by D. P. Prior
Shader whirled, skewering a lizard-man, spinning past a spear tip, and ducking beneath a club to eviscerate its wielder. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Shadrak emerge from the trees, shrouded in black and flinging razor stars with deadly accuracy. Two lizard-men fell before they could reach him, and then the assassin tumbled in among a group, stabbing with two daggers, bobbing and weaving.
Rhiannon threw the black sword up to block a club, but the impact sent her sprawling into Shader.
Skeyr Magnus regained his feet and yelled something that was drowned out by the din of battle. The cordon of lizard-men pressed in, and Shadrak was lost from sight. Shader stabbed another, but the blade got caught between the creature’s ribs. As he strove to pull it free, the lizard-men behind shoved, and the creature fell on top of him. Rhiannon drove the black sword through its head and swung to intercept an axe blow. Shader rolled to his knees, parried an overhead strike from a club and slashed his blade across the attacker’s thighs.
Shadrak tumbled in beside them, sprang to his feet with a dagger in either hand, and jabbed left and right, each time finding his mark.
“What did you have to fire for?” Rhiannon yelled as she dodged an axe and hacked down, smashing through scales and bone.
Shadrak was too busy to answer, stepping and turning like a dancer, punching repeatedly with his daggers. Shader took a blow to the right shoulder, and his arm went numb. He switched the gladius to his left hand and slashed it across the creature’s face.
A massive lizard-man reared up, swinging an axe with a two-handed grip. Shader turned to meet it, but an arrow ripped through its neck, and the giant toppled. Two more arrows cut into the lizard-men in rapid succession, and a tremor ran through the massed attackers. Another arrow struck, and then the lizard-men were running for the trees with Skeyr Magnus leading the way, his arms and legs pumping furiously, looking like nothing so much as a panicked chicken. Within moments, the clearing was still, and then a tall man stepped into view.
Shadrak drew his arm back to hurl a knife, but Shader caught hold of his wrist. Before anyone knew what was happening, the albino had slashed the back of his hand with his other dagger. Rhiannon punched him full in the face, and Shadrak stumbled backward.
“I’m sorry,” he said to Shader. “I—”
“Heat of battle,” Shader said. “Happens all the time.”
He was about to apply pressure with his hand, when he felt warmth radiating from the hilt of the gladius.
“Not to me,” Shadrak said, staring at the ground. “Won’t happen again.”
“Too bloody right it won’t,” Rhiannon said. “Want me to bandage that?”
“No need,” Shader said. The bleeding had stopped, and new skin had already formed over the wound.
“What the shog?” Rhiannon said.
Shadrak looked up, and his eyes narrowed. If he was spooked by the healing, he was giving nothing away.
Shader sheathed the gladius, shook his head, and turned to face the newcomer.
The man was dressed in browns and greens that could have been woven from the undergrowth. A thick cloak hung to his ankles, its colors shifting to match the trees behind it. His face was angular, his complexion fair. The tips of pointed ears poked through shoulder-length golden hair, but it was the eyes that were his most arresting feature: like softly lit verdigris, unwavering and yet gentle, seeing more than Shader wished to reveal. A quiver of arrows poked over one of the man’s shoulders, and he held a recurve bow in his left hand.
A half-grin curled one side of Rhiannon’s mouth. “Don’t tell me,” she said. “You’re an elf? Now I’ve seen everything.”
The man raised an eyebrow. “If it can be dreamed, then it is likely to exist. Like a maiden with a black sword, a warrior with an enchanted blade, and a homunculus with a pistol.”
Shadrak scraped his dagger blades against each other. “Homunculus? What’s that s’posed to mean?”
“Pistol?” Rhiannon said. “You mean that piece of Aeterna-tech he keeps waving around like he’s gotta compensate?”
“Shog off,” Shadrak said. “And it ain’t from Aeterna, so it can’t be Aeterna-tech, got it?”
“Ancient-tech, then. Point about compensating’s the same, though.”
The elf gave a deep bow. “Forgive me. I make too many assumptions. Too much time alone in the Sour Marsh has robbed me of my manners. Please, allow me to start again. I am Gilbrum Eloha, an elf of Qlippoth.”
Shader removed his hat and held it to his chest. He ran his fingers through the matted dampness of his hair. “The land of nightmares? Or was the lizard-man lying?”
