The Hanging Mountains (27 page)

‘Milang was attacked?’
asked Sal, picking up on that point with grim interest. ‘
I
had no idea the wraiths would be so bold. I thought they just picked people off in small groups.’

Skender didn’t mention that
he
had been attacked, specifically, not just Milang in general. That memory was still a little too fresh.
‘There were at least four: two at the top of the city and two further down.’

‘Vehofnehu says there are nine of them. So be careful out there.’

‘You too.’

‘We’ll need to keep an eye out for each other, in order to avoid each other’s crossfire.’

That was a worst-case scenario Skender didn’t want to contemplate.
‘How’s Kemp?’

Sal’s reply came with more than a hint of uncertainty.
‘Not good. Vehofnehu says he’s never going to recover.’

The news came like a slow-motion blow to the stomach.
‘Sal, I’m sorry.’

‘You have no reason to apologise. It’s just the way things worked out. Life doesn’t always go the way we want it to.’

There was no arguing with that. Neither of them said anything for a long moment, the link open between them but empty of words.

‘I suppose I should let you go,’
Sal eventually said.

Skender glanced at Chu, wondering how it would feel to watch her die, as Kemp might die, with no one able to do anything.

‘Just one more thing,’
Skender said.
‘You mentioned something about there being nine of the wraiths. If the thing we pulled out of the forest yesterday is anything to go by, there’s now just eight to worry about.’

‘Really? That’s good news. How did you kill it?’

We didn’t,
Skender almost said, but things were complicated enough without getting into that. And he was getting a headache from concentrating so long.
‘Fire knocks them out. Strong, hot fire. Watch out for the bodies, though. They don’t stay still for long.’

Sal sounded puzzled but appreciative.
‘Okay, thanks. That’s good to know. You’ll call us if you learn anything more?’

‘One of us will. Marmion will probably have orders for you when he finds out we’ve spoken.’

‘No doubt.’
There was a hint of a smile in his friend’s reply.
‘Take care, Skender.’

‘Have no doubt of that. And you, well
—’ He hesitated, struggling to find the right words.
‘Just make sure to leave us a couple to deal with, all right? Otherwise we’ll feel left out.’

‘That’s a bit rich, coming from the person with the headstart. Once we make up that lost ground, it’s anyone’s race.’

Skender grinned at that, but the amusement didn’t last long. The connection between him and his friend closed. He lay awake in the pre-dawn light, nervous about what the day would bring, and just as uncertain about what had happened the previous night as he had ever been.

* * * *

‘We found this.’

Heuve had dumped the crisped, brittle corpse on the living floor of the Guardian’s roofless citadel. His beard twitched in revulsion. The darkness of the night above perfectly matched that of the hideous shape displayed for them all to see. Its limbs were stick-thin and flaking into ash where it had been touched. Lacking obvious hands and feet, it looked much smaller than Skender had remembered. Only its head matched his recollection: a hideous mass of canines and eye-sockets that seemed no less fearsome dead than it had alive.

It stank of ash and charred flesh, yet the grass under it turned black with frost.

‘Are you sure it’s one of them?’ the Guardian asked.

‘It’s definitely not human,’ the big warrior stated flatly. ‘Or Panic. We found it three levels down from where Skender and the mage were attacked. It burned through the walkways as easily as a hot blade through cobweb, but set fire to nothing else. We were lucky this was no ordinary flame, otherwise the whole city would be ablaze by now.’

Skender couldn’t take his eyes off the thing, even though his hands shook to see it and the stink made his stomach roil.

‘It —’ He swallowed. ‘We —’

Then Chu was behind him, putting one hand on his shoulder. She didn’t say anything. Just having her there was enough.

He straightened and put his treacherous hands under his robes. ‘Did they attack anyone up here?’ he asked.

The Guardian knelt to examine the corpse, answering him as she did so. ‘Two circled the summit but my guards drove them away. I came out to call them down. They didn’t rise to the challenge.’ From beneath her gown she produced a short stiletto, with which she poked the crumbling remains. ‘I hadn’t expected a physical form behind the apparitions. They are, perhaps, less like us than I had hoped.’

‘In what way, Mother?’ asked Lidia Delfine, standing to one side with her arms folded.

