The Hanging Mountains (53 page)

‘It’s no lie. Your empyricist recognised the spoor of these creatures. Were he present, he could identify our captive here.’

‘Do you know where he is, Oriel?’ asked Griel, nodding at one of the female soldiers. ‘Ramal found his observatory empty yesterday.’

‘That mad old tree frog? Who cares where he gets to when he’s not in his nest?’

‘Perhaps we all should,’ said Marmion, ‘because he might even identify the new player that has joined the game: another creature from the old times, a being called Upuaut that we might describe as a golem. Two of our number have met it: Kail here, and Skender, who is watching this meeting from nearby. The nine hunters, once called the Swarm, have been given purpose and new potential for mischief by Upuaut. This one is your true enemy. The hunters we can kill, one by one, but not if our efforts are divided, not if we set to each other’s throats like angry dogs, not if we let Upuaut win before the true battle has really started.’

‘He’s right,’ said Highson Sparre on the far side of the table. ‘We have no quarrel with either you or the Guardian, and we have no allegiance, either. That we’re human doesn’t make us any more likely to co-operate with the foresters. We have our own purpose, our own mission.’

‘So why are you helping us?’ asked Oriel over his armoured shoulder. ‘Out of the goodness of your hearts, I suppose.’

‘No.’ said Kail with utter frankness, ‘because you’re in the way.’

Griel barked with laughter. ‘They have us there, Oriel. Why don’t we get a sense of perspective and talk like adults rather than the children we’ve become?’

Oriel snorted. ‘You can talk all you want. There’s nothing in that box but air, and nothing behind these words but dreams and lies. Minds from before the Cataclysm? I’d rather believe in traitors. Not if we were the last people on Earth would I ally myself with you. And you?’ He indicated the outsiders with one sweep of a gloved hand. ‘You go on your merry way as you wish. I’ll not stop you. But if you come near my city again, I’ll have you all killed.’

‘That’s a decision you would live to regret,’ said Marmion softly.

‘Is that a threat?’ Oriel leaned low over the table so he was eye to eye with Marmion.

‘Yes, but I’m not the one making it.’ Marmion opened the lid of the box and pushed it roughly forward.

Oriel recoiled as though Marmion had thrust a snake into his face. A second later, everyone around the table did the same. Kail felt it too: a wave of icy malignancy and hate radiating outwards from where the wraith lay imprisoned. He forced himself not to look away, darkly curious to see with his own eyes what had only been hinted at since his return.

Within the wooden box, resting on a bale of straw and dried leaves, protected from the outside world by an inner shell of lead, was a cylinder of rough-forged iron. Neither vigorously worked nor completely unfashioned, it looked like no weapon Kail had ever seen before, yet it had a pommel at one end bound up in dark leather thongs and came to a blunt point at the other. Between those two points, the iron resembled a cross between a club and a sword, with blunt charms carved in a straight line down one side. The light skittered sickly off it, as though repulsed.

That wasn’t the worst of it. Inside the metal, the being it contained railed against captivity. It hissed through the Change, as if in pain. The sound issued from the metal itself, as though it had been heated and dipped in hot fat.

‘Speak,’ Marmion commanded it.

The hissing continued unchecked.

‘I know it can talk,’ Marmion told Oriel. ‘I’ve spoken to it, and so have Skender and Warden Banner. It’s a living being, if not very bright, and it has clear preferences. It prefers the night, for one. That’s probably why they’re here in the Hanging Mountains, where the sun is perpetually shrouded and the hunting is good. Even this morning’s weak light pains it. Perhaps it would prefer to be locked up again, safe in the darkness for the rest of eternity.’

He reached for the lead-lined lid, and the wraith’s voice rang out in the icy morning.
I am Giltine, the one who stings. Come, my sisters, come!

Oriel stared at the thing with horror on his face. He could clearly hear the voice, although it spoke only through the Change. ‘What is it? How have you bound it — and why?’

‘Its origins are unknown to me,’ said Marmion. ‘All I can tell you is that it has been confined to the iron by the charms you see etched in the metal. As to why —’

‘We can’t kill it,’ interrupted Kelloman. ‘Believe me, we’ve tried. Fire knocks them out but doesn’t get rid of them entirely. Not the sort of fire we have access to, anyway.’

