by Heide Goody
“I was there at the battle of Hath-No!” Steve continued. “When the armies of Suler’au Sukram tried to take the fortress from Sha-Datsei. They lost. Hath-No crushed them, ejected them!”
“You lie!” said the Handmaiden.
Steve waved at the cloud of creatures dropping from the great moon blob hanging over the city. “Our brothers and sisters are not coming, Kye! They are dead! You and your—” He paused as he tried to count the Handmaidens. “Didn’t there used to be more of you?”
The crab monster wheeled and stamped in uncontrolled fury. Her sisters pounded with equal despair. Shells clashed in violent grief. Kathy was caught in the confusion and knocked to the ground.
A trembling claw pointed at Morag. When the Handmaiden spoke, it was no longer in measured Received Pronunciation tones, but in a raw and bitter voice. “She did this! It is all her fault!”
It sounded unlikely, but Rod knew Morag and was prepared to believe if he followed the chain of cause and effect back through the days, weeks and months, all of this – literally all of it – might well be Morag’s fault.
On the floor, Kathy groaned, grunted and slipped in a pool of her own blood. A stray claw had caught her on the back of her leg and opened it up.
“Bugger,” said Rod and rushed to her, the opened Israeli bandage still in his hand. A dead Kathy was an exploding Kathy. Holding the bandage in his teeth for a moment, he widened the rip in the back of her trousers until the leg was fully exposed. The bandage pack had a pressure applicator which could staunch wounds and effectively stop bleeding for a while, but the injury had cut through an artery and Kathy was pumping blood out at an alarming speed.
“What’s happening?” she murmured. Rod guessed that contact with Morgantus had been broken.
“We’re making a mess of things, lass,” he said.
“It’s most entertaining,” said the King in Crimson, close to Rod’s shoulder.
“Take her outside,” Morag commanded. The slimy, spindly and tentacled things in the hall did not rush forward to remove Kathy. If anything, they were retreating into the shadows. “Now!” she shouted.
A fleshy rope slapped onto Kathy’s hand. She immediately tried to get to her feet, pulling away from Rod’s ministrations.
“I’ve not finished!” he said.
Kathy slipped and struggled. Were there slashed tendons in that wound? Muscles that would no longer respond, regardless of what Morgantus commanded?
Rod saw one of the blob god’s tendril sliding towards him. He rocked back up onto his feet and retreated swiftly. He pulled Prudence with him as more moved in from the side. There was no point trying to shoot the things. They were too numerous, and too hard a target.
“Back up, back up,” he said urgently.
“Use your laser eyes, gobbet!” Steve shouted at Prudence.
Prudence stuttered and stumbled and cried out, “Mum!”
Brigit, not even physically attached to her god, rushed forward to try and haul Kathy away. But Kathy, plus her bomb pack, were heavy. Clearly years of being Morgantus’s plaything had not given Brigit the kind of muscles needed for the job.
“Help me, lord…” she grunted, failing to move Kathy more than a few inches.
In the once great hall, now half deserted and trashed, there were dozens of Venislarn creatures, poised to attack or flee, but only five humans. Rod was not sure if he gave two hoots about Kathy anymore – her fate was tied to that bomb – and that Brigit woman seemed hellbent on self-destruction, but he could still get Morag, Prudence, and himself out alive.
He glanced at Omar’s corpse, and felt the weight of the man’s death. Rod could hardly say he and Professor Sheikh Omar had been friends. The man had been a crook his entire career, always playing his own incomprehensible game with things best left untouched. And he’d rarely had a kind word for Rod that wasn’t hidden behind sarcasm and class prejudice. On more than one occasion Omar had delighted in belittling Rod’s northern heritage, his traditional outlook, and his skillset which undoubtedly stretched more towards the physical than the cerebral.
Rod unslung the rifle and fired a three round burst at the ceiling to get everyone’s attention. “Listen!” he yelled.
A dead thing dropped from the darkness above. It was furry and leathery, and its body and wings were peppered with bullet holes.
