The Book of Transformations (33 page)

The stories were very similar to his own – visitations and phantoms haunting the living of Villjamur.
What the hell had that priest been doing?

*

The path inside the iren was lined with numerous ornate cressets that each held a fat-based flame. Across a white marble floor, with mica-covered walls and ceilings, the place was assiduously clean and gleaming, and across such surfaces the echo of their footsteps ricocheted down the corridor.

Lan felt nervous as the weight of expectation dawned on her.

Not only were the Knights celebrated by the people of the city, but they would be in the public eye once again. If something should go wrong, the people would not look to the city guard for assistance, they would look to the Knights – the manufactured symbols of hope.

The corridor didn’t turn at right angles, it curved gently, implying the vast size of the structure. Soon they found themselves at the top of an iron spiral staircase and, together, they descended, passing portraits of the great icons of the military dressed in various regalia. At the bottom of the stairs the city guard boxed around Urtica, obscuring him with their crimson and grey colours, guiding him forwards, their dull steel shields held aloft as if they were heading into a fracas.

Then a lower level, wider, lighter, with skylights, wooden rails and gold cressets. Everything here seemed to glitter, as if they were in some heady dream.

People, who Lan guessed had something to do with the iren, were loitering. Wealthy types, judging from the looks of them, in regal tunics and dresses. All of them desperate to meet the new celebrities. ‘This is bizarre,’ Lan whispered to Tane.

‘I love it,’ Tane replied, shaking hands with some of the traders. ‘It’s why I love the taverns so much. I can’t quite get enough of the adoration.’ Then, to those gathered to one side, ‘Nice to meet you. Sorry, must be on my way.’

‘Tane,’ Vuldon snapped, ‘watch them closely. See anything remotely strange act on it.’

‘I am, big guy, I am. I can hear dozens of conversations. I can do this stuff without even thinking about it, and meanwhile I’m still on the lookout.’

‘You good, Lan?’ Vuldon demanded.

‘Yeah.’ Lan was now peering into the deepening crowd as their noise swelled to fever pitch.

A shaven-headed man in his thirties, wearing a dark-brown hood, came to her side – and he was pleading with Lan for a kiss; an admirer. She ignored him at first, didn’t want to make a scene here, but he laughed perversely.

‘You look jus’ fine in that outfit,’ he drawled, then groped for her breasts.

Lan grabbed his outstretched arm, punched his stomach, and he buckled over. Finding reserves of strength that surprised even herself, she grabbed him by the hair, yanking him back, and clutched his throat. She snarled into his alcohol-reeking face: ‘You leave me alone, right?’

The man squirmed a nod, and she pushed him away. Clawing his throat, he vanished into the masses.

‘Well handled,’ Vuldon said, without a hint of sarcasm. ‘Bet being a woman in your position surprises you somewhat.’

‘Fuck you.’

On through the horde, shadowing the city guard, who opened out behind a platform overlooking the lower floors in this vast atrium. Above there were two huge skylights, latticed with wood, and made from the most remarkably clear glass Lan had ever seen. The building felt as airy as an outside iren. A faint cough of a pipe as the new fire-grain heating system imported from Villiren continued to pump warmth around the place.
This is simply stunning . . .

Upon seeing the Emperor above them, the audience fell into a hush.

He cleared his throat and paused. ‘This is a momentous day. One of progress . . .’

While he recited a prepared script from memory, the Knights moved into position behind the city guard and across to the opposite side, gaining a better perspective on the events. Shops were layered on three floors, nearing a hundred units in all, mainly clothing-sellers and milliners, but also everything from designer carpenters to weapon-smiths, with a few bistros scattered about.

‘. . . from the latest materials developed with the assistance of cultists, utilizing the great ancient technologies of millennia past . . .’

Around the sides of this highest level, marksmen crouched with loaded crossbows. One of them glanced her way and nodded, before allowing his gaze to settle on the throng below. As the Emperor continued his oratory, Lan, too, began scanning the crowd for any signs of trouble.

