The lower edge of the chariot hatch crashed into the pedestal, shattering it and toppling the crystal balanced upon its summit. As the craft’s momentum carried it onwards, the great jewel flew in through the open hatch, bounced off Herian’s prone body and came to rest against the port side of the hull.
Herian’s expression turned fearful. ‘What are you doing?’
Granger slammed the thrust levers forward. The jewel rolled to the back of the control room and clunked against the rear bulkhead. If the damned thing was acting as a bridge between the entropath’s universe and this one, then he had to hope she wouldn’t risk its destruction. He spun the lateral control again, slewing the chariot in the direction of the nearest conduit.
‘You’ll burn us alive! Herian cried.
And the crystal too.
The lash snapped again, and this time a thin slice disappeared from the starboard side of the hull. The blow had cleaved through the edge of the console itself. The chariot stuttered and yawed suddenly to port. Granger wrestled with the controls to bring it back on course. Ahead through the view screens the conduit mouth loomed like a green inferno. Sparks burst from the console under Granger’s fingers. Engines screamed. The whole ship began to judder madly.
‘Stop,’ Herian cried, trying to rise from the floor.
But by then they had reached the portal.
A storm of energy poured into the chariot through the open hatchway, arcing between the bulkheads. Green flames tore across the console. The view screens blazed like suns. Granger cried out as electrical fluids shot through his body. His muscles began to spasm uncontrollably, and for a heartbeat he was aware of nothing but light and agony and the smell of his own burning flesh.
Abruptly, the light vanished.
It was as if someone had thrown a switch. The surrounding inferno simply ceased to be, leaving the view screens dark and the craft flying on through gloom. Granger eased back the throttle levers, slowing their forward momentum. Apart from the hum of their engines, the conduit was silent.
Herian groaned from the floor. ‘You’ve no idea what you just risked.’
Granger halted the flying machine. He stepped past the old man and retrieved the jewel from the rear of the cabin. It had ceased to glow, and he could no longer perceive the alien landscape within its facets. It looked like an ordinary crystal. He wedged it behind one of the view screens and gunned the engines again.
‘Let me take it back,’ Herian said.
Granger just grunted. He flew the chariot onwards at a much slower pace, threading his way through the conduits and junction spheres until her reached the transmitting station’s main entrance. All appeared as dark and desolate as it had at first. He brought the craft’s bow gently up against the outer door and then eased the throttles forward. With a shudder and an almighty groan, the door scraped open, and the small vessel moved out into sunlight.
Snowflakes swirled across the view screens and blew in through the open hatch and the gaps in the hull. Granger’s hands danced across the controls as he brought the flying machine up and over the building in a slowly rising spiral. He passed the white, lace-frill skeleton of the transmitting tower and the great torus upon its summit, where he let the chariot come to a halt. The northern ice fields shimmered like emeralds and diamonds, a jewelled coast abutting the bottle-green waters of the Mare Verdant. Awl lay somewhere to the south-west. He might reach it in a few days, but then what?
The Haurstaf had an entire army at their disposal, while Granger had one half-wrecked little chariot. He didn’t know if the craft would even make it that far.
He stood there for a moment, thinking.
‘Let me go,’ Herian said. He sat on the floor, shivering, with his shoulders slumped in an attitude of defeat. Snow was already gathering on his hair and mail shirt. ‘I’m no danger to you. Keep the chariot, let me take the jewel back.’
Granger picked up the jewel and carried it over to the hatch. An icy gale blew around his shoulders. A few yards below him, the toroid gleamed dully under the monochrome sky. Not a single snowflake had adhered to that metal surface.
‘What are you doing?’ Herian said.
Granger pitched the jewel out of the hatch. It landed in the depression in the centre of the toroid with an almighty clang, rolled one way, and then the other, before finally settling.
Herian crawled over, then let out a groan.
‘You’ll get it back,’ Granger said. ‘But I want something in return.’
The old man stared after the jewel.
‘That sword I picked up,’ Granger said. ‘The simulacrums . . .’
‘What about them?’
‘Show me how to use it properly.’
‘That’s all?’ Herian said. ‘You want to wield a Replicating Sword?’
Granger grunted. ‘That’s just the beginning.’
The room looked like a lecture theatre to Ianthe, with wooden seats rising in curved tiers before her. It was empty apart from a panel of four Haurstaf witches. Subtle changes in their expressions told her they were having a discussion, even if she couldn’t hear them. Briana Marks glanced at Sister Ulla, who gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head. The remaining two spinsters simply glared down at Ianthe as if they knew the secrets of her soul. They were older than anyone Ianthe had seen before, balanced there like pinnacles of weathered rock.
‘Really,’ Briana said suddenly. ‘This is beyond tiring. Why not let the girl hear what you have to say? I’m not going to go over this twice for her benefit. If the point of psychic warfare is to inflict pain, suffering and death, then she’s done exceptionally well.’
Sister Ulla snorted. ‘We can’t have lawlessness and anarchy within our own ranks.’