“Er, sorry about that,” he said. “Everyone stop what they’re doing.”
A flesh ribbon trickled toward him. He stepped back.
“Stop it! I know … I know the, um, final word of unmaking.” There was a lull as those listening took this in. “That’s right,” he said. “I do. The final word. Very dangerous. I discovered it while playing Venislarn Scrabble with the professor here. The late professor. Now, if you lot don’t let us go – that’s me, Prudence and Morag there – then I’ll have no choice but to say it and, you know, unmake everything. And I don’t think we want that, do we?”
Morag tilted her head, as though Morgantus was sifting through her mind in search of something. “He doesn’t know it,” she said. “He guessed some of the letters. He can’t even speak Venislarn.”
“That’s not … incorrect,” he said and winced. “Really making a dog’s dinner of this,” he muttered.
“Do you usually make such a damnable mess of things?” asked the King in Crimson.
Kathy gasped and floundered as she tried to crawl to the door, driven by whatever impulse Morgantus had put in her.
The mound of Yo-Morgantus’s flesh was shrinking and receding, folding itself away into conduits and vents in the back of the hall. It took Morag with it, riding a tide of flab that drew her in. The bloody god was fleeing!
“Lord!” shouted Brigit and ran to catch up with it.
Seeing the one-time prince of the city fleeing his throne room, the last of the court descended into pandemonium. Yo-Morgantus had been the axle of their crazy alien circus and, even before he had gone, the creatures reverted to their base natures. Several vanished into other dimensions with sharp snaps. Others hastened away via other more mundane exits. Old rivals, despite the bomb or in ignorance of it, set upon one another with suckers, hooks and acidic bile. Some of them leapt upon each other with unbound carnal desire. It was hard to distinguish which were which.
The lead Handmaiden angled her shell and claws at Rod. Her shells dialled round in constant agitation, screaming baby after screaming baby presented to him.
“You think you can take me, wench?” boasted Steve manically. “You think you can take me?”
Rod decided to give the little egotist the opportunity. He plucked Steve from his shoulder and flung him at the Handmaidens, giving him enough height to hopefully land on the Handmaiden’s bony white shell.
“From hell’s heart—!” screamed Steve, waving his blood-smeared pencil as he flew.
Rod didn’t even watch him land. Not knowing, not daring to hope what distraction Steve offered, he grabbed Prudence and legged it for the door. Kathy mumbled something wordless as he passed. He knew he’d have long dark moments wondering what she meant if he survived, but he didn’t hesitate.
Prudence yelled as Rod hauled her through the double doors and into the lobby. He paid no mind to the kaleidoscopic war taking place over the near formless ruin of the city – no longer a battle between humans and Venislarn, but between all manner of impossible other-worldly things, philosophically and physically incompatible beings, fighting over the strange spoils of this ravaged world.
Rod ran to the stair doors. August Handmaidens of Prein, two or three of them, smashed out of the hall and stumbled on their skittle legs as they came after him.
“Through here!” he shouted to Prudence. He hit the doors to the stairwell a second before the lead Handmaiden. The frame exploded behind Rod. He bodily hoisted Prudence under his arm and leapt the first three stairs up to avoid the creature crashing after him. He turned and fired at the corner of the stairs. The Handmaiden’s shell cracked loudly, fatal fissures blasted by
the blue john bullets. Her sister was already climbing over her corpse and he ran on, not wanting to meet one of them at close quarters.
Prudence shouted and yelled as he ran up the stairs. He ran and fired, ran and fired. He could not hear anything over the echoing gunshots and the clashing shells of the Handmaidens. Two flights, and the stairs came to stop at a plain white door. He dropped Prudence onto her feet and tried the door. It was locked. He brought his rifle round to aim.
“Shouldn’t we have run down?” said Prudence.
Rod stared at the young girl.
“I was trying to tell you,” she said.
Handmaidens scrabbled and crashed one flight below them.
“She was,” said the King in Crimson, leaning nonchalantly against a wall.
“Bollocks,” said Rod with feeling.
