The Immortal Storm (Sky Chaser Book 1) (27 page)

60
Into Darkness

Thump-scrape.

Kite ran alongside the hobbling Umbrella Man, both driven on by Ember's compulsion to find the Cloud Room. The tunnel seemed to stretch for leagues. Intersections and passageways in all directions. All blocked by armoured shutters. Every now and then Kite passed doors sealed with keypads. But Ember didn't pay them any attention. And all Kite could do was follow.

Thump-scrape
.

Occasionally they passed stranded workers, men in overalls and hard hats, trapped in the lock down. Thankfully no soldiers had been left amongst them and none of the men dared to challenge him with the Umbrella Man present. A wise decision. Even crippled the Umbrella Man could pulverise their bones. And Kite had seen enough Weatheren blood to last him an age.

The tunnels stretched on and on. Kite couldn't even begin to guess the scale of the weather machine. But the noise of it terrified him. It vibrated under his feet and droned through the tunnel walls. Turbines and pumps and venting gasses, all thumping and hissing together like a dying beast struggling to breathe. Something this vast had to have a mind. A mind more powerful than any fulgurtine or ascender. A clever computer to regulate the systems and keep its place in the sky. And the more Kite thought on that the more it made him nervous.

Thump-scrape. Thump -

The Umbrella Man halted by one of the locked doors. A door much the same as the others, lying between two sealed off passageways. There was a keypad on the wall beneath a strobing red light.

“Is the Cloud Room in there?” Kite asked, doubtfully.

In response the red light turned amber. One by one bolts slid back inside the wall. The Umbrella Man went first and Kite followed, finding himself in narrow metal stairwell leading into the guts of the weather machine. Kite covered his nose. The chemical-laced air stank like sharply of hot salt and acid. A sickening mix that reminded him of a dry morning in the Thirsty Sea.

They pressed on. Soon coming to a forest of fat pipes and twisting ducts bubbled with foul liquids, filling vast silver silos, each one labelled with death's head hazard signs. Kite could only guess what the contents of those vats were used for. Chasing away clouds? Creating rain? Or maybe they were being pumped into the Undercloud after all.

The Umbrella Man missed a step and sprawled noisily on the gantry. Kite kept his distance, not wanting to be cut in half by a flailing arm. Ember dragged the sluggish, ruined thing up and relentlessly drove him on. Kite couldn’t help but feel sorry for the Umbrella Man. His wound was still leaking oil, leaving a silver trail in the dark. His inner workings clicking miserably with each laboured step. Kite reckoned the poor machine wasn't going to last much longer at this rate. And what would happen when he failed altogether? Would Kite have to carry the mempod on alone?

Down another level. Always down, Kite noticed. Each blind step taking him further from Fleer. Sometimes he'd catch a glimpse of her face, in that place where the edges of his imagination blurred with the shadows. Then his veins would flood with all kinds of emotions. More than once he'd considered doubling back, leaving Ember to go on alone. But how far would he get without Ember's puppet to protect him? However uncertain he knew he had to go on.

Kite was deep inside the Ether Shield now. The infernal noise of turbines had receded, replaced by the cold hush of long-dead machines. Parts of this section seemed salvaged from another time. Patchworks of riveted steel instead of machined skymetal. Low-voltage light-bulbs instead of mosfire strip lights. Silent engines, succumb to corrosion and dust, once driven by cogs and clockwork.

Kite frowned, realising these old machines must have been part of the original weather machine. The one the Foundation had put in the sky during the Fairweather-Skyzarke War. The one they'd built from the knowledge Mercurius Lux had stolen from the Patriarchs. No wonder Ember had guided him here. Kite imagined the Cloud Room like a flickering beacon in the dark, tormenting Ember, forcing the Umbrella Man ever onward.

At the end of a long, narrow passageway they came to a dark door. The frame had been welded and reinforced with inch-thick crossbars. There was no keypad or warning light. No wheel-lock. Not even an a simple keyhole. Whoever had ordered it sealed had never meant for it be opened again.

“There must be another way, Ember,” Kite said, looking back down the passageway.

The Umbrella Man remained still, his innards tick-ticking in the silent shadows like a barometer of Ember's rising frustration. Then the Umbrella Man shoved Kite aside and hurled himself at the door, smashing his body against it. Kite covered his ears, flinching at each thunderous blow. Surely the Weatherens would hear them now. They could probably hear the racket in Dusthaven.

The Umbrella Man tore at the door. Metal ground on metal.  With one last blow the welds burst and the door fell away, landing with a heavy crunch. Dust settled and through the breach stood the silhouette of a giant.

Kite froze, unsure if this was some new enemy. But the giant didn't move, not even an inch.