“Skeyr Magnus?” Gilbrum said. “No, he speaks sooth, though he knows as little as his maker of the lands beyond the Farfall Mountains. Mayhap you Malkuthians know no more.” He indicated the jagged peaks with a wave of his bow. “Ours is a world divided, like night and day. The side of the Farfalls you call Malkuth was a place of sweet dreams until the Technocrat came from Earth. There is still great goodness in Malkuth, but Gandaw’s creations have wreaked much harm, and he has introduced life-forms alien to Aethir. Your kind, for example, the folk of New Jerusalem and its satellites.”
“Jerusalem?” Rhiannon said with a glance at Shader. “Isn’t that—?”
Shader silenced her with a hand. The mythical holy city mentioned in the Liber. It seemed that Earth and Aethir had certain things in common. This word, ‘Qlippoth’ he’d also seen in scripture. ‘Malkuth’ too, was a name dotted throughout the Liber, derived from an archaic language that only a few scholars in Aeterna understood. Adeptus Ludo, Shader’s mentor in the seminary, was one such. Try as he might, Shader couldn’t recall the meaning of either of them, but Jerusalem was a different matter: the City of the Luminaries. The place where Ain would be revealed in all his glory.
“You are not from New Jerusalem?” Gilbrum said.
“We’re not from Aethir,” Shader replied. “We came here from Earth in a…” He looked at Shadrak for help.
“Plane ship,” the assassin hissed through clenched teeth.
Gilbrum narrowed his eyes and studied Shadrak for a moment. “Yes, I have heard of such things. Vessels of Sektis Gandaw. It was your people, was it not, who taught him the mysteries of travel between the worlds?”
“If you mean humans,” Shadrak said, pointedly returning his blades to his baldric.
Gilbrum frowned but did not pursue the matter. “You two—” He indicated Shader and Rhiannon. “—wear the apparel of Maldark’s dwarves, though the symbol is different.”
“You knew Maldark?” Shader said.
“I know of his fall.”
Shader sighed. There was more to the story the elf presumably hadn’t heard, but now was not the time. “We are consecrated to Nous.”
Rhiannon thrust the point of the black sword into the ground and tapped out a rhythm on the pommel, seemingly unaware she was doing it. The black flames dancing along the blade kept time.
“I know nothing of this Nous,” Gilbrum said, eyeing Rhiannon warily. “Only what the Creator dreams. These things are mysteries to him, truths warped by the Liche Lord.”
“Blightey?” Shader said. “You’ve heard of him here?”
Gilbrum shrugged. “Is there any place not darkened by his touch? Even the Creator’s abode was not immune, and he still shudders at the memory. But Maldark’s fall had another source, one even more corrosive. Gandaw may have duped him, but there is always a hidden root to deception.”
“The Demiurgos?” Rhiannon said. “The Cynocephalus’s father?”
“The Creator is thus afflicted,” Gilbrum said. “But, yes, that is so. Maldark’s dwarves held to the form of religion while denying its power to save. They professed faith, but relied on their own judgment, and in the end, it was hubris that allowed Gandaw to sway them.”
Shader recalled Maldark speaking about how Gandaw had convinced the dwarves to betray the Hybrids and almost brought about the Unweaving once before.
“There is a home the Creator longs for,” Gilbrum continued. “A realm beyond the Void, where gods are men, and the mysteries are ever more ineffable. But he has never seen it, and never will. He remains where he was sired, cocooned within Aethir, which he dreamed for his own protection.”
Shader was about to ask what that meant, but Gilbrum’s green eyes flicked to the left, and he took a firm grip on his bow.
“Gandaw’s aberrations are returning—the lizard-men. Where are you heading? If you will permit it, I can lead you to the bounds of the marsh.”
“The Perfect Peak,” Shadrak said, thumbing in the direction they’d come from.
“The mountain of Sektis Gandaw? Then why are you traveling away from it?”
“Because he followed a glowing sphere.” Rhiannon cocked her head at Shader.
Shadrak rolled his pinkish eyes. “What did I say?”
“More to the point,” Rhiannon said, “where the shog were you?”
“Tracking your pursuers,” Shadrak said. “This sort of thing always happens when I work with amateurs.”
