The Iron Khan (32 page)

“Where’s he going?”

Omi and Zhu Irzh slid through the trees at a safe distance. Unlike them, the Khan did not seem to care how much noise he made. He crashed through the undergrowth, unheeding of whatever lay in his path. At first the demon thought he was heading for the main encampment, but it soon became evident that the Khan was, for once, not concerned with his warriors. Through the gloom, the demon could still see the magical threads by which he held them, snaking around one thick wrist and extending out into the darkness, a spidery web of power.

The Khan was now heading straight down the mountainside, making it difficult for even Zhu Irzh and Omi to follow him. Both needed to be careful of their footing, and Zhu Irzh started to worry that they would lose sight of their quarry. He was also concerned that someone might be following them, and kept casting glances over his shoulder. There was no one to be seen, but Omi had managed to creep up on him and Zhu Irzh was by no means confident of his own abilities.

There was something up ahead. Zhu Irzh strained to see, but it wasn’t clear — some kind of building? But who would put any construction on such a steep hillside? The first heavy rain would wash its foundations away. Then Omi gave a little indrawn breath of understanding, and Zhu Irzh understood, too.

“It’s a portal!”

A black square in the air, distinct even against the shadows of the trees. A darkly glittering outline betrayed its extent. The Khan stepped through it, accompanied by his general. Omi and the demon glanced at one another, waited for a second, and then they followed.

Inari stood at the window of her turret in Agarta, watching as the steppe sped by. Agarta was, so Nandini had told her, legendary for its serenity, the peacefulness which it bestowed upon its inhabitants, and this had been something which Inari had experienced for herself. So why was she now aware of such a tension in her stomach, the baby turning uneasily within, and a band like a strap of steel tightening around her head?

Chen was down in the Council chamber with the Book, talking to Nandini. Inari knew that it was a good idea to try and get some sleep, but she was too restless. Maybe this was just some symptom of pregnancy; perhaps going for a walk would be a good idea…

With that thought in mind, she went through the door and down the stairs, heading for the ramparts. But before she reached them, there was a curious vibration in the air. Halfway down the stairs, Inari nearly fell. She clutched the banister for support and regained her footing.

Agarta was shuddering. The staircase on which Inari stood began to creak, a sound she did not think stone was capable of making. Alarmed, Inari hastened down the stairs, gripping the banister in case the shuddering came again. It did not and she was beginning to feel that it had been nothing more than a temporary perturbation when she reached the bottom of the steps and the city gave a great groan like an animal in pain.

Singapore Three had been subject to earthquakes: some naturally generated, some not. Living on a houseboat, this had been a constant fear, but Chen had also told Inari what to do if a quake hit while she was out in the city. She was, she understood, safer outside than in, and although this did not really apply to the self-contained Agarta, she didn’t like the idea of all that stone tumbling down the stairwell on top of her. So she bolted as quickly as she dared toward the door and out onto the ramparts.

There, she collided with Jhai, emerging just as rapidly from another doorway. The two women clutched one another.

“What — ?” Jhai stared at the thing rising up ahead of them, across the rampart. It took a moment for Inari to recognize it, accustomed as her eyes had become to smaller structures. Even Agarta’s towers were dwarfed by this building.

Jhai pointed a trembling figure at the monstrosity. “That’s Paugeng.”

She was right. The skyscraper rocketed into the heavens, with its red Jaruda bird symbol blazing at them over the edge of the rampart. Inari could see a strip of sea through a gap in the clustering buildings, and the lights of the city beyond. From forty stories up, late in the evening, the skyline of Singapore Three was an impressive sight.

“We’re home!” Jhai sounded more appalled than relieved.

“But I thought Agarta wasn’t able to travel outside the west of China?”

“So did I. Maybe it’s changed its mind.” But the agonizing creaks and groans that were resonating throughout the city’s structure suggested a different tale to Inari. Now Nandini ran out onto the terrace. Her impassive, remote serenity was gone: her face was distorted and she was wringing her hands. Jhai seized her by the arm.

“What’s going on?”

“Agarta has been hijacked! We have been wrenched out of our path, stolen away!”

“Who’d hijack a flying city?” Jhai asked, but Inari, with an awful sinking in the pit of her stomach, found that she already knew the answer to that question.

“The Empress! Where is she?”

At this, Nandini rushed off, looking even more panic-stricken.

•

Chen had been in the main chamber of the city when the shift had occurred. Nandini, obviously closer than Chen to the city’s own soul, had screamed and run from the room. This change in her was almost more startling than their sudden alteration in location. Chen and Roerich, with a horrified glance at one another, rushed to the window.

“The city’s in pain,” Roerich said. “I can feel it.”

“It shouldn’t be here,” Chen said, the policeman in him coming to the fore. “There’s helicopter traffic at this level — and if we go any higher, we’ll be in the flight path.” Paugeng wasn’t so close to the airport, but it was still within crashing distance, and after that episode in New York all those years ago, the combination of flight and large buildings was not an appealing one. Just as this thought struck him, Agarta shot upward at dizzying speed. Both Chen and Roerich were thrown against the wall.

“First flying boats,” Chen said through gritted teeth, “and now flying cities.” He’d not counted on such an aerial week. Below, the vast tower of Paugeng was receding fast. Around it, the towers of Singapore Three were approaching the dimensions of pins. The shattered stumps of those buildings that had been demolished in the last, goddess-induced quake were clearly visible, with the cranes around them looking like small pecking birds.

“What is Nandini thinking?” Chen asked.

“I don’t think this is Nandini’s doing,” Roerich replied. “I think the city is panicking.”