It seemed impossible to know what signs to look for. Everyone had been searched on entry and any weapons confiscated – an act all the more ironic considering that expensive blades would soon be on sale here. Lan noticed personnel sporting the new Shelby Corporation colours, white belts bright against the dark-red uniforms. It seemed they were guarding some of the more impressive-looking shops.

She focused on people’s hands, whether or not they were in pockets, about to draw out something, people nudging those next to them, people gesturing across the atrium.

Through the glass, she saw something up on the roof. Possibly a pterodette or a garuda on patrol?

A noise below caught her attention. Someone had knocked over one of the grand portraits. Laughter frothed up around that corner and a man was hauled to his feet, peering around sheepishly whilst members of the city guard restored the work to its place on the wall. He was escorted from the premises.

The Emperor continued his speech with no pause, his voice carrying across the distance of the atrium. People stood listening in earnest. Again, Lan caught movement – something on the roof.

Moving through the press of guards surrounding them she reached Tane and Vuldon, who were scanning the crowd below.

‘I’m going up onto the roof,’ she said. ‘Is there a way to get there without drawing too much attention?’

‘Only the way we came,’ Vuldon whispered, his gaze flitting about the iren. ‘You need support?’

‘I don’t know. Just a hunch.’

‘Fine. Well, we’ll stay here for now.’

*

Lan peered back up over the doorway, and could see the roof extending back overhead, so she gripped the frame and, using her circus skills more than her powers, she quietly hauled herself up to the higher level.

Crouched by the guttering, wind pummelled her, sending her dark hair flailing around her face, and she pulled the strands aside and under control. Ahead in the distance, the towers of the city soared into a fine mist.

The roof was curved slightly, banking upwards, constructed mainly from a slate-like material, but one which possessed more grip. Some distance ahead, Lan could see the two vast skylights which focused light into the iren. Each must have been twenty feet across.

And there, crawling along the outside of a skylight was something . . . some kind of
creature
. She shifted along the perimeter of the roof to gain a better perspective, being careful not to catch its attention. From behind she could see its body, a brown and leathery skinned beast, twice the length of a human, with four squat legs, a stub of a tail.

Lan’s foot caught a loose tile and she slipped; the creature froze, then turned to face her, an image of surreal horror: there was nothing but a vast mouth, no eyes, nose or ears that she could discern, just layered rows of teeth set in a slobbering maw.

The thing tromped on the spot, rotating its fat body. It snorted thick gloop by its feet. Then with a surprising, lumbering speed it charged towards her. When it was less than a few paces away Lan leapt up hovering in the air. The creature reared up, chomping at the air, but couldn’t stop itself from sliding over the edge of the roof and, moments later, came the sound of its mass slapping against the cobbles below.

Lan lowered herself and looked over the edge of the building. Down below, in a vacant alley, the thing had become a purple aggregation of blood, offal and pulp.

What the hell was that?

Lan scanned the rooftop but could see nothing else. She scurried along the edge of the roof, peering over the side.

At the rear of the iren, a small huddle of figures dressed in dark clothing with scarves across their faces were surrounded by buckets of water. She watched as they placed a hand-sized, dark lump before them, and poured one of the buckets of water over the top. Suddenly the small mass began to lurch and convulse, contorting itself in all directions, and swelling into something altogether larger.

It ballooned into the precise form of the creature that had attacked her moments earlier, then one of the three – now clearly holding a sword for protection – kicked it so it tottered forwards, out of the alley, up a wall and out of sight. The figure returned to the others, who tilted up a sack to empty out one final dark mass, only to repeat the process.

Screams and manic calls for help started to erupt from the inside; she could feel the hysteria through the roof.