Gilbrum looked at Shader. “This sphere you saw, it was a wisp, a denizen of Qlippoth. Normally, no creatures from the nightmare realm can cross the Farfalls, but the pollution that has grown into the Sour Marsh has eroded a passage.”
“Pollution?”
“Noxious rains from Qlippoth have seeped into the mountains. Over the centuries, they have formed a stream into Malkuth, spreading like mold, a cancer devouring the earth with calculated malice. The Sour Marsh is sentient, a unified whole.”
“It’s alive?” Rhiannon asked.
“One vast entity. An ocean of evil. Its entrance into Malkuth has brought others—parasites, like the creatures that inhabit the mire, and tempters like the wisps. It is a good thing the lizard-men stopped you, else you would have crossed the mountains and been lost.”
“So, what about you?” Rhiannon asked, yanking the black sword from the ground and slipping the scabbard over her shoulder so she could sheathe it. “You said you’re an elf from Qlippoth. Doesn’t exactly inspire much trust.”
Gilbrum swirled his cloak about him and vanished into the undergrowth. Shader’s hand went to his gladius, and Rhiannon swore. Shadrak half-drew his pistol, but an instant later, the elf reappeared.
THE STOWAWAY
Stealing Shadrak’s plane ship seemed like the right thing to do—well, not right, exactly, but pragmatic. Opportune, even.
Albert hadn’t wanted to get involved in this mess in the first place, but all along he’d been cajoled, bullied, forced against his will. First by Master Frayn on that ill-fated attack on Dead Man’s Torch, and then by Shadrak, who’d rescued him from those skull-headed nightmares, only to thrust him headlong into a battle that was better off fought by those with the requisite training.
Watching Shadrak operate the controls en route to the Homestead had given him the idea, and finding the entrance to the plane ship on the ledge during the battle had been such a stroke of luck, Albert might have almost called it providential. Might, but not quite. Problem was, it had taken him forever to find the control room, and by the time he had, there were footsteps approaching. He hid in a shiny closet so immaculately clean it could conceivably have passed Mumsy’s dust inspection. Not any longer, though. Not after the ship had lurched and juddered and tipped him upside down, and he’d spewed his guts all over those pristine surfaces. He endured an agony of waiting before he heard them leave—Shadrak and two others: a man and a woman. Wherever it was they’d chosen to come, it didn’t sound exactly pleasant, judging by the snatches of conversation he picked up. Not his kind of thing at all.
He crept out of hiding and immediately set about finding a way to turn the situation to his advantage. Leaving Shadrak stranded would be just deserts for dumping him in the thick of things without so much as a by your leave.
A thing like the plane ship could take you anywhere, with a bit of practice. Anywhere but the Homestead would do just fine for starters, so long as it wasn’t smack-bang in the middle of the mess Shadrak had rescued him from. Best of all, though, would be if he could get it to take him home to Sarum, so he could capitalize on the disaster that had befallen his brother Sicarii at Dead Man’s Torch.
It looked simple enough to control; it was just a matter of moving around shapes on little black mirrors. When you’d worked through as many cook books as Albert had, when you’d digested everything there was to know about what the Ancients called chemical composition from every extant tome on the subject—and quite a few that weren’t supposed to be extant—pressing and swiping glowing shapes in a certain sequence was a doddle—in theory, at least. With an eeny, meeny, miny, moe, he selected a flashing yellow triangle and tapped it. It grew larger and turned green. At the bottom of the mirror, a cross lit up, also green. Albert grinned and swiped the triangle down toward the cross; after all, what could be simpler than ‘X’ marks the spot?
The room tilted, and Albert cried out and clung to the control plinth.
Don’t play with someone’s else’s toys, Mumsy used to say, and for once he was wishing he’d listened. His legs scissored in the air behind him, loose change cascading from his trouser pockets like hale on a tin roof. A klaxon blared briefly then shut off as the floor came level once more, and Albert heaved a sigh of relief. He could have used a shot of brandy, or something stronger, to settle his roiling guts. Once this was over—
“Nooo,” Albert wailed as his feet flipped over his head, and he found his face pressed against the cold hard surface of one of the black mirrors. Lights zipped across his vision in a kaleidoscopic blur, and acid bile swilled into his mouth. “Stop it moving, stop it moving, stop it—” An obnoxiously pungent reflux interrupted his prayer before it led to rapture. Not that he was praying to anyone in particular, mind; it was more like a message in a bottle.
