The Hanging Mountains (57 page)

Then
yadeh-tash,
the ancient stone pendant that the man’kin claimed as one of their own, whispered through the skin of his chest, warning him of a storm nearby. That had surprised and unnerved him, for in the muffled stillness of the mist forest, storms seemed a distant, alien phenomenon.

And finally the warning had come from Highson through the Change:
Be on your guard. The golem is abroad with one third of the Swarm. We’re on our way.

Sal had kept that warning to himself, not wanting to rattle the twins. The one-day deadline wasn’t up yet. He didn’t want them to leave before time.

The wolf howled again, louder and longer than before. Instead of loneliness, this cry conveyed eagerness and hunger.

‘I want to know why you can hear it,’ said Seth’s brother, Hadrian, ‘when Kail couldn’t.’

‘Yes, what makes you different? Is it something to do with those signs scratched on you?’

Sal responded defensively to the strange accusation. ‘They’re just ordinary charms, the same as the ones I’ve drawn to hide us here. Underneath them, I’m the same as anyone else.’

‘You can’t be.’ The flat assertion defied contradiction. ‘There must be something about you that’s special.’

There was no point in denying what he knew to be true, even though he had spent half his life rejecting the assertion that it meant he was special. ‘I’m a wild talent.’

‘What does that mean?’ asked the twins.

‘It means ... Well, it just means that I was raised away from the wardens and mages who might’ve taught me how to handle my talent when it came, and because of that I’ve gone my own way. I do things differently, that’s all.’

‘Must be more to it than that,’ said Seth, ‘if you can hear the wolf.’

‘What if that’s all it is —
just
a wolf?’ he asked. ‘You could be jumping at mozzies.’

‘We could be,’ the twins agreed. They didn’t sound convinced. Their two superimposed faces scanned the tree line for any sign of their ancient enemy.

Sal stood up and shivered. Although it was barely noon, the day seemed to have suddenly chilled.

‘It’s not just a wolf,’ said a voice from behind them. ‘I’m so much more than that.’

The Homunculus and Sal whipped around. Above them, stepping out of the trees, was the skinny figure that Sal remembered from the Aad. He had only glimpsed the man’s face briefly, but he would never forget its tortured expression. Now, that expression was gone, but the sense of agony, of
wrongness,
remained. There was something entirely new in the man’s head now.

‘Stay back,’ said Sal, feeling the Change stir in instinctive response.

‘Or what? You know what will happen if you try to attack me. You’ll empty yourself and we’ll take you over. You’ll be lost forever in the Void. You’ll die and be no use to anyone.’

The man’s eyes were awful — black, pain-filled pits — but his mouth was worse. Every word came from a place devoid of hope, waking troubled memories.

‘I helped kill one of your kind once,’ he said. ‘Or like enough. You’re vulnerable inside that body. If I kill it while you’re in there, you’ll die too.’

‘But
how
will you kill the body while I’m inside it?’ The terrible figure walked down the landslide, following much the same path the twins had before. ‘There’s the rub.’

‘We could tear your throat out,’ growled the twins, ‘as you would tear out ours, given the chance.’

‘Oh, I’ll have the chance. Make no mistake of that.’ Upuaut showed the yellowed, chipped teeth of its host. ‘You don’t frighten me, even in this puny body I inhabit, with its twisted mind and sordid memories. And you obviously don’t frighten Sal. What sort of power do you think you have? If you can’t inspire fear, it can’t be as great as you imagine.’

Sal visualised a series of shapes Shilly had taught him while making repairs on their underground home. As the golem came closer, he shifted the stones beneath it just slightly, enough to make it stagger then freeze with its arms outstretched.

‘Easy, boy,’ it said, ‘or you’ll bring the whole lot down on you.’

‘And you with it.’

‘That’s not the most stupid thing you could do, but it’d certainly be ill-advised. A wasted opportunity, if nothing else.’

‘You have nothing I want.’

‘Oh, no? Don’t come to that conclusion too quickly. At least hear what I have to say.’

‘About what?’

‘Your missing friends, for one.’

Sal, the Homunculus and the golem formed an equilateral triangle splayed across the side of the mountain. Sal glanced at the twins, who quivered with suppressed emotions several metres away. Their frames of mind were impossible to read.

