by D. P. Prior
“The Annals spoke about the black axe,” Nameless said. “My brother found a reference to the Pax Nanorum that—”
“Nothing about no Pax Nanorum in the Annals,” Rugbeard said. “Not when I was teaching.”
“That’s what ol’ baldilocks said. Then how—?”
“Sounds like tampering, if you ask me. The Pax Nanorum’s in the legends about Arnoch, sure enough.” For Shader’s benefit he added, “The Axe of the Dwarf Lords, only theirs was gold, not black.”
Shader gnawed on a knuckle. So, it wasn’t just the Liber. Were there no reliable truths?
“But we was talking about the dragon,” Rugbeard said. “The one that was brought down by the Lords of Arnoch. You see, a big ol’ red wyrm was terrorizing the shores of the sea the great city stood watch over. Didn’t matter how many folk it fried, how many it chomped up and ground into dust, it kept coming back. Course, that’s the way of the Cynocephalus’s nightmares: they don’t ever stop, lest someone faces up to ’em and puts ’em in their place.
“Anyhow, Arnoch was like an island of hope in the face of the worst dreams of the Cynocephalus. If the dwarf lords hadn’t stood against the tide of horror, it would’ve overflowed and infected all of Aethir. Worse than that, the dreamer himself would’ve gone stark-raving mad, maybe even perished at his own hands. Don’t need me to tell you what’d happen to the world of dreams if there was no one to dream it.”
Shader looked out at the boiling waters of the lake as they finally passed along its shore. It wasn’t just a haze he’d seen earlier; it was steam, and the heat stung his face like the sun on a scorching Sahulian day.
“That normal?” he asked.
Rugbeard sucked in his lips and made a popping sound. “Nope. Can’t say that it is.”
“Are we there yet?” Albert called from inside. “I need to micturate.”
“There’s a bucket in the back,” Rugbeard called over his shoulder. “Either that, or tie a knot in it. Won’t be long now. Anyways,” he said, scanning the way ahead and giving the reins a gentle flick, “the Lords of Arnoch kept watch over the sea, but they also patrolled the skies using baskets hung from enormous balloons. They was filled with gas that was lighter than air, but they wasn’t exactly safe. A single lick o’ flame, and that gas’d go up—boom!
“One day, the dragon was razing the fishing villages along the coast, but then he gets all purposeful and comes at Arnoch itself. Flames charred the city walls, hundreds was killed, and just when all hope seemed lost, and the city was making ready to sink beneath the waves, as it was designed to do in the worst of all perils, Lord Kennick Barg asked permission of the king to go out after the beast on his own. The king agreed, seeing as there was nothing to lose, and brave Lord Kennick goes up in a ballon, hollering insults at the dragon for all he was worth. The wyrm grew mightily pissed, turned its ire on him and him alone. It soars right at the ballon and unleashes a searing torrent of flame, and kabooooom! No more dragon. No more Lord Kennick, neither.”
Rugbeard turned his gaze on Nameless. “That’s our model; what we were supposed to be like. Don’t believe all this Gandaw shite. Where’s the proof? In the Annals? Pah, you’ve seen just how much they can lie. In the council, bunch of prevaricating old sods that they are? Too ready to despair, ever since Maldark, I say. Too ready to see everything as doom and gloom, and themselves as no more than botched experiments. We’re better than that, my nameless friend, and someone needs to ram an axe-haft up the council’s asses to tell ’em so. Now, have a look under your end of the bench; see if I got any more grog down there.”
They rattled along in relative silence, while above them, both suns flared briefly and then began to flicker like guttering candles. In the far distance ahead, what looked like a third sun—black as the Void—sent dark fractures through the surrounding sky. Shader couldn’t be sure, but each time he looked, it seemed the black sun had grown larger. His back ached from hovering at Nameless’ shoulder for so long, and he desperately needed to stretch his legs. Nameless seemed to notice and gave up his seat, squeezing past Shader to get to the wagon bed. Within moments, he was bantering away boisterously from beneath the canopy, as if he hadn’t a care in the world—as if the worlds and all they contained weren’t about to end. Stranger than that, though, was that Shadrak laughed out loud, and it was a far cry from his usual sarcastic sneering; it could almost have been described as good-natured. Shader shrugged. He’d felt it, too, from time to time. Whatever it was about Nameless, it seemed to be contagious.
