery that drove Creation. No choirs of angels awaited.
Below his feet lay the steel with Arellya's body upon it. She had fallen straight and true to land near the base of the shaft. There was no sign of William.
He studied his beloved.
She sprawled broken-backed upon the striated lines of the Mainspring. There was no stirring of life. Blood stained the metal around her.
The lines he had seen proved indeed to be the edges of bands of steel set end-on. They could be a hundred miles deep for all he could tell. This close, he could see the metal flexing and loosening. The bands moved farther apart at a speed visible even to his eye.
Soon they would part like the thin lips of an angry master and her body would plunge again to be lost within the coils of the Mainspring.
“I am coming,” he said, grasping the railing to step over it and drop the twenty feet or so to rest beside her.
“No.”
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