‘Golems can’t lie,’ Sal said, ‘but I wouldn’t trust you, no matter what you told me.’

‘Yet you trust this abomination.’ The golem indicated the twins with one broken-nailed hand. ‘This freak of un-nature. What does it know of this world? What can it possibly tell you about the shadow drawing long across us all? What stake has it in our fates? It doesn’t care if we live or die.’

‘We care,’ said the twins. ‘We gave up our lives to be here.’

‘You made this world as it is by leaving. You fashion its undoing by returning. How does that prove your goodwill?’

‘I’m not sure I see the point you’re making,’ said Sal. ‘Are you suggesting I’d be better off on your side? Because if that’s the case, you’re wasting your breath.’

The ghastly smile faded. ‘You’re being hasty again, boy.’

‘Empty threats and empty promises. That’s all a golem has to bargain with. If I won’t bargain, you’re nothing. You might as well go back to the Aad and bother someone else.’

‘My threats aren’t empty,’ growled Upuaut, its guttural tones testing the capacity of the human throat it spoke through. ‘Look around you. We four are not the only ones abroad this fine afternoon.’

A chill wind stirred the hillside. The mist roiled as three tapering midnight shapes glided into view. Sal tensed, but they came no closer than the golem itself. They circled the three-way confrontation making a sound like metal scraping on glass, eyes and open mouths gleaming.

Sal forced himself to speak levelly. ‘At least you
are
making threats now. That’s more in character.’

‘You aren’t the one I’m threatening,’ it said. ‘Just your companions.’

‘What did they ever do to you?’

‘They are responsible for the ruin of the world!’ The sudden fury on the golem’s face was startling and raw. ‘They will pay!’

‘We did what we could to
save
the world,’ the twins said, eyes roaming across their combined face as they tried to track all three wraiths at once. ‘We paid the price.’

‘You saved nothing! Everything I worked for, everything I aspired to, you destroyed. Alongside Mot I could have turned back the tide. Yod would have been repelled. But you got in the way. You denied what was rightfully mine.’

‘You know nothing about Yod,’ hissed Seth. ‘It would’ve eaten you and your precious Mot and still been hungry.’

‘You lie!’ The golem turned its anger onto Sal. ‘How can you believe these fools to be your only hope? Your delusion is as great as theirs. Other forces are stirring, other plans: The seers are gathering. The imp is a-wing. I and my kind do not intend to sit idly by and watch.’

Sal thought of
yadeh-tash
still whispering at his throat and wished he knew what the other wraiths were up to.

‘I see your plan now,’ said Hadrian. ‘It’s the only one you have open to you. You’re going to kill us and return the Realms to their natural state. You know that’ll set Yod free, but you think you can fight it better that way. You think you and a handful of tired old energumen can do what the Sisters of the Flame, the Ogdoad, Baal, the Duergar Clans, and the Handsome King could not. You’re so fucking wrong it makes me sick.’

‘Yod is starved and weak,’ the golem retaliated. ‘It is as frail as you are. If we control the timing of its emergence, we control its fate. You would rather let it come forth when
it’s
good and ready. You’d wait until the jaws of death close tight around the world before doing anything to save it!’

‘And meanwhile — what? Your friends in the Swarm cause mayhem in the forest to distract everyone from us?’

‘To give me time to find you.’ The golem looked down at the charms scratched and gouged across the tumbled rock and dirt. ‘Your friend’s skill at hiding is excellent, but insufficient against a hunter such as me.’

‘So why don’t you just do it?’ asked the twins. ‘Why don’t you just kill us — or try to? You weren’t so talkative the last two times we met.’

‘Because it’s afraid,’ said Sal. Much of the conversation between the golem and the twins went over his head, but that detail he understood perfectly well. ‘It’s not sure it
can
kill you while I’m around. Maybe if you were alone; maybe if it had caught you in a dark corner somewhere with no one to help you; maybe then it might have succeeded. But not now. I’m too strong for it.’

The golem laughed, long and low. The man’s face had lengthened and his ears had swept back. He half crouched on bent legs and his hands curled into claws. ‘You flatter yourself, boy. I was just hoping that you might be convinced to do it for me.’

‘No chance.’

‘Not even in exchange for Tom? For Kemp? For Mawson?’