06:20am
Chad had decided staying in the taxi with Hasnain the driver was the safest place to be. Hasnain, that silent and stoic knight of the city, seemed to know what was going on and how to stay out of harm’s way.
“You must see a lot of things, being a taxi driver,” said Chad.
Hasnain said nothing, but Chad knew he agreed and appreciated the insight.
“Probably not a lot of stuff like this,” added Chad, gesturing at the world beyond the window. Outside, the air fizzed and crackled. The bangs and screams which had dominated the city all night were joined by strange vibrating tones, as if the whole city was being subjected to some sound-based healing.
“I once went to a spiritual retreat where they used brown noise to re-energise your chakras,” said Chad. He frowned. “Was it brown noise? Could have been white noise. Purple noise? I don’t know if I’ve made that one up. Anyway, it was the magical tone, five hundred and something hertz, corresponding to the mystical principle of light. Very healing. A lot of people in the creative industries swear by it. We do suffer for our art. Better than the naked birch whipping therapy I did in Dorset the year before with Leandra. I’m all for nakedness, but Leandra got a bit over-excited by the whipping part. Chased me through Whareham Forest with a branch. I’ve still got the marks somewhere.”
Hasnain started the engine, pulled round in a semi-circle on the road and drove away from the Cube, round to the left and up a side road.
“Not waiting for Morag and the professor?” Chad asked.
* * *
Yo-Morgantus flowed, and Morag flowed with him. Her body was wrapped entirely and snugly in his. His warm flesh pressed in on her from every side, a constant pressure. She could not move, except where he made room. She could not breathe except what he permitted her to breathe. He opened up air sacs and presented his orifices to her, expelling such air that she needed. He connected to her intimately, holding her safely in a grip that could not be broken.
She was blind and deaf in his embrace. She could see nothing. She could hear nothing – except the thump of his pounding organs and the whoosh of his blood and vital juices.
Morag did not panic. Morgantus touched her and told her not told panic, so she did not. He bent her and folded her as needed as they moved down through the Cube building at speed, a rolling wave of powerful flesh.
Morag swam in the body of Yo-Morgantus, and the part of her which still maintained some level of conscious thought exulted in the sensation. It would be so easy to merge with Morgantus, to not just reside in him but become one flesh. Others had done it before. On a non-conscious level, Morag knew the bulk of her lover and god was composed of such individuals. Men, women and children had touched the sacred flesh and been drawn into it. This skin was their skin. These quivering muscles and throbbing capillaries were gifts from them. They were part of him, still alive, components in the machine, praising him as they did his bidding.
Yo-Morgantus did not absorb her. They touched, but he did not make her part of him. He kept her, embraced her, but remained apart. He fed her feelings and perceptions. She knew Brigit was with them, wrapped in other folds, a bunk mate in this intimate vessel. She knew Morgantus was warping and flowing down through the Cube building. There was the sensation of depth, of a shaft where girder rungs flew past at speed.
There was a sense of urgency – a mundane and mortal feeling borrowed from all the bodies he’d consumed – that he might die here, on this alien world, and no one would mourn his passing.
* * *
Prudence didn’t always find the world an easy place to understand. She had been born only a few hours ago and suspected if she’d been given a longer period of time to grow up – a day or two or even a whole week! – then things might have made more sense. She even struggled to understand herself half the time. Knowledge and understanding popped up inside her, like little explosions of comprehension. She knew what hours and days and weeks were for one thing, even though no one had told her. She knew that this man on the roof beside her was called Rod Campbell and he was a friend of her mum. She knew this and trusted it as fact. She also knew that when he said everything was going to be all right, he was lying. He was lying because he was trying to be kind, but he was a rubbish liar and the more he repeated it, the less convincing he sounded.
“It’s going to be all right,” he said again. Prudence suspected he didn’t even know he was saying it now.
He had blasted apart the door lock and, after pushing her through, fired something that had made a scary booming sound and filled the stairway with fire and smoke, for the moment stopping the August Handmaidens of Prein from following them. Now, he hurried frantically from one edge of the rooftop to another, constantly searching.