Lan took a leap off the edge of the building. She hung in the air – positioning herself – and then she allowed herself to fall at a velocity that wouldn’t be quick enough to injure her, but certainly hurt the three down below. She collapsed into two of them, catching one on the back of the skull, another in the chest, and they both lay still, dead or unconscious. The third figure swung wildly with a sword, but Lan tuned into her powers to funnel out a blast of energy, repelling the weapon and sending it clattering behind. She followed up with two swift punches to the stomach, kicked the figure’s face, and her victim collapsed backwards.

Her left leg ached from the fall, but she ignored it, removing the scarves of the strangers – two men and a woman – and recognized none of them. The female did not fit the description of Shalev at all. They were all still alive, so she heaped their bodies in the corner and ripped the now empty hessian sack into strips. She bound them tightly around their wrists and ankles.

Scooping up the discarded sword she sprinted around to the front of the structure, where citizens were pouring out from the iren’s main entrance and into the wide Maerr Gata. Three of the recently spawned beasts were attacking people as they fled.

Lan drew on her reserves of energy, and projected herself into the air. She made a huge arc and came down on top of one of the beasts, driving her sword through the back of its skull: the thing heaved, groaned and shuddered into stillness. As she stumbled around to its front, people lurched away in horror – there was a human leg hanging out of the beast’s jaw, and four corpses lying around in close proximity, each with a limb missing. At least the military was present and they were busy escorting people away to safety, apparently unconcerned with stopping the beasts.

Another beast was dispatched in the same way: a sword to the skull, blood pooling across the cobbles, and this time blood beetles arrived in their droves. Rarely up this many levels of the city, the insects were a glossy black tide devouring chunks of flesh and feasting on blood.

The final beast gave more of a fight. It threw itself at her; Lan jumped, drew up her legs so she was almost horizontal and thrust the sword into the side of its head. It wasn’t quite dead; she hadn’t used enough force. With a gaping wound, the creature hobbled in a circle, unable to control its movements. Spasmodically, it snapped at anyone nearby. Lan skipped up onto its back, fell to one knee and drove the blade through the thick hide on the top of its neck. The thing collapsed with a thunderous wheeze. She faced the front of the iren, this glorious structure of modernity, and she noticed that two black banners were now fluttering down from one of the windows.

How have the anarchists got there, too?

She ran towards the entrance, shoving her way through the crowds and, when it became too congested, stepping up through the air to run above them. She descended to land by the main entrance, by two sets of open double doors.

Lan paused in shock to regard the horror.

The opening event had been turned to carnage. Blood pooled thickly on the ground whilst crossbow bolts showered down from the tiers above, hitting innocents and the ravening monsters alike. There was screaming and chaos as the surreal hellions lunged and surged across the marbled floors, snapping at any pieces of moving flesh, sliding in the blood, and tearing apart whatever they could fit into their maws.

Vuldon was making his presence felt. He was at the far end of the ground floor, a sword swinging in each hand, lashing out at the vile freaks. Tane seemed to be everywhere at once, using his speed and agility to haul people out of the way of certain death, and raking his claws repeatedly through the beasts’ thick hides to render them useless.

The creatures, while vicious, succumbed quite easily; they possessed little awareness or control, nothing in the way of guile. The creatures died, one by one, and very quickly there was just the aftermath, people sobbing, the injured calling for aid and a mass of blood and bone scattered across the once pristine floor. There were around twenty of the monsters, each considerably bigger and broader than Vuldon. He dragged the carcasses into a heap while Tane stood idly, drenched in blood that wasn’t his, contemplating the event with something akin to disbelief on his face. Up above, Emperor Urtica stumbled forward from his military shelter overlooking the blood-soaked scene.

Although some distance away, Lan could tell how horrified the man was. A skylight suddenly shattered. Glass buckled and fell in large shards to disintegrate on the marble surface, while purple light flared in the gap; and down came a solitary figure, a woman with no hair, her dark cloak fluttering as she drifted softly to the floor on a line of light. Shalev.