He plonked himself on the bench beside Rugbeard. The gladius’s scabbard banged against the wood, and he instinctively reached out to adjust it on his hip, thought better of it, and shifted his own position instead.
Rugbeard flicked him a look. “What you gonna do, sonny? Way I heard it, you’ll need that sword, but here you are scared to even touch it.”
Shader’s hand found the pendant beneath his surcoat. He raised it up to his eyes, studied the image of the woman, the inscription on the other side.
Peace, the old man had said with his dying breath. Do not fear. Peace. And if he’d been afraid of dying, he hadn’t shown it. Even mutilated as he was, and in incalculable pain, he’d been resigned to his fate; serene, even. What was it that brought him such calm? Shader closed his hand around the pendant. Was it just relief from suffering? Was it the despairing acceptance of a man who couldn’t take any more? Or was it something else? He tucked the pendant back beneath his surcoat.
Right now, Shader just wished he could pray. Wished he had someone to pray to. His faith had been like the guttering suns since the Gray Abbot had planted the seeds of doubt, but in all honesty, it had never been strong; not like Gralia’s—simple, childlike, even. Aristodeus again. He’d no doubt set it up like that, introduced the paradox by way of Jarl Shader. Ensured Shader was holy, but not too holy to fight. Well, he’d miscalculated, if that was his plan. All he’d done was introduce a fault line that just needed the knowledge of Blightey’s tampering with the Liber to bring the whole edifice of belief crashing down like a house of cards.
But the Gray Abbot hadn’t despaired, had he? Even with the knowledge of what the Liche Lord had done, he’d clung to the faith; to the golden thread. Hadn’t he? The same with Ludo, and he was no fool. It’s like the adeptus knew the value of the social side of Nousianism, the cohesion it brought, and was willing to put up with it for the sake of a deeper truth. But what was that truth? He started to reach for his Liber, but then shook his head and sighed. What would be the point? Even if there really was a golden thread, he had no idea how to weed it out from all the chaff Blightey had surrounded it with.
Rugbeard was watching him, waiting for an answer, but what answer could he give, save the truth?
“No idea what I’m going to do. No idea, at all.”
“Well, sonny,” Rugbeard said, “in that case, you’d better fish out another costrel from under the bench. If the end of the world is nigh, I don’t want to face it sober.”
They drove along the shoreline for an hour or so, and then Rugbeard pointed out a barren hill set back a couple of hundred yards from the lake.
“There it is. That’s where we’re heading.”
Shader could see a range of mountains rolling away beyond it.
“That be the scarolite mines outside Arx Gravis,” Rugbeard said. He steered a course for the hill. “But this is the secret I was telling you about.”
As they drew nearer, Shader could see the hill was made of packed earth, as if it had been piled there during some mammoth dig. Holes pocked its surface, many of them big enough to drive the wagon through. They pulled up close, and Shader climbed down. Albert was straight out the back and rushed into the cover of some scrub. Shadrak leapt lithely from the wagon, fingers still checking his pouches and weapons. Nameless steadied himself with a hand on one of the bows that provided a frame for the canvas before jumping off and landing amid a puff of dry earth. Rugbeard busied himself hammering an iron spike
into the ground and tethering the horse to it.
“Is that—?” Shadrak started.
“An ant-hill,” Nameless said. “So, it wasn’t just the drink talking, Rugbeard.”
The old dwarf chuckled as he slung his mallet into the back of the wagon and took down a hooded lantern from inside. “Like I said, there’s an ocean of difference between legends and lies.”
“So, those are tunnels,” Shader said. “Big ants.”
“Giant,” Rugbeard said. “More of Gandaw’s creatures. It’s said they had no queen, just a controller, part ant, part human. They say they never aged, neither, not the ants, nor the ant-man.”
“And you want us to go in there?” Albert said, traipsing back over, doing up his trousers.
