Against the Unweaving

by D. P. Prior

  Once the droning stopped, the wall parted, and Shadrak led them along another identical corridor. The wall opened to admit them to a spherical chamber dominated by a bedizened plinth flashing with pinpricks of multicoloured light and topped with black mirrors, across which symbols etched in light raced. A steady hiss like a gentle wind sounded in the background.

  Rhiannon lingered in the corridor, staring at the floor. Shadrak had already moved to the plinth and was gazing at the mirrors while tapping buttons and twisting knobs. Rhiannon stooped to pick something up—a slender loop of wire that ran between two short wooden rods. She turned her face toward Shader and raised her eyebrows. Shader shrugged, and Rhiannon shook her head, pocketing the contraption. It looked like something you might slice cheese with.

  “The plane ship is huge,” Shadrak said as three ovoid stools twirled up from the floor and he gestured for them to be seated. “Way bigger than the summit of the Homestead. Goes right through it and beyond.”

  As soon as Shader lowered himself onto a stool, pliant silver straps wrapped around his waist and over his shoulders. Rhiannon stepped back, and Shadrak sighed.

  “Safety precaution. When this thing moves, it gets a bit weird. Trust me, you’re better off strapped in.”

  “Like I’m gonna trust you,” Rhiannon said, but she sat down nonetheless, laying Callixus’s sword across her lap.

  Shadrak sat and let himself be strapped in, and the background hiss gave way to a sound like the droning of a thousand bees. Shader’s stomach did a lazy flip-flop, and his body felt oddly weightless. When he looked at his arms, they lacked substance. He was as ethereal as Callixus had been.

  “Don’t suppose you’re going to tell us how you came by this thing,” Shader said, fighting back the urge to vomit.

  “It was beneath Sarum for years. Found it by chance.” Shadrak looked away pensively, as if replaying old memories. He shook his head and glanced at one of the black mirrors. “Never knew what it was till recently, and I ain’t never done nothing like this.”

  “Like what?” Rhiannon asked.

  Shadrak ignored her. He seemed rapt by whatever was in the mirror.

  Shader saw what looked like a painting of a barren wasteland dominated by a lone mountain—no, it wasn’t a mountain: it was too perfect, too symmetrical. More of a cone, formed from black rock—obsidian perhaps—and veined with what looked like malachite. The cone grew larger, and the angle of the image changed.

  “That must be it,” Shadrak said. “I’m just going on instructions, but that has got to be the Perfect Peak, Sektis Gandaw’s scarolite mountain.”

  “Scarolite?” Rhiannon said.

  “Yeah. Whatever that means,” Shadrak said. “But this is where the shit’s gonna kick off, apparently. When the Unweaving starts, this is where it’ll spread out from.”

  “How do you know all this?” Shader asked. “Aristodeus?”

  Shadrak frowned and shook his head. “Never you mind, mate. Just be grateful I got us here, right?”

  The black mountain started to shimmer. The room pitched, and Shader found himself suspended above the plinth, held only by the restraints. Then he was falling to the left, the whole room rolling with him. An abrupt halt, as if they’d slammed into something, and he was upright again. And then the room began gyring at a giddying speed, Shadrak and Rhiannon broken blurs that were torn apart by invisible forces. Just as abruptly, the spinning stopped, and Rhiannon flopped forward against her straps.

  “Shit!” Shadrak said.

  Shader’s stomach hit his mouth, and the plane ship plummeted.

  THE SOUR MARSH

  “Tell me this is supposed to happen,” Rhiannon cried over the wail of klaxons.

  Shader braced himself and gritted his teeth.

  The plane ship fell and fell, the background susurrus now a torrent of raging water.

  “Something hit us,” Shadrak yelled. “Some kind of force from the mountain. That ain’t s’posed to happen. This ship passes through walls.”

  “Gandaw?” Shader had to shout to be heard.

  Silence.

  They were no longer falling.

  He forced his body to relax.

  “I think we’ve crashed,” Shadrak said as his restraints released him and he moved to the plinth.

  Shader’s straps retracted and he stood, but Rhiannon remained seated, wincing, her cheeks bulging, as if she were going to be sick.

