by Peter Newman
It seemed that as the bodies of the lesser demons joined to constrict them, so too did their voices.
‘… TAKE … FIGHT … FREE …’
Now Arkav was moving. The demons attached to his arms weighed nothing, and their pained voices whispered directly to his wings.
Facestealer twitched and started to move backwards.
Too late, thought Pari. He’s got you.
Arkav plunged into Facestealer like a diver into a midnight lake. The surface of the demon rippled and tore, and the many mouths on its surface opened in a silent chorus of screams.
Instantly, the lesser demons around Pari’s legs broke formation, as did the ones that had been around Arkav’s arms. As soon as they’d put a safe distance between themselves and the damaging aura of the tanzanite armour, they stopped, drifting slowly in the void. They kept whispering their support though. Pari swam forward until she was in the current and allowed it to carry her towards Facestealer.
She could see it writhing in pain, her brother a furious glow within it, thrashing his arms and legs. Pari lashed Facestealer’s side with her whip, using it to swing past the demon so that her wing cut a gash along its flank. She allowed her momentum to carry her in a tight spiralling orbit, slicing a corkscrew wound around its body.
It lashed out at her, but she was too quick. It lashed out again, reacting rather than predicting, each time catching the space Pari had already left.
The tenebrous matter that made up its skin began to bubble, the gills opening too wide as Facestealer began to tear itself apart in an effort to disgorge Arkav.
There was no more slack in Pari’s whip as she slammed into it. The impact of her armoured body was the last straw and Facestealer moaned from a score of mouths. She saw Arkav’s hand reach up from inside it to claim the image of his face. Then she saw nothing but movement as the lesser demons descended, biting and snapping at Facestealer with shocking fury.
In seconds they had ripped Facestealer from her brother as if it were no more than a set of paper clothes. Then they began to fight over the other pieces.
Arkav floated amongst the carnage as if in a daydream. The perfect glow of his aura was marred by two cracks, one across his chest plate, the other on his right wing.
Pari’s heart sank as she grabbed Arkav’s arm. ‘It’s time to go.’
He looked at her, dazed, then joined in as she swam them awkwardly towards the gateway. It was slow going, especially as Arkav had one arm close to his chest, his fist loosely clenched. ‘Stay with me,’ she said.
He nodded, then looked over his shoulder. Following his gaze she saw they’d attracted followers. A shoal of demons were keeping pace behind them, whispering quietly. She had no idea what they were saying, nor if they were the same ones that had fought Facestealer.
She was too tired to care either way.
When they’d come through the gateway the first time, it had been at great speed. This time, they lacked the momentum to punch through and Pari had to tear a way open with her gauntleted hands. It was hard, awkward work. When it finally gave, she felt the powerful currents just in front of her. All she had to do was go forward a little and it would carry her all the way home. She gave Arkav a smile of triumph.
He wasn’t smiling back.
But it seemed to her as if the demons were.
They dived for the hole, slamming into Arkav and Pari, heedless of the harm it caused them. A few started to burn, but the majority surged out, taking Pari along for the ride.
This far down the essence currents were pure and ferociously strong. They took hold of Pari’s wings and threw her towards the distant sky.
She flipped and tumbled, tumbled and flipped, using her lifecycles of training to gradually right herself. Things continued to spin in her vision for a few moments as she desperately tried to locate the lights.
It was the demons that guided her. They were ascending even faster than she and Arkav were, their dark wriggling bodies stark against the paler clouds of essence.
Her instincts said to follow them, and she did, fighting the currents that wanted only to send her up, and up and up.
And then a circle of golden lights. Seven. No more, no less.
They reminded her of the other lights she’d seen below. Thousands of them, beyond her ability to count, but all arranged in circles of seven. All familiar. Pari had glimpsed a mystery and she knew it would haunt her until she’d solved it.
The space shrunk down around them, smooth walls replacing open air.
We are back in the chasm under Rochant’s castle.