“Hill’s deserted nowadays,” Rugbeard said. “Last I heard, the ant-man and his pets was out Malfen way. Probably trying to cross the Farfalls to be with all the other monsters.”
A muffled boom rolled across the sky, and the ground shook beneath their feet. Dirt cascaded down the side of the ant-hill, and something dark and sleek poked from one of the holes and then disappeared.
Shader was already moving toward it, heart pounding. He’d only caught a glimpse, but he’d have sworn it was the thing that had been watching Nameless from the rooftop during the fight with the soldiers.
“Was that an ant?” Albert said.
“It was standing upright,” Nameless said.
Shader scrabbled up a bank of dirt until he reached the opening. There were footprints leading away down the tunnel, and a smudge of similar markings around the entrance. But they weren’t ordinary footprints; they were long and slender, the impressions left by the toes splayed wide.
“Looks like it was hanging round the entrance for some time,” Shadrak said, coming up alongside him. “Waiting.”
“You think it’s the ant-man?” Albert asked.
Rugbeard was next up, shaking his head, eyes wide and bulging. “But they was in Malfen. That’s what folk say. Surely—”
“That weren’t no ant, and it weren’t no shogging ant-man, neither,” Shadrak said, drawing his pistol and slipping into the tunnel. “Wait for me here.”
Nameless and Albert struggled up the bank, and the four of them stood staring out to the south, where the black sun was wobbling, expanding, and its fractures were thrashing about like tentacles. And then, as if the dreaming god of Aethir blinked, everything was plunged into darkness. Albert screamed; Rugbeard groaned; Nameless muttered, “Shog,” and Shader gasped. Was that it? Were they too late?
The next instant, the darkness lifted, but there was no sunlight now, only a crepuscular gray that turned the surrounding landscape dull and lifeless.
Shadrak came back down the tunnel. “Gone,” he said. “Scut sure does move quick.”
“You know what it was?” Shader asked.
“Thing that attacked me in the city,” Shadrak said. “Certain of it.” He unfastened his cloak and slung it down the hill, and then took the concealer cloak from his knapsack and put it on.
“It was outside the prison,” Shader said with a glance at Nameless. “Watching from the rooftops. Staring at Nameless.”
Shadrak’s pink eyes blazed. “So why’d it do nothing? Thing like that could—”
“Must’ve got a look at these,” Nameless said, flexing his biceps. “Thought better of it.”
“My advice,” Shadrak said, “is stay alert. Anything moves in there, hit first, worry about what it was later.”
Rugbeard struck flint to steel and got his lantern burning.
“You said it had a…” Albert pointed at Shadrak’s pistol.
“Gun? Yeah, it did, and it’s shogging fast.”
“Come on,” Nameless said, sauntering into the tunnel. “No point worrying about things we have no control over.”
Rugbeard ran up alongside him, holding his lantern aloft and sending long shadows across the floor and walls.
They moved through a maze of winding tunnels bored out of the earth. At first, Shader was tense—the same as he’d been when chasing Shadrak through the mangroves on the Anglesh Isles, never knowing when the dagger was going to strike. Shadrak was almost invisible in the cloak, no more than a shifting blur beside the tunnel wall. Albert brought up the rear, fiddling nervously with his cheese-cutter.
At one point, Shadrak took the lantern from Rugbeard and scanned the ground. “Tracks have gone,” he said, raising the light to inspect the ceiling and walls. Finally, he handed it back to Rugbeard. He muttered something to himself and pulled the concealer cloak tight, merging with the tunnel once more.
“He’s not used to it,” Albert whispered in Shader’s ear. “He’s the one that’s supposed to be unseen.”
Rugbeard brought them to a steep decline, which they had to descend on their backsides, before they emerged into a mine tunnel. It was lit by a soft, greenish glow that emanated from veins in the otherwise black rock. The green flecks in Nameless’ great helm picked up the light and sparkled like emerald stars in response. Struts and supports lined the walls and ceiling. They were not wooden, as Shader would have expected, but appeared to be cast from a smooth gray material that was as hard as granite. Iron rails with stone sleepers threaded down the center of the tunnel.