  “But there was no—” He was going to say impact.

  “Plane ship,” Shadrak said, as if that were answer enough. When Shader shrugged his incomprehension, the albino explained. “She merged with the sewers of Sarum, passed right through the rock of the Homestead. But to answer your other question, yes, it must’ve been Gandaw. I was told this is one of his ships.”

  “Told by whom?” Shader asked.

  Shadrak pointedly ignored him. “Everything’s still working.” He peered into a mirror. “We’re just not where we’re s’posed to be.”

  “Was it a barrier of some sort?” Rhiannon finally stood and drew in a long breath. “Around the mountain?”

  “Not as stupid as you look,” Shadrak said.

  Rhiannon bristled but bit her tongue. Shader sidled closer, but she had eyes only for Shadrak as she leaned on the black sword and glowered.

  “Ain’t the foggiest how this works.” Shadrak slapped the side of a different mirror and waggled a lever. “But something tells me it’s meant to show what’s outside.”

  Shader stooped to look at the mirror. At first it seemed blank, as black as the Void, but then he discerned ripples of movement, bubbles and dark detritus that oozed across the surface.

  “We’ll have to do this the ol’ fashioned way,” Shadrak said, scurrying across the chamber and tapping a panel. A section of the wall slid open onto an endless corridor. “Stay here, if you like, but I’m going outside to see if it’s started. I’m dying to see what the end of everything looks like.”

  “Oakendale,” Rhiannon muttered, but Shadrak had already gone.

  Or Britannia, Shader thought. At least that’s what they would have said in Aeterna.

  “Are you really going to use that?” Shader said, indicating the black sword.

  “Too bloody right.” Rhiannon shouldered the blade. “I’m not trusting my arse to Nous, if that’s what you’re thinking. Did that before, and look where it got me.”

  “Then you’ll need something to keep it in,” Shader said, “so you don’t trip over it and lop your leg off.” He unbuckled his belt and slid it through the loops of the scabbard holding his longsword. He removed the sword and propped it against the plinth, then handed the scabbard to Rhiannon. “Should fit.”

  “Don’t I need a something to hang it from?” Rhiannon asked as Shader re-buckled the belt and adjusted the gladius’s scabbard so that it hung just behind his hip.

  “Here.” He pressed close to her and reached for the knot of the rope that cinched her robe.

  Rhiannon flinched and pulled back.

  “Sorry,” Shader said, raising his hands. “I wasn’t thinking.” Wasn’t thinking about Gaston, and what he’d done to her.

  Rhiannon shut her eyes and steepled her fingers over her lips. “No, it’s OK. I just… You know.”

  Shader resumed his work on the knot, careful not to make any other contact.

  “I should be good at this now,” he said. “What with all those hours of meditating on the prayer cord.”

  Rhiannon scoffed. “You expect me to believe that?”

  “See,” Shader said with a little fanfare as the rope belt came away. “I’ll be a luminary in no time.”

  Rhiannon gave a slow handclap. “Deacon Shader, raised to the altars. Just don’t expect me to pray to you.”

  Shader threaded the rope through the back of the scabbard and then fastened it over Rhiannon’s shoulder. She handed the black sword to him, and he recoiled. The air around the hilt was icy, and waves of darkness danced along the blade like a deathly mia
sma.

  “You get used to it,” Rhiannon said.

  “Not sure I want to.” Shader took the sword and hurriedly sheathed it on her back. “Might be a bit awkward, drawing it from behind, but it’s the best I can do for now.”

  Rhiannon studied him for a moment and then dropped her eyes.

  “Thanks,” she said, before starting down the corridor.

  Shadrak was on his way back as Shader followed her out the chamber.

  “Lower level’s submerged,” he said. “Mud and slime. P’raps if we go up a floor or two…”

  He located another panel, tapped out a sequence, and then led the way into a cubicle. After a moment’s whirring and whining, the wall parted, and they emerged onto an identical passageway that terminated in a blank silver wall split down the middle. More button pressing, and this one slid open onto a vista so alien that Shader could only gawp.