Looking down at the vertiginous view, Chen agreed. He was about to suggest to Roerich that they go in search of Nandini, when Agarta veered sharply to the left and soared out across the bay. Suddenly looking down on water was slightly better than the concrete jungle below, but the harbor was conspicuous now, and so was the empty space where Chen’s houseboat should have been. Another thing to worry about, but at the moment, his main concern was Inari.

As if he had read Chen’s thoughts, Roerich said, “If you need to look for your wife, Chen, please do so. We’ll find her first, and then go in search of Nandini.”

“I’d appreciate it,” Chen said, and headed for the reeling stairs.

By the time he reached the ramparts, the city was once more coming back over Singapore Three. Someone had, by now, noticed that local airspace was being occupied by an unauthorized visitor, and as Chen approached the bottom of the stairs, a jet streaked past, flying low over the harbor and coming back around across the hills. Agarta was, so Chen had been told, supposed to be invisible to the eyes of unenlightened mortals but unless the Chinese air force was suddenly embarking upon a particularly tricky set of maneuvers, he had the feeling that the city was, by now, all too visible.

Just as he stepped out onto the ramparts, Inari appeared around the corner, with Jhai in tow.

“We think it’s the Empress,” Jhai told him curtly.

“Seems like the most probable candidate. Does anyone know where Nandini was holding her?”

Jhai shook her head. “No idea. But if it is the Empress, she doesn’t seem to have much control over her latest acquisition.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Chen agreed, as the city lurched back over the skyscrapers. “Inari, wait here. Hang onto something!”

“I’ll try not to fall off,” his wife wryly remarked. As she braced herself against one of the pillars, Chen, Roerich, and Jhai pelted down the stairs.

“Does Agarta have dungeons?” Chen shouted to Roerich, against the sudden roar of the wind in the narrow passages. It looked as though the city’s internal climate was breaking down and that wasn’t good news: the non-humans could probably cope but at this altitude, anyone else was likely to freeze. And Agarta didn’t seem like the kind of place that would possess dungeons.

“I think there are rooms on one of the lower levels,” Roerich called back, confirming his fears. “But they’re not really cells. Agarta doesn’t often take prisoners, as you can imagine.”

They reached a wide platform and Chen, startled, saw that the center of the city was almost hollow. Parapets circled an echoing space, filled with dim light. He felt as though he had stepped into the presence of some vast entity, not a god, but a living, thinking being, and a moment later realized that this was precisely what had happened. They were at the heart of Agarta, the source of the voice Roerich had mentioned.

But there was something in the midst of the light that clearly did not belong. To one side of the door from which they had emerged stood a small chamber, a honeycomb cell in the substance of the city. As Roerich had said, it looked more like a monk’s meditational cell than a prison, but its door had been blasted off its hinges and now hung awry. The origin of that disharmony was floating in the middle of the light, staring at them with cold, black eyes.

Roerich stopped dead, staring ahead. “Majesty,” he said at last. Chen had only set eyes on the former Empress of Heaven on a couple of occasions, but he had no difficulty in recognizing her. She looked exactly the same, her masklike face lovely in repose and yet somehow hollow, as if the evil behind it had eaten it away, corroding it over the long years until this was all that was left. Her garments floated round her like streamers of cloud, drifts and eddies of rose and gold.

“I don’t know you,” the Empress said. Her voice, too, was still lovely, and yet it grated. Roerich gave a small nod. The Empress floated closer. “And Detective Inspector Chen. What a surprise. You appear in the most unlikely places.”

“One might say the same of you, Madam,” Chen said. There was the faintest flicker of anger across the Empress’ smooth countenance, like a distant bolt of lightning.

“Empress,” Roerich told her. “You must relinquish control of the city. Even if you care nothing for its inhabitants, or for the people in the buildings below, you must be aware that if we crash, you are likely to return to the Sea of Night, where your prison is waiting for you.”

“Oh, I know that,” the Empress said. “My son was very careful. And I am learning to be careful, too.”

“Not fast enough,” Jhai said. “This thing’s already missed a couple of passenger aircraft and you damn near took out the upper story of my offices.”

“And what do you propose to do about it?” the Empress said, still sweet. “The Enlightened Masters have been incarcerated — it proved very easy, once I’d freed myself. And with them taken, the city itself was willing to bow to my will. I suppose limitless compassion doesn’t really equip you for battle, does it? I wish I’d remembered that during all those insipid centuries.”

“Power’s addictive,” Chen said. The Empress laughed.

“Do you speak from experience, Detective?”

“You must stand down,” Roerich repeated.

“I don’t think so,” the Empress told him. “I’ve come too far to back down now. And what kind of existence would be waiting for me if I did? As you so kindly reminded me, the Sea of Night and that cursed boat? Oh no. If you’re not happy with the way things are, my enlightened friend, then why don’t you just leave?”

She raised a hand. The city canted over on its side, sending Chen and the others sliding down the parapet toward the emptiness of its interior. Chen scrabbled for a handhold and succeeded only in clutching Jhai’s sleeve. They went down into air, falling through sudden light, and out of Agarta.

The cold knocked the breath out of Chen’s lungs. He thought: Inari! as the cityscape of Singapore Three spun up underneath him. The lights were so bright: he could see the length of Shaopeng, all the avenues that led out in a wheel from the district of the Opera House. From this height, it looked remarkably like Hell. He couldn’t even muster the breath to scream. Turning in the air he saw Agarta hanging like an inverted chandelier above the bay — and then his vision went black as something came up fast beneath him and Chen hit solidity.

“Are you all right?”

It was Inari’s voice. Chen blinked. The sky swam. It didn’t make sense, that Inari should be speaking to him so urgently now.

“Wei Chen!”

Her face came into focus: the huge dark-red eyes, filled with fear and concern in the pale oval of her face. His head was thumping, a rhythmic beat like distant thunder. He must have been stunned — and yet there was no pain. It took him a moment to realize that the sound was coming from outside his own skull.