The room slammed down again, and Albert shot across the floor arse over head until his feet hit the wall. He couldn’t quite situate the rest of his body: his stomach was practically smothering him, his chin was in his chest, and his trouser legs were cutting into his knees where they had run up his shins. Just his rotten luck if someone came in right now and caught sight of his lilly-white calves hanging like bloated sausages somewhere behind that infernal strip of black hair that was forever slipping toward the nape of his neck. Not the most practical position for breathing, perhaps, lying supine with your feet above your head, but at least it had gone still. Very still, in fact. Silent, even.
Before he dared move, Albert’s hand crept into his jacket pocket in search of the reassurance his cheese-cutter always brought. It was an old friend, a faithful aid, equally at home in the kitchen as wrapped around a victim’s throat. He inside-outed the pocket, scrunched at the fabric, did the same with the other pocket, and then, in a paroxysm of terror far greater than he’d just experienced following his experiment in flying the plane ship, he flopped to his side and flipped to his knees, all the better to pat himself down.
It was gone. Gone and most certainly gone. The pats turned to slaps, which turned to thumps, the last of which was aimed at his forehead. This was insufferable, intolerable, inconceivable. He never ceased fiddling with the cheese-cutter; it was always between his thumb and forefinger, like a Nousian’s prayer cord, only infinitely more useful. The habit was so ingrained as to be unconscious. Perhaps it was so unconscious as to have been forgotten. Albert glanced around the chamber, dived in among his scattered coinage, and put his face to the ground like a bloodhound.
“Bloody shitting hell and shogging scu—” He clamped his mouth shut before he could say the unmentionable word. Even now, so many years after her unfortunate death, he winced at the slap Mumsy would have given him—right on the lughole, as she would have put it, sending shockwaves through his skull that would gradually ebb away to a persistent ringing. He was sure she dislodged a year’s worth of memories with every clout. If nothing else, the recollection of the old bat gave him pause for thought and
allowed him to reassert the rational over the primitive mind. It took a lot these days for Albert to lose control, and loss of control was a habit he couldn’t afford to slip back into. Not in his line of work.
“Master poisoner,” he reminded himself. “Deadly assassin.” Not to mention consummate observer, reader of people, and devilishly devious criminal mastermind. If you say it enough, you’ll believe it, Papa had always said; and if you believe it long enough, it will come true.
“Crowd out the negative.” Albert gave a sharp clap as he stood. “Define yourself.”
He stooped to roll down his trouser legs, tugging them smooth over the tops of his shoes. His heart still ricocheted from the loss of the cheese-cutter, but his mind was back where it belonged, firmly grasping the reins.
The lights on the control plinth had gone out, leaving the black mirrors blank as the Void. He gave one a sharp slap on the side of its casing, and it flickered to life, revealing an image of a desert studded with craggy rocks and what looked like enormous craters. He peered closer to get a better look, but the image broke up and disappeared. He gave it another slap, but nothing happened this time. He was about to kick the plinth, when it trumpeted an alarm that sent his hands over his ears.
“It wasn’t me. I wasn’t going to…”
Before he could complete the same automatic response he’d always blurted out as a child, silver fluid seeped from the base, bubbling and forming into beads that solidified and then started to roll up the plinth and across its surface. As they encountered buttons, switches, and mirrors, the beads dispersed. Lights came back on, the background hiss resumed, and the mirrors once more showed their pictures. Beads continued to form and go about their work like an army of termites.
Albert watched them, mesmerized, noting how they repaired and cleaned everything they touched. Some of them left the plinth and moved toward his shoes. He danced away from them, careful not to let them touch him. With a spin and a quick tap of numbers on the door panel—Shadrak hadn’t exactly been discreet—he left the chamber and made his way down the interminable corridor until he reached the button on the wall. When he pressed it, the wall split open, and he entered a cubicle not dissimilar to the one in the Tower of Glass back in Sarum. He pressed another button, and the cubicle shuddered. Albert’s guts felt a little queasy, but then the cubicle stilled and the doors opened onto another corridor, only slightly less interminable than the previous one. He half-jogged, half-walked toward the door he’d entered the plane ship by.