It occurred to her that the shoal of demons would escape into the world. Perhaps the Bringers would stop them. Perhaps the demons would feast on the Bringers.
Arkav continued alongside her. The crack in his wing seemed longer, the gap in the light there, wider. She reached down to take his hand but missed, grasping at empty air.
She tried again but this time their stretching fingers weren’t even close.
I’m going faster than him. I’m leaving him behind.
‘Arkav!’ she shouted.
He looked up at her and nodded. There was peace in his eyes. And sadness. And farewell.
‘Don’t give up now, you idiot! We’re almost home.’
He continued to look at her, until her vision blurred with tears. His lips moved but she couldn’t hear him. She didn’t need to. He loved her. He thanked her. He’d see her on the other side.
As his hand moved in a final wave, hers moved too, flicking her whip out. It snared his wrist, the barb looping around three times before catching tight. ‘You’re not getting away from me that easily!’ she cried.
It was hard to tell, but she thought her brother laughed.
The demons surged ahead of her, blasting out from the chasm and into the sky. She could make out the Bringers of Endless Order standing around the lip, diamond-tipped wands held aloft to guide her home. They watched the demons too, but did nothing to intervene.
Why am I not surprised?
Onwards and upwards went the demons, towards Lord Rochant’s floating castle. And suddenly they were rolling and twisting, contorting their bodies in a doomed attempt to change direction. Perhaps it was her imagination, but she thought she heard them screaming. Caught in the currents they were helpless to resist as their journey was taken to an abrupt and speedy end. Sharp jags of sapphire protruded from the great hunk of rock the castle was built on. They hummed with stored sunslight, like teeth, like rows of spears set before a charge.
One after another the demons were thrown onto those sharp points. One after another they burned.
Pari turned her attention to her own ascent. Angling her wings, she drifted towards the edge of the current and, as she and Arkav emerged from the chasm, they flew out into normal air, and began to glide down. Arkav landed first.
Safe! He is safe at last.
And she dropped lightly next to him.
‘Well?’ she asked. ‘Did it work?’
‘Yes,’ he replied.
‘Truly?’
‘Yes! Truly. I …’ He put a hand across his chest. ‘The hole, the … absence. It’s gone.’
She thought she’d be jubilant but she wasn’t. Mostly, it just felt like relief coupled with a hint of wariness. ‘Good. Because charming as you are, I don’t think I can go through that again.’
He opened his arms. ‘Let me hold you for a change.’
As they embraced, she shot a glare over his shoulder in the direction of the Bringers. Don’t get too comfortable. You’re next.
Chandni sat, cocooned in the dark, communing with Murderkind. It knew her questions as she did, and answered them without guile. Indeed, it had treated with her most fairly, but she could not fully relax.
There will be a catch or a trick. It is only a matter of time.
‘You will find no trickery here, Iron Purebird,’ replied the chorus of Birdkin. ‘We need no deception for you are ours. On the second point you speak true. It is a ma
tter of time, and you must be swift in your service. In times past your son was my eyes in places we could not go. He spied for me and mine, and what he saw was troubling. Many demons flocked to the Corpseman’s banner, out of order, out of shape, upsetting the balance and flow that was. Such action demands response: You. You must be my voice in places I cannot speak, to ears that will not listen.’
‘How can I speak to someone that will not listen?’
‘Not to me, but only to me. For you, my Iron Purebird, they will make time, they will attend your every breath, and you will make them attend me.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Another Prince of the Wild, a peer, an adversary, a fellow victim of the Corpseman’s plans. Bring them to me with warm eyes so we might bury our grievances in the Corpseman’s flesh.’
‘You wish to make an alliance with this other prince?’
The Birdkin cawed derisively, then spoke in one voice. ‘We desire it not, and yet it must be done. Prince Kennelgrove is a trickster, a curse mother, a false-jointed thief. But even that is preferable to the strange destroyer, that is the Corpseman, this walking death that spreads itself among us like a sickness, unseen and unstoppable. Do this for me, Iron Purebird.’