Eventually the Umbrella Man snorted dismissively and moved forward, dragging his broken lopsided body. Kite paused then cautiously followed. The giant was an ugly marble statue set in the middle of a deep alcove. The old door had been hidden at its back, plastered over and long forgotten.

Kite gave the statue a short look. A sour-faced Weatheren carved out of luxurious marble, clutching a book and a lightning bolt, looking imperious and self-important. Kite sneered
.
Even made of fancy stone they looked like a bunch of fools.

The Umbrella Man had stopped, seemingly lost in thought. Ember had made a right mess of him. His smart coat had been reduced to rags and bits of mangled metal jutted out of the rips. His mask had been warped down one side, giving him a melted, forlorn look. Kite pitied him, even now.

Cautiously, Kite leaned out from the shadowy alcove. He couldn't believe his own eyes. Crimson carpet stretched in all directions like a tide of blood. Dozens of alcoves, more statues sitting or standing or otherwise posed inside. Indignant stone faces stared at him from the hollows, with marble flesh flickering in the glow from mosfire sconces. And above it all was an endless blue sky, with fluff ball clouds and swarms of little winged babies carrying sunbeams.

“Is this is it, Ember?” Kite asked. “Is this the Cloud Room?”

The Umbrella Man stared at the painted sky. Kite had no way of knowing what was going on behind that broken mask. But it wasn't hard to imagine Ember lost in her memories.

A soft clatter.

Kite spun around. An old man in a white robe cowered by one of the columns, a pile of fallen papers scattered at his feet. He had two faded blue spots on his bald scalp and milky, squinting eyes. But he looked harmless enough. In fact he looked terrified.

“A G-Grey?” the old man stammered, his liver-spotted hands starting to shake. “Here?”

Kite raised his hands in a calming gesture. He could hardly blame the old fool for being frightened. An Askian prisoner and a bashed-up automechanical in a crooked high-hat - they must have looked like they'd flown in from another world.

The old man squealed and hitched up his robe. He fled across the hall, his cries echoing in the hollows. Kite swore and dashed after him, hoping to stop him raising the alarm. But the old man fled into a white corridor, his cries drawing out more of his kind from offices and private rooms.

Kite stumbled to a halt. A dozen white-robed officials, each with sagging skin and crooked backs, stared at him aghast. One even shunted himself along in an ridiculous gold and ivory wheelchair. Were these the men Shelvocke told him about? The Corona Council, the men who ran Fairweather?

One of the officials bravely stepped forward. He was desperately old, with a surprisingly kind, timid face. And like the others he was quaking with fear.

“Have you brought it?” the official said.

Kite frowned. “Brought what?” he said.

“The weapon. She said it existed,” the official stammered, glancing over his shoulder. “The Askian weapon. Did you bring it? Is that why you have come? Is that was this is about?”

The Umbrella Man stumbled wildly into the corridor, smashing into the wall. The elders shrank in horror at the sight of him. They scurried into their rooms and locked themselves inside and soon the corridor had been deserted.

Kite was still digesting the official's words when he spotted a golden glint in the distance. At the very end stood a colossal door, nearly high at a stack of containers and just as wide. The Umbrella Man pointed furiously.

The Cloud Room.

Kite could almost hear Ember’s eagerness, but he didn't follow. Where were the soldiers? Where were the Correctors? If this was the Cloud Room, the First Light Foundation’s most secret of places, then why had it been left unguarded?

The Umbrella Man had only taken a few, lurching steps before he juddered to a halt. Kite waited for a moment, wondering why Ember had chosen to stop.

“Ember?” he whispered.

A soft clicking noise came from inside the Umbrella Man’s silent, breathless shell. Just like in Dusthaven he’d been halted by some invisible force.

A blue light flickered in his peripheral vision. Down the corridor Ember’s ghost had appeared, floating freely beneath the Cloud Room entrance. Kite edged passed the sleeping automechanical. “Ember, what’s happening?” he called.

Ember was silent.

Kite edged closer, glancing behind him, anticipating a sudden rush of violence. The Cloud Room’s door was a towering wall of impenetrable gold. The surface shimmered with clouds and sunrays and in the centre was a great golden eye. Watchful, accusing, daring Kite to approach.

Whatever this door protected, whatever secrets the Foundation kept in there, Kite wasn’t entirely sure he was ready for it. But this was the end of the journey. There was no turning back.

“Can you open it?” Kite whispered.

But this was a door that Ember could not open. So Kite stepped a little closer and pressed his hand against the smooth, ice-cold metal. He pushed. He may well have been pushing a cliff.  Scavenging what little strength he could find in his bruised, aching muscles and pushed again. It was hopeless. Nothing could shift those doors except the one who had locked them.