Briana looked at the old woman with an expression of incredulity. ‘Anarchy? Don’t be so dramatic, Ulla. The loss of one brat is not going to make any difference to the world. She was hardly an asset.’
‘The parents!’ Sister Ulla protested.
‘Why on earth would you want to inform them?’
‘They’ll find out eventually—’
Briana batted a hand at the other woman. ‘We have finances set aside to deal with these sorts of problems. Don’t bore us all with your peacock morality. Her parents ought to be glad she was given an opportunity here in the first place.’
Sister Ulla fluffed out her chest, as if she was going to protest, but then she sank back into her chair.
Briana looked at Ianthe. ‘Mara said you turned that girl’s brain to paste.’
Ianthe felt her face turn red. She shuffled from one foot to the other. She wanted to say that she hadn’t meant it, that it wasn’t her fault and if they would let her go home she’d never bother the Haurstaf again. But that wasn’t going to happen now. She lowered her head.
Briana laughed suddenly. ‘You think so, Ulla?’ she said. ‘I’d like to see you do it.’
‘Don’t tempt me,’ Sister Ulla growled.
Nobody spoke for several minutes, and it seemed to Ianthe that the witches had fallen back into psychic communication. But then Briana turned to her and said, ‘Sister Ulla is of the opinion that you had help. Did you have help, Ianthe?’
Ianthe said nothing.
‘If you don’t mind,’ Briana went on, ‘we’d like to examine those eyeglasses of yours.’
‘They’re just eyeglasses.’
‘Then you won’t mind—’
‘No!’ Ianthe cried. ‘They don’t belong to you.’ Tears welled in her eyes, blurring her vision through the lenses. These old w
omen had no right to ask her to give up her sight, no right at all. All of them except Briana were glaring furiously at her now.
Sister Ulla looked as if she was ready to explode with indignation. ‘You’ll hand them over now,’ she said, ‘or I’ll come down there and take them from you myself.’
Ianthe spoke through her teeth. ‘Try it.’
Briana raised her hands. ‘That’s enough,’ she said. She glanced from one sister to another, before returning her attention to Ianthe. Her expression softened. ‘There’s a place for you here, Ianthe, but only if you work with us. I won’t tolerate threats. I expect you to be as civil and honest with us as we’ve been with you.’ She gave her a half-smile. ‘We can’t put you back into the classroom now.’
‘But I didn’t mean to harm—’ Ianthe’s voice broke and she began to cry.
Briana left her seat and walked down the central aisle of the theatre. She wrapped her arms around Ianthe and held her. Ianthe couldn’t stop herself. Her whole body began to convulse with sobs. Tears flowed freely until she could no longer see through her lenses. She clung fiercely to Briana. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’
The Haurstaf leader smoothed Ianthe’s hair. ‘Shush,’ she said. ‘You’ve done nothing to be sorry about. All you need is a little guidance.’ She held Ianthe for a long time. Finally she squeezed Ianthe’s shoulders and gently pushed her away. ‘If you can do that to a human,’ she said, smiling, ‘think what you could do to the Unmer.’
Ianthe sniffed and shook her head.
‘This is what we do, Ianthe,’ Briana said. ‘It’s what your classmates have been training towards, what poor Caroline sacrificed her life for.’
‘Constance,’ Ianthe said.
Briana nodded. ‘And when you see what the Unmer are capable of, you’ll understand why the Guild is so vital. Women like us keep the world from falling apart.’ She turned to the other three witches. ‘I think she’s ready to see the dungeons now.’
Sister Ulla shook her head, but her two companions looked at each other for a few moments. ‘There’s no going back if you decide to take that route,’ one of them said. ‘She’ll be bound to us for good or ill.’
Briana made a face. ‘Don’t be so melodramatic, Bethany,’ she said. ‘We can always kill her later.’ She moved her lips close to Ianthe’s ear. ‘I’m joking. But your acceptance into the Guild will have other consequences. Maskelyne will be executed for his crimes.’
Ianthe looked up at her for a long moment. ‘What about his wife? His son?’
Briana looked surprised. ‘You want them dead, too?’
‘No, I mean—’
‘We must protect our family from the Maskelynes of this world,’ the witch said. ‘Family is important, don’t you think?’
Ianthe’s eyes filled with tears again. She nodded.
Briana extended her hand. ‘Then come with me.’
What happened next happened quickly. Ianthe found herself whisked away from that room. Briana Marks led her on through the palace, through glassy black corridors and halls and rooms where women Ianthe did not know looked on in grim silence. They descended one stairwell and then a second and a third and a fourth, until Ianthe lost count and it seemed to her that they must be deep with the earth itself. Finally they came to a nondescript door in a small stone antechamber. Briana turned a key in the lock.
They stepped out onto a balcony set high on one wall of an enormous, brightly lit chamber – one of four platforms connected by a cruciform steel catwalk. Thousands of gem lanterns depended from the vaulted ceiling overhead, filling the entire space with harsh white light. Below the catwalk lay a maze of roofless concrete cells, each about six feet to a side. Hundreds of small openings, barely large enough for a man to squeeze through, connected each cell to one or more of its neighbours in a seemingly haphazard fashion. Ianthe strolled to the edge of the balcony and looked down. A network of pipes suspended beneath the catwalk fed an array of shower heads, one located above each cell. Their purpose was presumably to wash the occupants below.