Sal couldn’t let himself be tempted. A golem’s word was poison. It might know where his lost companions were; it might even have taken them itself. But it was just as likely that it only knew that they were gone, and could be possible bargaining points. He wouldn’t commit murder on the off-chance.

‘Sorry.’

‘Then you’ll both die, and my pleasure will be doubled.’

At no obvious command, the three wraiths stopped circling and rushed in towards Sal and the Homunculus. Sal’s first instinct was to close ranks, but he knew that would be suicide. He had to stay out of the Homunculus’ Change-sapping aura. Instead he dropped onto one knee and put his hand into the tangled soil. A great deal of potential lay untapped in the jumbled mess of boulders and loose soil. That energy could easily be turned into motion, if tipped the wrong way. If tipped the
right
way, it could mean the difference between life and death for him and the twins.

He knew which way it had to go. Summoning one of the earliest mnemonics he had learned — from Shilly, not Lodo, in a cave filled with bones at the heart of a Ruin — he picked one wraith at random and kindled light in its breast. He pictured a tiny, blossoming point deep within its midnight flesh, growing brighter and brighter with every beat of its dark heart. All his strength went into the attack, and within seconds its effect became clear.

Radiance burst from the wraith’s mouth, open and hungry, and flashed suddenly from its eyes. With a screech, it veered violently off-course and careened across the rocky mountainside. Its cries grew increasingly agonised and its movements more erratic until finally, with a soundless pop, it simply burst. For the space of a breath, a tiny sun burned the mist away, and then even that was gone.

Sal staggered forward, pulse pounding in his head. He wanted nothing more than to lie down and close his eyes. Instead, he forced himself to look up. The two remaining creatures wheeled and darted, trying to get at the twins. The Homunculus stood with arms and legs splayed, shooting streams of metallic energy in reply. Sal couldn’t make out what exactly the twins were doing, or how, but the Swarm did everything they could to avoid being hit. Where the streams touched, skin peeled back and black blood spurted. Angry, frustrated cries filled the air.

Sal took heart in that, until he saw what a toll the effort was taking on the twins. The Homunculus was losing substance, becoming noticeably translucent as he watched. Each jet of energy robbed it of more and more solidity until Sal could actually make out the shape of tumbled rocks through it. And still the Swarm kept coming, snapping and scratching and getting closer by the second. It was only a matter of time before they came close enough to do real damage or the Homunculus vanished entirely.

The golem howled in triumph. ‘Kill them! There’s no imp to save them this time!’

Sal ground his teeth and dug deeper. Void or no void, he had to try.

‘Sal, no. Don’t do that.’

The voice came through the Change and accompanied a sudden surge in energy. Wisps of mist converged from all directions on one of the wraiths, shrouding it in ever-increasing layers of white. It flailed and struggled, but still the mist thickened. Its flight grew clumsy and slow, its screaming muffled. With one last flex of willpower, the shreds of mist collapsed inward to form a shell of ice, and the wraith fell trapped to the ground.

The one remaining wraith screamed in anger. Sal turned to see a sleek Panic balloon touching down on the far side of the avalanche. Two men — Highson, who had called the warning to Sal, and a mage Sal didn’t know — climbed out of the gondola and hurried across the rubble.

The twins had fallen slumped over the rocks. Sal limped forward to defend their body, which looked as watery and fragile as a bubble about to burst. The wraith didn’t know who to attack for a moment, and swung from one target to another before making up its mind. It lunged first at Sal, trying to rake him with a flurry of claws and teeth. He fell back, crossed arms blazing with flickering, faltering light, and it skidded blindly away, swinging across the sky in a jagged arc. When its vision cleared it lunged next at the Stone Mage, who stamped his foot hard on the stone beneath him, just once, and blasted it with blue flame.

The shrieking ceased.

Highson ran over and knelt besides Sal. ‘Are you all right? We came as fast as we could.’

‘I’m okay,’ he said, brushing well-meaning hands away. His thoughts were as turgid and heavy as clotted blood, but he would be all right. ‘The twins — the golem —’

Highson looked up the slope, then back at Sal. His expression was grim.

* * * *

Seth?

Hadrian?

The twins floated in blackness so deep they couldn’t see each other or even themselves. No light existed to see by, and they had no eyes to see with anyway, even if it had.