‘They hunt purely for the sport of blood and they have no sense of honour. We should not expect to treat with them. We should show them the same mercy they would show us.’

‘Who said anything about mercy?’ asked Chu softly.

‘Not me.’ Skender stared in horrid fascination at the face of the creature that would have torn him to ribbons, given the chance.

With a click, its eyes opened.

‘Back!’ The Guardian leapt to her feet. Heuve and Lidia Delfine lunged forward. The creature twitched and hissed, gouging furrows in the dirt as it attempted to right itself. Its teeth snapped at Heuve’s sword, unafraid of the metal. Clouds of choking black soot rose from its skin.

Skender froze, again. Kelloman was still out cold, drained by the first attack. The mage was recuperating in one of the Guardian’s antechambers, watched over by a healer and the bilby. Skender knew
he
didn’t have the strength to summon such a powerful flame.

‘Out of the way.’ Marmion’s whipcrack command caught the ear of all those retreating from the creature. With his one hand he scratched a charm into the grassy surface of the chamber’s floor, a complicated pattern of circles and crosses that Skender didn’t recognise. ‘Lure it over here, quickly.’

‘I don’t think it wants to be lured,’ said Heuve, jumping back from a sudden snap.

Marmion didn’t look up until he had finished the charm with a flourish. Then he turned to face the creature, unwinding the bandage around his truncated wrist.

‘Here,’ he said, thrusting the stump forward. ‘This is what you like, isn’t it?’ As though throwing punches with an invisible hand, he caught the attention of the blackened husk. ‘Smell me. Taste me. Come and get me!’ He sidestepped neatly as the creature lunged forward. ‘That’s it.’

Marmion dodged again, and again, proffering his injured arm as bait until the creature lurched onto the charm he had drawn. Then he shouted a word that Skender had never heard before, and stepped hurriedly away.

A miniature hurricane sprang into life, defined by and confined to the dimensions of the charm. The column of violent air swept the creature’s bitter smoke into a cylinder, and dragged it up as well, so it hung vertically in the air, struggling and snarling. No matter how it squirmed, it couldn’t break free. The charmed air coiled up and down around it like a nest of translucent snakes, binding it firmly in place.

‘Nice one,’ said Chu, helping Skender to his feet. He had tripped over his robes and gone sprawling, unable to take his eyes off the unnatural creature’s malevolence. The Sky Warden didn’t respond. His eyes were fixed firmly on the creature he had captured. He clutched his injured arm tightly to his chest.

‘Fire to burn it,’ said Lidia Delfine, sheathing her blade and walking shakily to her mother’s side. ‘Air to bind it. But how do we kill it?’

‘Dismember it,’ suggested Warden Banner from the small crowd gathered around. ‘Chop it into pieces.’

‘And then what?’ asked Heuve.

‘I don’t know. Throw it into a river, let the current disperse it?’

‘Sow it into the Earth,’ suggested the Guardian. ‘Let the roots dissolve it.’

‘I wouldn’t trust the tree that fed on such a thing,’ said Marmion softly. ‘Would you?’

The Guardian looked at him, and shook her head.

‘Cast it,’ suggested Skender, hating the faint tremor he heard in his voice but ploughing on. ‘Cast it into metal. Burn it, dice it, grind it, whatever; smash it down into a powder; then mix it with molten lead and let it cool. The metal will hold its mind fast — the part of it that will never burn — and if you engrave the metal with binding charms, the deal will be sealed. Then you can drop it down Versegi Chasm and forget about it forever.’

Everyone was staring at him by the time he had finished, making him wonder if what had seemed a good idea a second ago was actually the most stupid ever uttered in public.

‘Uh, or you could just chop it into pieces like Warden Banner said and leave it at that.’

‘No,’ said Marmion, breaking his silent confrontation with the thing in the whirlwind. ‘That’s a good idea. Nearly perfect. The only suggestion I’d make is to cast it in iron, not lead.’

‘Yes, of course.’ Skender nodded, feeling himself beginning to babble with relief. ‘Iron is stronger, and even if it took hundreds of years for that thing to get out of lead —’

‘It won’t. It attacked us, and it will pay the price. It and all its kind. That’s a mistake they will not make again.’