Chandni could not see its face, but she felt for it in the dark, so she could look directly at Murderkind and reply. ‘I dealt for the life I wanted first. A family. A home. The return of my son, time with my lover.’
‘Do this first or there will be none of these things. The Corpseman cares little for your pacts or mine.’
‘Very well. I will do this for you, but that does not mean I will run your errands every time you ask.’
‘So be it.’
‘Where can I find Prince Kennelgrove?’
‘Those that hate you know the way. Your white-faced friend can take you to them.’
Before she could reply, cracks of light broke through the darkness, bright and brighter red, and gold that was brighter still. Chandni squeezed her eyes shut against the sudden intrusion. As Murderkind pulled away, she shivered, suddenly aware of the cold air rushing in.
In moments, it was gone, leaving the forest unusually quiet. The Birdkin had gone too, scattering, shrieking and, it seemed to Chandni, laughing. She now sat between the trees aware that above her, night was retreating, pulling back as the three suns rose.
A single Birdkin remained, black feathered, with a white beak and a thoughtful demeanour. It stood ten feet from her, regarding her with a compound eye.
‘Hello,’ she said.
The Birdkin circled her, walking slowly, one eye on her at all times. She sat up straighter and lifted her chin. ‘Is there something you want?’
It came to a stop on her right side, twitching its head at an angle, and hopped forward.
Of course, thought Chandni. The blood.
Three times she’d cut herself, once for each of her crimes. The blood was still fresh on her right arm. Even in the day blood could draw out the demons of the Wild, and the suns were barely in the sky. The Birdkin looked at the wounds, then up at her in a quick gesture, then to the wounds, then back to her.
Chandni shivered. This creature was probably only the first of many.
‘My blood is not yours to take,’ she said as imperiously as she could. ‘It belongs to Murderkind.’
The Birdkin gave her a knowing look.
‘Did Murderkind send you to me?’
The Birdkin nodded and hopped forward again. She forced herself to appear calm as it examined the three cuts close up, each in turn. Then a second time, its beak hovering over each one for less than a heartbeat. On the third pass the beak flashed down, nipping the highest wound closed.
Chandni marvelled as she saw the torn flesh rejoined, the cut replaced by a clean white scar. ‘Thank you,’ she said as the Birdkin considered the second cut. ‘My name is Chandni.’
It looked up at her sharply and she felt as she had as a girl when interrupting her mother’s work. ‘Cha-aan,’ it replied in a tone that was equal parts greeting and admonishment.
The second wound was closed as swiftly as the first. The blood around the cut had vanished too and she wondered if that was the price of the healing or if the creature simply took pride in its work. I hope it’s the latter.
She didn’t mean to interrupt it again but the words slipped out. ‘Do you have a name?’
The Birdkin gave her a glare and then dipped its head towards the last cut, opening its beak wide. A proboscis levered out from deep in its throat, plunging into her arm.
It should have hurt, but that part of Chandni’s body no longer felt pain. No longer felt anything. And yet, for the first time in years, she had a tingle of sensation deep within her forearm. Another shiver took her body and as it did so a thought bloomed in her mind:
Crowflies.
When she looked at the Birdkin again, the third wound was closed and clean.
‘Your name is Crowflies?’
It nodded its head.
‘Thank you, Crowflies. Please pass on my thanks to your master.’ She stood up carefully, swaying as a brief wave of dizziness passed through her. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I ought to find my friends. They’ll be worried.’ This was easier said than done, though, given how lost she was.
Crowflies rose into the air with a flap of its wings and landed on a nearby branch.
‘Cha-aan!’
‘Yes?’
‘Cha-aan!’ it said again, holding her gaze. When she walked towards it, it flew away, further into the forest.
With no better options, Chandni did her best to keep up.
Sa-at found the castle bewildering. They seemed to be underground but he knew they were in the sky. How could you be under the earth and in the air at the same time? The tunnels under the castle twisted and turned constantly, and there were no stars, no suns, nothing to navigate against.