Hundreds of Unmer filled that grey labyrinth, either alone in a cell or gathered together in small groups. All were naked and painfully thin. They slouched against the bare walls or sat on the floors or lay sleeping. The murmur of conversation gradually ceased as they became aware of their observers in the gallery above.
‘It used to be a mental faculty test,’ Briana said, her voice echoing far across the chamber, ‘but we ended up using the place to store the breeding stock. They’re all leucotomized, of course, so security isn’t much of an issue here. Food can be thrown down, filth washed away, and we use acid to direct test subjects to the gate for removal.’
Ianthe’s throat grew dry. They were all looking up at her.
‘The leucotomy procedure allows them privacy,’ Briana said. ‘We don’t need psychics to monitor them constantly.’
‘They look so miserable.’
‘Misery is the price of freedom,’ Brian replied. ‘We can’t have them walking through walls or vanishing matter at will. They’re happy enough. Come now, I’ll take you to the zoo.’ She set off across the catwalk at a brisk pace.
Ianthe hesitated. ‘The zoo?’
‘That’s where we keep the able-minded ones,’ the witch called back.
Ianthe waited a moment longer, then ran after her. The catwalk rattled under her boots. She kept her gaze level, afraid to look down at the pitiful creatures below. She caught up with Briana just as she reached the opposite balcony. Briana unlocked another door and ushered her into a corridor lit by gem lanterns recessed behind copper mesh. A door at the end of this passage led to yet another stairwell, which descended even further beneath the earth.
By the time they reached the bottom, Ianthe was quite out of breath. They had reached a circular chamber with walls clad in blood-coloured seawood inlaid with curlicues of copper. Recessed lanterns threw cross-hatch patterns across the living rock floor. At least a dozen exits surrounded them, each blocked by a door made from different coloured glass. The air was much cooler here and carried the scent of perfume.
Ianthe could sense large numbers of people behind each of the doors. Her inner vision fluttered with the lights of their perceptions: a hundred of them, maybe more. And yet she held back in spite of all her nervous excitement – forcing her mind to remain in her own body. She was about to witness the Haurstaf’s greatest secret with her own eyes.
Briana opened the door.
Ianthe’ first impression of the chamber beyond was that it was upside down. Light poured into the room through huge slabs of glass set into the floor. These panes were all of various shapes and sizes: squares and oblongs and long strips. In the centre of the room stood a tall, thin wooden structure, like a small watchtower or an improbably large high-chair. A ladder on the near side gave access to a cushioned seat at its summit. Upon this sat a young witch in plain white robes. She had been peering down into the glass floor below her but now glanced up as Briana and Ianthe entered.
‘Any mischief?’ Briana asked.
The witch on the high-chair did not reply.
‘Verbally,’ Briana said
The other woman cast a curious glance at Ianthe. ‘Not in here,’ she said. ‘But we had an incident in suite seven.’
‘Who was in the chair?’
The younger woman shrugged. ‘Some new girl. She overreacted.’
‘Did the prisoner survive?’
‘
Sort of.’
As Briana and Ianthe approached, Ianthe looked down through the glass pane under her feet. Below lay a bedroom, as richly furnished as any other in the palace, with silken sheets and plump pillows on the bed, Evensraum rugs on the floor. Paintings and tapestries adorned the walls, giving the room a rather stately feel. One of the two doors led to a bathroom, with a smaller glass pane for a ceiling. Ianthe walked over it and found herself gazing down at a huge copper bathtub with a matching sink. The other bedroom door opened into an enormous lounge, also roofed with glass. Through this pane, Ianthe could see a young man reclining on a red settee, reading a book. He glanced up at her without expression, before returning his attention to the pages. To the right of the lounge lay a small library containing a writing desk flanked by bookshelves. The witch’s high-chair allowed her to look down into any of the rooms below.
Briana stood directly over the man in the lounge. She tapped her heel against the floor and said, ‘How is the prince today?’
The young man yawned, but didn’t look up.
‘He’s been ignoring me for months now,’ said the witch in the high-chair. ‘Not so much as a glance.’
‘But you must be used to that,’ Briana said. ‘A face like yours . . .’
The witch did not reply.
Ianthe walked across the glass floor. She couldn’t take her eyes off the young man. He couldn’t have been much older than her, and yet he appeared so much more relaxed and confident in his surroundings. A touch of arrogance, even? He was clearly aware of the women in the chamber above him, but chose to dismiss them, casually turning the pages of his book with long white fingers. He had a pale, slightly effeminate face framed by an unruly mop of hay-coloured hair, and he wore a flamboyant smoking jacket of red velvet trimmed with gold.
‘He hasn’t been leucotomized,’ Ianthe said.
Briana looked up. ‘We couldn’t do that to the king’s son. It wouldn’t be civil.’ She glanced down again. ‘Not as long as he behaves himself.’
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