Suddenly Ember moved away, twitching her head this way and that. Something had spooked her, made her suddenly afraid.

“Ember, what is it?” Kite asked.

Then Ember’s face warped into a twisted, voiceless scream. She began to blister and dissolve, bleeding into tiny particles.

“Ember!” Kite said.

In an instant she vanished, leaving a ghostly after-image on the air. Kite called again, scanning the now empty corridor but there was no sign of her anywhere.

A boom.

The Cloud Room doors rippled like liquid gold. The sound of complex, hidden mechanisms shifted and unlocked, pulling the eye apart. At first Kite could only see a wire-thin slither of black, but that soon widened to a column of darkness. A cold, terrible breathe licked at Kite's skin, forcing out an involuntary shudder. Or maybe it was fear creeping into his bones. Whoever was inside, the one Ember had been sent to find, had just invited him in. Against his better judgement, Kite stepped into darkness...

61
The Cloud Room

The Cloud Room doors closed softly behind him, sealing Kite in a tomb of darkness. The only sound in his ears was his own rapid breath.

“E-Ember?” Kite said. He was shocked how different his voice sounded; hollow and thick in his ears as if he was smothered in a blanket.

Slowly, a metallic light began to lift away the darkness. He found himself in a vast chamber of burnished skymetal. Two hundred feet wide and twice as high the cold space could have swallowed the
Phosphene
whole. The walls shimmered like soft mirrors and a blueish light came from somewhere yet, puzzlingly, the Cloud Room had no windows.

Then, slowly at first, Ember began to reappear. A motionless ghost caught in the air, face set in a that terrible cry. Her arm was extended, pointing at Kite’s heart.

Kite frowned. No, not at him.
Through him.
Kite nervously followed her finger.

A man stood a short distance away. Kite was certain he hadn't been there before. The man was a little younger than the Corona Council elders. Bald with a single dot, and a neat beard and tiny wire-thin spectacles. His robe was a solid black. So black the fabric had no shape, no folds. No shadow.

Kite began to doubt his own eyes. Somehow he
knew
this man. He'd seen his face on Shelvocke's screens. Heard Clinker curse the name a thousand times. Heard of his crimes from the lips of the Genetrix herself.

Mercurius Lux.

“You recognise me don’t you?” Lux's voice was a soft, careful voice full of tempered power, piped from the walls in a directionless monotone.  “After all this time I am humbled that I am not forgotten amongst your people.”

Lux walked a little closer. And as he walked Kite watched his feet fall silently on the bare metal floor. It had to be an illusion. Lux's couldn't have lasted all these years. Yet he
looked
real. Just as Ember looked real…

“I recognised the Starmaker's work almost immediately of-course,” Lux said, gesturing to Ember's frozen form. “I have often wondered if my old friend achieved his goal of creating the perfect mind. Arcus really was a genius ahead of his time. Such a pity he was Askian.”

A barb of anger stuck in Kite's throat. He squeezed his fists tightly, but said nothing.

“I can only say I am disappointed,” Lux said. He circled Ember, smiling - an entirely human gesture - yet devoid of all warmth and compassion. “Sadly it appears the Starmaker's great work has been corrupted by those most worthless of human emotions - hatred and vengeance.”

Finally Kite dredged up the courage to speak. “E-Ember isn't corrupt,” he said, his voice sounding insignificant in the vastness of the Cloud Room. “She's more human than you'll ever be.”

Scan lines rippled down Ember's face.

“Human?” Lux said. “Why would anyone
want
to be human? The Askians always were such a foolish race. No vision of what their own technology could achieve.”

“You stole that technology from us,” Kite hissed back.

“Such technology was wasted,” Lux said, moving again in silent, dangerous steps. “The Patriarchs obsessed over the preservation of their foolish society but it was knowledge not worth preserving. Their society was dying. They lacked the foresight to see it.”

Hexagonal panels began to dissolve away beneath Kite's feet. White light flooded in, forcing him to cover his eyes.

“Shall I show you what real vision can achieve?” Lux said.

Kite looked down, detached from his own body. He was plunging through the clouds, his mind momentarily tricked into thinking he was falling. But it was just a vast lens. An eye zooming in on the world beneath the clouds, to the spires of a magnificent city light by an unseen, powerful light. Kite couldn't see the sun but its rays set Fairweather's golden towers aglow like fingers of fire. Temples and domes and great columns of silver and glass reached into the shimmering sky. Emerald trains sailed along suspended rails through sprawling districts and over bridges, over a lake with ships and a harbour and a promenade by the shore...

“It’s…Skyzarke!” Kite said, appalled by what he was witnessing.

“That city does not exist,” Lux replied. “Only Fairweather exists.”