‘This is the thing that killed my brother,’ said Lidia Delfine, grief and hatred warring openly across her face.

‘If it’s what you say it is,’ said Oriel, ‘then we should throw it into the Versegi Chasm and have done with it forever. Why haven’t you?’

‘It’s only one of them,’ Marmion said. ‘Only so long as the metal is intact will the binding remain fast. Should it rust or melt, its efficacy will end, and the creature will escape.’

Come, my sisters, come!

Kail raised a hand to his chest, where his wound had begun to itch. He tried to remember everything the twins had said about the creatures called the Swarm.

‘There are ways to fight them,’ he said, a vision burned in his mind of the Homunculus driving the Swarm back with one palm outstretched. ‘I’ve seen it done, but the means is beyond my knowledge.’

‘Where have you seen it?’ asked Oriel. Highson, too, glanced at him, lips tightening.

‘That’s not important,’ said Marmion. ‘We can discuss the details later. The important thing to agree on is that
this
is your enemy, not each other — this and eight more creatures exactly like it. Once we cross that hurdle, much that is presently difficult will become simpler.’

Oriel nodded warily, indicating that he was listening but not yet fully convinced. ‘How am I to know that this isn’t some elaborate parlour trick?’

Marmion reached out and slammed the lid shut. ‘If this thing succeeds in bringing its sisters here, you’ll be in no position to doubt any longer.’

‘Is that likely?’

‘You now know as much as I do about these creatures. This was a risk I had to take, in order to convince you.
Are
you convinced?’

Oriel looked more shaken than anything else. ‘You bring me here,’ he said to Griel, ‘with threats of death and destruction, only for me to hear more of the same. I am not relieved of any of my fears. They are, in fact, worsened by the fear I see in your eyes.’ He swept the gathering with his stare. ‘Are we mice who cower at the shadow of an eagle? We are not. We face this evil the best way we can, and if that means talking —’ he put his hands on the table and stared down at the box ‘— then I will talk. But I make no promises.’

‘None are required.’ Marmion stepped back and waved the guards forward. They removed the box from the table and put it to one side. ‘Guardian? I’ll let you negotiate the release of your daughter. When you need my advice regarding the Swarm, I will be here.’

Marmion backed away to join the others, leaving the major players to thrash out their differences.

‘Clever,’ whispered Kail.

Marmion feigned a nonchalant shrug. ‘They would’ve worked it out eventually.’

‘I’m not so sure about that — and that’s not what I meant, anyway. You did this deliberately. You and Griel, I bet.’

‘What?’

‘Got everyone together in one place. Opened the box.’ Kail became conscious of Kelloman listening in. ‘The traps you laid in the forest caught nothing, but what could be a better target than this?’

The mage’s eyebrows went up. ‘A bit of a risk, don’t you think? We’re not exactly in the best fighting shape.’

Marmion shushed him. ‘We’re as able as we’ll ever be. And Griel had nothing to do with it. Maybe he guessed, or came to the same conclusion. I don’t know. But the result is the same. We’re all here and waiting. If the Swarm don’t do something now, they never will.’

‘We’re not all here,’ said Kail.

Marmion looked at him inquiringly.

‘The Homunculus is missing. I notice you’ve been keeping that particular detail very quiet. Are you hoping Upuaut will get rid of that problem for you?’

Marmion leaned in close and spoke with tightly wound restraint. ‘There’s nothing I can do for the Homunculus now. It’s beyond my reach — and I’m glad for that, to be honest. I can only deal with one crisis at a time. I’m only human.’

Kail raised a calming hand. He believed Marmion, which surprised him, and he resolved likewise to let the matter of the twins go for now. Wherever they were, whatever they were doing, he only hoped they would remain safe.

Silently, feeling the wound in his chest still tingling from the proximity of the wraith, he hoped the same for all of them.

* * * *

The Summoning

‘Humanity’s ability to channel and concentrate

the Change is unparalleled in nature. The only

force capable of such explosive and sweeping

energies is fire, and that is mindless and

unfocused. Conversely, while other minds do

exist in the Change, they don t use it as we do.