“We’ve just got to get down somehow,” he said. “Another stair or…” He clearly didn’t know what the ‘or’ was.
The rooftop was a square U shape around a deep drop through the centre of the building. The prongs of the U overlooked the canal and the fighting going on below. The fortress of Hath-No hung in the sky overhead, ominous and streaky brown, and still spitting out wave after wave of creatures. Over another section of the city, threads of light spread and split in a widening pattern, like an unravelling rainbow with a mad eye at its centre. Prudence knew this was the Cha’dhu Forrikler, just as she knew the crazy mud moon was Hath-No. The information simply came to her.
“There’s Sorod’leis Pah,” Prudence said, pointing at the Handmaiden which had finally pushed its way through the smoking, crumpled mess of the stair access on the other arm of the rooftop.
Rod brought his rifle to his shoulder, aimed for a long cool moment as the Handmaiden scuttled round, and fired. The Handmaiden crashed to the floor.
“Maybe there’s a window cleaner’s cradle somewhere,” he said, looking over the edge of the building nearest him. “No. Maybe we can jump into the canal.”
Prudence looked over the edge. The canal was a long way down. “How far is it?” she said.
“And how deep is it?” said Rod. “Hey! Hey!”
The shout wasn’t for Prudence, and it wasn’t elation at finding a new way down. It was aimed at the two creatures fighting in the canal at little further away. One was the Lord of the Deeps, Yo Daganau-Pysh, who was trying to throttle Yoth-Qahake-Pysh, Goddess of the Deep. His tentacles were fat and smooth and edged with fluted pink frills that were almost like leaves. She was countering by jabbing her long, bleached finger-claws into his body mass and attempting to impale him on the horny end of her head crest.
“That’s our ride out of here!” yelled Rod.
“Where?” said Prudence.
“There!” he said. “The bloody canal boat it’s got stuck on its head.”
Prudence tried to understand what he was on about. “That is her head,” she said.
It was true Yoth-Qahake-Pysh’s grey head crest did look a bit like one of the boats lining the canals. If Prudence focused really hard on the twisting gods as they fought, she thought she could see a couple of people trying to cling on to parts of that ridged skull.
Rod sighed bitterly. “Our way out of here. I thought I had a plan.”
<
br /> A bright light stung Prudence’s eyes, and she looked round, across the city. It was bright, like the earlier explosions which had threatened to destroy the city, but this was confined to a solid orb of hot radiance, rising over the misty horizon, washing the world in yellow light.
“Yoth-Bilau,” she said in recognition.
Rod grunted. “It’s just the dawn. That’s the sun. You’ve never seen the sun, have you?”
Prudence shook her head. “No, I haven’t. It’s Yoth-Bilau.”
“No, it’s just the sun—” Rod began. He stared at the rising orb. “To look upon Yoth-Bilau is pain itself,” he said hollowly. “She causes mutations and tumours. She is accompanied by her stillborn children… Hell and buggeration! The planets?” He clenched his hands in anger. “Riddles! I hate this kind of riddle nonsense! Are you telling me that’s Yoth-Bilau?”
“It is Yoth-Bilau,” said Prudence.
“Bloody riddles! I had a whole argument with a door about it.”
“Er, okay.”
“And you’re no help at all!” he said, directing this to an empty space behind his shoulder. “We’re doomed now, aren’t we?” he said to Prudence.
“Are we?” she said.
“Yoth-Bilau there means the Soulgate has closed. That’s it. The trap is shut. Even if we kill ourselves, we can’t escape. We can’t die.” He grunted and looked over the side of the building again. “We can’t die.”
There was a rolling thump, and two more Handmaidens forced their way through the smashed roof access door.
Rod put a hand on Prudence’s back. He had big hands, like he could use them as shovels to dig up earth. “Do you trust me?” he said.
“Does it make a difference?” said Prudence.
“We’re going to run and we’re going to jump and we’re going to try to hit the water.”
“Try?”
The Handmaidens of Prein had rounded the second turn on the roof.