The view zoomed again, pulling Kite down to the streets where colourful cityfolk walked and polished automechanicals serviced their every whim. Kite watched their smiles and their finery. Heard the laughter of their children. He pitied them all. Did they know what Lux had done? Did they even care?

Then Fairweather was shrinking, reduced to the size of a pocket watch as the view began to widen. Kite was numb and unsteady, his legs near to buckling. Somehow he forced himself to stand and watch, taking it all in with a sickening fascination.

The stolen clockwork city was surrounded on all sides by a wealth of verdant greens and ripe yellows, bejewelled with the glittering veins of waterways and reservoirs, boxed in by the pale fortifications of the mighty Dreadwall. And beyond that seethed the Undercloud, held back by the rings of the sky-wide Ether Shield.

Kite couldn't look at Lux's vision anymore. He turned away, feeling hollowed out like a gutted wreck. Lux wasn't just a thief. He'd taken everything from the Askians, even the plans of their great city. But he still didn't understand
why
.

Lux was talking again. “...and even then I knew my great vision would take more than a single lifetime to orchestrate. And in Frore I discovered a way to have as many lifetimes as I wanted without the threat of forgetting a single moment of each.”

Kite's fists shook. Anger bubbled through his veins and burst from his mouth. “
Skyzarke!
” he cried. “It’s called Skyzarke!”

The words boomed, echoing back and forth.

“Emotions,” Lux said, entirely unmoved. “Such a crippling symptom of humanity.”

And then, in Kite's spinning mind, the puzzle pieces fell into place. The reasons for all of this became clear. And it sickened him.

“That’s what all this was about. You stole the Starmaker's technology you wanted to live forever,” Kite said. “The real Lux created a copy of himself so he could live up here in the clouds. ”

Lux smiled thoughtfully. “There never was really an end to one and the beginning of the other,” he said. “Lux Aeterna.”

“But the Starmaker learned of your plans,” Kite went on, glancing at Ember. “That's why he created Ember to come here and destroy you.”

“The Starmaker is dead,” Lux said, simply.

Kite stared at him. “But you feared the Askians would remember too,” he said, recalling what the Genetrix had revealed to him in the High Hollows. “That's why you tried to kill us, because it's not in the Askian blood to forget.”

“The human memory is remarkable persistent,” Lux said, waving his hand dismissively and chuckling a little to himself. “Even if it is easily corrupted by sentiment.”

Kite turned from Lux's cold gaze. The frozen ruins of Skyzarke flashed in his mind. A thousand faces. A thousand screams. All those souls sacrificed for Lux's squalid vision. And those precious few Askians remaining, hiding in the hollows. He thought of his own family, somewhere east of the Ashlands, afraid of their own shadows. More than ever Kite wished Ember had destroyed this monster. If only he had the power to do it himself.

One by one the hexagonal panels opaqued, turning the Cloud Room once more into a metal shell.

“Ah, Corrector,” Lux said. “So good of you to join us.”

Kite spun around. The Corrector limped through the Cloud Room doors, her face sheened with sweat. She had come alone.

“My Lord,” the Corrector said, dipping awkwardly to one knee. “Forgive me, I did not believe the intruders would get this far.”

Lux raised a calming hand. “Everything, as usual, is quite under my control,” he said, and gestured at Ember's twisted form. “The rogue program has been quarantined and will be shortly deleted. The Starmaker's work, as you correctly suspected from the evidence you found in Frore.”

The Corrector swallowed, glancing at Kite from under her sweat-straggled fringe. “That is...a
relief
,” she said.

Kite picked up on something in the Corrector’s voice that Lux had failed to detect. The woman sounded disappointed.

Lux's face changed, offering up an wan attempt at a sympathetic smile. “I regret to say but I was forced to
deactivate
Beaufort,” he said. “Unfortunate but necessary. His core processor had become corrupted by this abomination. I will have Wolfram Rhymer rebuild him for you. I know the automechanical has served your family since the days of the great war. It is the least I can do to repay you for your years of loyalty.”

“You have always been too kind,” said the Corrector, her words etched with false sincerity. She glanced at Kite. “What of the Askians, my Lord?”

Lux gave Kite an empty, unsympathetic look of someone who had long-forgotten the value of life.

“I believe you know what must be done, Corrector,” Lux said. “Not here though, I will not have Askian blood tainting my Ether Shield. Take them to the
Daylight Arbiter
. I'm sure they will have secrets to reveal. Ensure that they do.”

“Yes, my Lord,” the Corrector said.

Cold, cutting reality sank deep into Kite's bones. There would be no escape now. No way back to Fleer. Ember, the Cloud Room, Skyzarke. All of it had been for nothing...

Then Kite detected subtle movement on the edge of his vision.

Ember had blinked.