Skender’s mouth snapped shut at the fierceness of Marmion’s tone. He had never heard the warden speak like that before. The dark anger in every line of the warden’s face was echoed in the foresters around him, and he knew that this promise was being taken very seriously indeed.

* * * *

Later, when the Guardian’s citadel was cleared so Marmion and Lidia Delfine could begin the chopping-up process — which Skender preferred not to think about, although he felt no pity for the captured creature — he and Chu were given the opportunity to eat and freshen up in temporary quarters set aside for the visitors. Skender had become conscious of a smell emanating from himself that had something to do with the mud of the previous day and a lot to do with fear. The foresters showed him to a bath filled with warm water and left him alone. He soaked and soaped until his skin tingled, and then he just lay back and relaxed. For once, no one was pressing him for information or trying to eat him. All he could hear was the dripping of water, a low murmur of voices in the distance, and from still further away an enigmatic moaning that he eventually identified as the stone faces the locals called moai. He pictured them leaning out of the cliff, staring fixedly into the mist and singing their strange, fearful song. Their combined chorus was peaceful, but in an unsettling way, as though at any moment it could rise up and explode into an angry crescendo.

Flashes of the day’s events — teeth and fire and blood — came and went. There was nothing he could do about them. Neither time nor effort could erase them from his perfect memory, but at least he had a patina of good memories between them and the present moment. If he breathed deeply, he smelled sweet perfume instead of a reminder of his recent travails.

When he clambered out of the bath, he found that his robes had been taken away. In their place lay an entirely new outfit: ochre pants and baggy black shirt. He groaned on seeing them, but had little option but to put them on. He struggled into the pants and slipped the shirt over his head. A green thong went around his waist when he was done.

‘Fresh as a daisy,’ Chu commented as he walked into the common area given to the visitors. She was sprawled comfortably on a broad cushion, dressed in a yellow-and-white robe and picking at a platter of fruit and nuts. The space was elegant in its simplicity, with sliding doors separating the many bathrooms from the common area. The floor was neither stone nor wood, being covered with delicately woven mats that gave slightly underfoot. Each cushion possessed a different colour and arboreal pattern, yet they complemented each other perfectly. Warden Banner lay sound asleep in the far corner on three cushions laid end to end. From another room came the sound of Warden Eitzen humming as he continued to bathe.

‘Do you have daisies in Laure?’ Skender chose a cushion facing Chu and leaned on one elbow, leaving the other hand free to sample the food. He wasn’t particularly hungry, but he knew he should eat. The sight of Chu in what amounted to a dress definitely made up for not having a robe of his own. ‘I thought it was all dead rats and dust.’

‘We hear stories,’ she said. ‘I saw a picture of one, once.’

Skender couldn’t tell if she was being serious or not.
He
wasn’t, not entirely, but his impressions of Laure had for the most part been grim and unhappy. A city where the rulers drained the blood of the populace to draw water up from the depths of the Earth was by nature a desperate one. But that didn’t mean that joy couldn’t exist there. People could get used to anything — even a sudden excess of water.

They exchanged easy, free-flowing banter for a while. He had thought Chu knew nothing about his home, but it quickly became clear that she had been making inquiries. The Keep wasn’t well known beyond the borders of the Interior — not being as famous as the Nine Stars where mages met every full moon to apply the laws of the land, or as essential to trade as such cities as Ulum and Mayr — but it had a certain notoriety. Some of the Interior’s finest mages had studied there, and the name Van Haasteren was closely associated with it. Nine consecutive generations had overseen the school, earning the privilege by virtue of their remarkable memory and — Skender admitted in the face of Chu’s suggestion — a profound disinterest in doing anything else.

‘Maybe you’re the one to break the chain,’ she said, smiling as she popped a dried fig into her mouth. ‘Isn’t it about time you lot let someone else have a go?’

Skender dreaded what his father would say if he even suggested such a thing — then berated himself for letting his father’s feelings rule what should be his own decision. Perhaps that decision would be easy to make: his mind was full of images of murdered old women, malicious golems, rampaging man’kin, and now bloodthirsty wraiths ... He didn’t know how much more it could hold before he would never sleep again.