  An immense milky disk bathed the encroaching gloam with a consumptive pallor. At first, he thought it was an ailing sun, but once his eyes adjusted and he took in the surrounding darkness, he realized it was a moon—so close it seemed to sit on the horizon. Two more disks hung higher in the night sky, one as large as the moon back home, the other small and remote, seeming to trail its larger companion like the runt of the litter. They were set in deep cobalt skies that draped heavy above stooped mangroves and tangled briars. The ground squelched as he stepped from the plane ship, the loamy surface sucking greedily at his boot.

  The sickly light of the closest moon washed the undergrowth with argent, granted it a sheen of unreality.

  “Aethir,” Shadrak muttered, pink eyes drinking it all in. “Feels weird… like a dream…”

  “Isn’t that what it is?” Rhiannon said. “The Cynocephalus’s dream? That’s what Elias used to say.”

  If she still grieved the bard’s death, she didn’t show it. She was too enraptured by the new surroundings.

  “Not any dream, though,” Shadrak said, as if Rhiannon hadn’t spoken. “My dream. Like I’ve seen all this before.” He hopped nimbly to a mound that protruded like an island amid the wetland.

  Rhiannon gripped Shader’s shoulder for support and lunged up beside the assassin.

  Shader fought his boot free of the mire with a slurp of hungry mud and set it down on the firmer ground of the elevation.

  “You think maybe Gandaw’s hoping we’ll get stuck in the bog?” Rhiannon said, wrinkling her nose.

  Shadrak crouched and felt the grass atop the knoll. He scanned the tangled brush like a predator sniffing for prey.

  Something pricked Shader’s neck, and he slapped it away. He struck a pulpy body as large as a sparrow. Rhiannon squealed and whacked at her legs. Shadrak calmly pulled his hood up and all but vanished beneath his cloak.

  “So, where to now?” Rhiannon swished her arm around to fend off more circling insects.

  “Not sure.” Shadrak’s voice was low and uninflected beneath his hood. He may have been thinking. “I was directed to the mountain. Didn’t say nothing about this.”

  Shader did up the buttons of his coat and pulled his hat low over his face. The stench of decaying vegetation rose from the ground like a contagion.

  “Can you locate it on the mirrors in the plane ship?”

  Shadrak stood. “No need. Assuming this place ain’t completely screwed, the mountain’s south from here. Maybe a little to the east.”

  “How can you tell?” Rhiannon’s question was loaded with derision.

  “I’m very observant,” Shadrak said. It could have been a warning. “Look.” He pointed into the murk. “The marsh there is studded with islands like this.”

  Shader followed the albino’s finger but couldn’t make anything out. The low ground was a black abyss to his eyes. As far as he knew, he could take a step in that direction and plunge into empty space. Shadrak’s eyes were undoubtedly keener. Maybe that was a result of the kind of work he excelled at; either that or something more innate.

  “Great,” Rhiannon said. “Let’s play stepping stones and see who goes under first.”

  “Just follow me.” Shadrak leapt into the darkness, and it swallowed him whole.

  “And how are we meant to do that?” Rhiannon called after him. “Can’t see a bloody thing. And don’t go giving me that crap about you being Shadrak the Unseen.”

  Fire flared and then settled into a controlled glow. It came from a stick of light in Shadrak’s hand that revealed his flickering face. Without a word, Rhiannon jumped toward him. Shader drew the gladius and, as he’d hoped, the blade gave off a soft golden dweomer. Holding the sword aloft, he sprang after Rhiannon.

  Something about the swamp muffled their footfalls and thickened the air with a pall of foreboding. Rhiannon followed Shadrak’s thin light, gingerly finding her balance before each flurried leap, and Shader went next, the glow of the gladius picking out the white of her Nousian robe.

  Shadrak waited for them at the foot of a bank that sloped sheerly above the mire. As Shader reached firm ground, he started. Something plopped in the sludge behind him. The head of a maggot-like creature tasted the air with its circular maw, which was ringed with jagged razors. It was as big as a man’s forearm and segmented like a worm. Shader instinctively took a step back and bumped into Rhiannon, who was muttering and wringing out rank water that had soaked into the hem of her robe. She slipped, but he caught her arm, and when she steadied herself, her face wrinkled in revulsion at the thing squirming in the bog. The maggot emitted a hiss and then rolled languidly beneath the oozing surface.