The uniformity of the walls also puzzled him. In the Wild every tree was different, every bush characterful. They stuck in the mind. He knew them even if they moved. But here, the personality had been smoothed off the stone. How was he to tell one from another?
He knew that somewhere above the suns shone brightly, but not a shred of their light penetrated this far down. The only illumination came from sapphires set into the walls at regular intervals. He touched each one as they passed. They were cool under his fingers, but not cold like the stone. In places natural veins of sapphire could be seen making glittering patterns. They weren’t as bright as the crafted gemslights but he thought they looked nicer.
More than once he’d been distracted by his surroundings and almost lost sight of Roh. The old woman wasn’t stopping for anything, forcing him and Tal to match her pace. She was making a strange noise as she walked, reminding Sa-at of much bigger beasts from the Wild. A sort of huffing, angry exhalation.
Like a big grumpy Bearkin.
The thought made Sa-at snort and the other two shot him a glare.
‘Ssh!’ said Tal.
They continued in silence, past several small doors set into the wall.
‘What are they?’ asked Sa-at.
‘Cells,’ replied Tal in hushed voice.
‘What’s a cell?’
‘Ssh!’
Sa-at resolved to ask Rochant when they got back.
Eventually the tunnels became less uniform, the kind carved naturally rather than by hand. Sa-at preferred this, though Tal bumped his head on the irregular ceiling several times. There were no lights down here but Roh didn’t slow.
‘I don’t like this,’ he whispered to Tal.
‘Me neither,’ replied his friend.
Without either of them saying anything, they found each other’s hands in the dark. Things felt a little better after that. They followed Roh’s breathing through the darkness. The air became chill and Sa-at’s other hand brushed against something that was not stone. It was hard, cold, and damp. It swung away from his touch, then swung back, nudging him, hard.
‘It smells o
f death down here.’
‘And so it should,’ chuckled Roh. ‘Have to store the meat somewhere.’
Sa-at stopped to think about that. He reached out again. Yes. It was dead flesh. A great carcass suspended from the ceiling. He soon found more of them, setting each in motion with a gentle push.
A growl sounded nearby. Tal squeezed Sa-at’s hand. Sa-at squeezed back.
‘W-what’s that?’ asked Tal.
‘That’s my boy,’ replied Roh. ‘Always tell the staff to take meat from the front, never from the back. But people are stupid. Oh yes, they are. Especially the young ones. Old age doesn’t make you clever, but youth makes idiots of us all. So when one of my young idiots comes down here to get supplies, my lovely boy keeps them near the front.’
Sa-at wasn’t sure if Roh was referring to her child or something else but he didn’t ask. The old cook scared him.
Chains rattled in the dark and then there was the sound of padded feet on stone and a soft whump of impact.
‘There you are!’ said Roh, and Sa-at heard scratching, slurping, and a happy whine. ‘Missed old Roh, didn’t you, you soppy thing. You love old Roh, don’t you? Yes, you do. You love her.’ There were more slurping noises. ‘I brought you something. Here you are. Not much mind; have to keep you hungry or you’ll get soft. Can’t have you being too friendly, can we?’
A wet mouth chomped industriously in the dark.
After a few satisfied grunts, they heard Roh’s voice again. ‘This way. Not far now.’
Another stumble in the dark, another turn, and they arrived.
Roh pulled on some fabric, the rustle echoing in the cold space, and suddenly there was light, soft and blue and beautiful. Sa-at gasped. He had never seen anything like it before. To his eyes it looked like a sleeping crystal giant. Its skin glowed like the gems on the castle walls, from fingertips to toes. But the thing that struck him most were the wings. Large and curling, like Crowflies’ at full extension but shaped differently. There was no sign of the bone beneath or an ability to flex or flap or close. They just looked permanently, perfectly open.
Roh reached out and pinched Sa-at’s arm, then she pinched Tal’s.