Humanity therefore stands at a critical nexus

between two worlds
—
a unique and sometimes

very dangerous position.’

MASTER WARDEN RISA ATILDE:

NOTES TOWARD A UNIFIED CURRICULUM

kender was beginning to feel dizzy. For an hour, he and Chu had been circling the barge, keeping always at a safe distance. Thus far they had avoided any overeager archers while watching people — arguing, gesticulating, pacing back and forth, putting things on the table then taking them off again — but he could no more tell what they were saying than he could have read a book held at that distance.

‘Looks like the Eminent Delfine is joining her mother at last.’ He squinted. ‘And the Panic soldiers who came with the Guardian are going to stand with Oriel. I think that means our job is done.’

‘I hope so.’ Chu sounded tired, and Skender could understand why. Flying was exhausting, even if it had lately been round and round in circles. ‘If we’re going to land, we’ll need to signal Rosevear or Highson and get them to talk to the Guardian. She can signal to her people in Milang and tell them not to stick us full of arrows.’

‘That just leaves the question of where to put down.’

‘At the bottom of the mountain, where the slope isn’t quite so dramatic. There’s bound to be a clear patch somewhere.’

In the forest?
Skender wanted to ask, but didn’t. The only clear patch he knew of was the knoll, half a day’s march away. ‘Sounds like a fine idea to me. Got that mirror handy?’

This time he didn’t need the starlight it had stored. He was able to reflect the hazy glare of the sun instead. It took him a moment to attract the attention of one of the wardens, but when he did a reply came soon enough.

Fragmented words flashed in rapid code between the barge and the wing. Their plan was quickly approved. The archers of Milang would be told to let the wing land where it chose, provided it posed no threat to the public.

‘Yeah, right,’ said Chu with a snort. ‘One bad landing and suddenly you’re a health hazard.’

‘You’ve had more than just the one,’ he said. ‘I can think of at least three — and they’re only the ones I know about.’

‘Picky, picky.’ She tugged the port wingtip down, freeing it from the endless circle. It dropped into fresh air with a sound like a sigh.

The blowing of signal horns accompanied them as they approached the forest city and began to descend. Although they had permission to occupy its airspace, Chu took pains not to alarm anyone — or to stay in range for too long, just in case the order wasn’t immediately understood.

Landing first,
Skender told himself, beginning to look forward to taking a break from their lookout duties,
then the long climb back up the hill.
That, he wasn’t looking forward to. A bath and a change of clothes at the end of it would be very welcome, though. And then, when things quietened down ... I
don’t hate you,
she had said. That could mean
anything.

The thought trailed off as a hint of smoke hit his nostrils. It made his stomach rumble for breakfast, and that put all other considerations aside.

‘I want eggs,’ he said. ‘I don’t care what kind of eggs they are. Bantam, pigeon, turkey — anything. And I’ve seen pigs in the forest, so there must be bacon too.’

‘Thinking with your stomach, eh? That makes a nice change.’

‘I’m just saying.’

‘And
I’m
just saying ...’

They were halfway down the city’s southern flank when he realised that the smell of smoke was growing stronger.

‘That’s some feast,’ he said, starting to wonder. ‘There,’ he said, pointing down at a dark column rising out of the mist below. ‘Does that look odd to you?’

‘Odd,’ she agreed, ‘and hot. Hang on.’

She put the nose down and headed for the column at speed. Their ride grew turbulent as they flew through dense layers of fog. Skender might have learned to recognise some recurring cloud shapes and the atmospheric currents that caused them, but the lower the wing went the less familiar the clouds became. What Chu saw through her licence she wasn’t revealing just yet.

She levelled out as they approached the top of the column of hot air he had spotted. Distantly he heard the sound of horns blowing — not the calm transmission of orders from above, but a rapid staccato signalling alarm from below.

‘There’s definitely a fire down there,’ Chu said, swinging them around the billowing smoke. Strong, erratic gusts shook the wing from side to side. Particles of ash got in Skender’s eyes and nose, making him cough.

‘We should take a closer look,’ he said, although his lungs disagreed. ‘We’ll see it better from above — better than those down there, anyway. We might be able to help.’