  More bubbles erupted across the mire, and the fetid grubs began to pop up in clusters, their writhing giving the impression that the swamp itself was alive and hungry.

  “Ugly scuts, ain’t they?” Shadrak said when he reached the top of the bank.

  Shader jogged up the slope beside him, leaving Rhiannon hypnotized by the wriggling horrors and the staccato hisses they spat like sinister whispers.

  The swamp spread endlessly away from the far side of the bank, an ocean of mire tufted with reeds and overhung with drooping boughs. Clouds of insects scoured the marsh in search of blood, and the ripples of the emerging maggots seemed to have no bounds.

  “This ship of yours—” Shader started.

  “Was set to go to the mountain,” Shadrak said, rubbing his bearded chin. “No point trying again. Whatever force hit us last time is most likely still in place. Mind you, I might be able to hop the ship in a random direction. Anything’s gotta be better than this.”

  “What’s that?” Shader pointed at a hazy ball of golden light that winked into existence above a strip of dry land to their left. It hovered for a moment, and he had the sense it was watching them. It drifted away a few yards before returning.

  “What is it, a dog playing fetch?” Shadrak said.

  The sphere moved off again, a little farther this time, then swiftly returned.

  “Don’t like it,” Shadrak said. “Marsh gas don’t move like that, and my moth… Kadee,” he corrected, “someone I’d trust with my life, told me stories about lights in swamps that lead people to their deaths. Let’s get back to the ship.”

  “Agreed,” Shader said.

  They trudged back down the bank, and Shadrak led the way from one small island to the next. If it were possible, everyone was even more careful with their footing on the return journey.

  “How come you can find the ship?” Rhiannon asked as Shadrak stood with hands on hips surveying the purplish haze. “All looks the same to me.”

  “Perfect memory,” Shadrak said, tapping his temples. “And I’d swear this is where we exited.”

  “It is,” Shader said, crouching down to study the footprints they’d left leaving the craft. They emerged from nowhere, which he supposed was where the entrance should be.

  Shadrak walked ahead with his arms extended like a blind man’s.

  “He’s shogging lost it,” Rhiannon said. “I don’t bloody believe it.”

  “It was here,
” Shadrak insisted, turning on her with his eyes narrowed to pinkish slits. “Something’s happened.”

  “The swamp?” Shader said.

  “Yeah, maybe it just swallowed it.” Rhiannon hugged her arms tightly across her chest.

  Shadrak chewed at his thumbnail, nodding to himself, as if he were running through all the possibilities one at a time.

  “That don’t make sense,” he said. “The ship ain’t solid, ’cept when it wants to be. Least that’s how it looks to me.”

  “So what, then?” Rhiannon said.

  “Must’ve left by itself,” Shadrak said. “Unless it was taken.”

  Shader looked back across the bubbling mire and drew in a deep breath. “Leaves us with just one choice,” he said, raising the gladius and leaping for the first island, not waiting to see if the others followed.

  ***

  The maggots posed no threat—as long as they stayed out of the water. Shader mistimed a jump and landed knee-deep in the mire. One of the creatures immediately latched on to his boot, but in an instant he scraped it off with the gladius. It left a trail of putrid ichor on the blade, and there were puncture marks in the leather of his boot. After that, he never missed another jump.

  The ground became firmer as they made their way south—at least, the way Shadrak said was south. The sphere of golden luminescence took a parallel course, always just behind, weaving in and out of the mangroves, pausing when they paused, resuming when they resumed. Shadrak barely took his eyes off it, and frequently hung back to check nothing else was following them. Finally, he drew his black cloak about him, buried his face in the hood, and slunk off into the brush, as if he planned to stalk the sphere.

  Rhiannon walked with Shader, so close they could have been a couple. Once or twice, Shader thought she was going to take his hand, and even moved a little nearer, hoping that she would. There was something discomfiting about the marsh, he told himself, and Rhiannon’s presence seemed to anchor him.