Rugbeard led the way to a long mine cart, the likes of which Shader had never seen before. The undercarriage was of rusted iron, but the main body was a sleek silver capsule, caked in rock dust. Rugbeard wiped a patch of grime away with his hand, revealing a row of five buttons. He pressed each in turn, and the side of the cart slid open to admit them. There were three rows of seats inside, each upholstered with padded leather, and at the front was an array of levers and knobs. Rugbeard toggled a switch, and a panel lit up. The smell of ozone wafted through the tunnel, accompanied by a low, pulsating hum.
“Hop in,” Rugbeard said with evident relish. “I ain’t used one of these for donkey’s years.”
BIRTH OF THE UNWEAVING
One thing centuries of experimentation had taught Sektis Gandaw was never to rely on readouts.
He stepped onto the transporter disk and allowed the sedatives to do their work as it plunged to the roots of the Perfect Peak.
Not that the Unweaving could be classified as an experiment—it had been too meticulously planned for that and was better thought of as an actuation; and not that the monitoring instruments were unreliable—they were perfect in every way; after all, he’d made them himself. It was just that you could never be one-hundred percent certain something was working as you’d predicted until you saw it with your own eyes.
Gandaw allowed himself a wry chuckle at that, and at the same instant, the disk touched down, reoriented itself, and skimmed along one of the horizontal tubes that splayed out beneath the mountain. They weren’t exactly his eyes; those had rotted away eons ago. Granted, most of the stem cells he’d grown a new pair from were his, but they’d been augmented with just about everything nature had to offer and capped with the most intricate nano-technology he’d invented. Well, maybe not invented. A taunting voice in his head reminded him he owed a debt to the homunculi for introducing him to their otherworldly science, but he closed the lid on that particular intrusion with a quick influx of neurotransmitters.
The disk slowed to a stop beneath a vertical tube and then rose. As it neared the surface, an iris valve began to open above.
The inner voice had returned mere days ago, like a cockroach creeping up from the bubbling abyss that lay beneath his rational mind. It was Blightey, he was sure of it. Just a ghost, a memory that refused to die. He’d told himself time and again not to worry; after all, hadn’t he defeated the Liche Lord after bringing him back from the Abyss? It wasn’t so much the threat Blightey presented that disturbed him; it was the lingering sense of mockery. As if he’d forgotten something—which was ridiculous—or as if he had somehow been led astray…
The disk wobbled as it passed through the valve; it wasn’t meant to do that. Gandaw steppe
d off, onto the bleached dust of the Dead Lands. Wind buffeted him and sent strands of his plastinated hair across his vision. He swept it out of his face with a surge of irritation. The hair wasn’t meant to do that, either. Even now, centuries after making the humiliating adverts that had launched Global Tech into the stratosphere, he could still hear the promise he made to his customers:
New from Global Tech: the plastination revolution! Hair you can style with just a thought. No more brushes, no more bad hair days. Permanently perfect hair, because you deserve it!
Only it wasn’t perfect, clearly. He ceased trying to pat it down and let the wind muss it up. He wondered when it had lost its hold. It had never occurred to him to monitor it, not in the unchanging environment of the Perfect Peak. The consumers would have all turned back into dust by now, in any case—dust surmounted by an imperishable wig. He wanted to tell himself it had been good enough, one of a string of products that had generated the capital to take Global Tech to world domination, but ‘good enough’ was one step down from perfection, and it was an infinite step, at that.
Three silver spheres shot toward him from the mountain. Tardy. Even the sentroids were no longer living up to his expectations. They stopped abruptly and then began to circle him, each in its own orbit.
Anything could have happened in the seconds he’d been left unguarded.
With a thought, he flexed the limbs of his exoskeleton. At least that was working correctly. Servos whined, and a shudder passed beneath his coat sleeves. Before his legs could extend, he stood down the system from defense mode.
It was hard to recall what the Dead Lands had looked like last time he’d been outside. He was fairly certain the sky had been some shade of blue—cobalt, most likely—and the suns had been golden, maybe even amber. Now, though, the sky was a like London’s smog all those centuries ago, and the bone-dust that formed an island around the Perfect Peak was shifting, morphing into jagged monoliths that crashed and reformed like waves. Even the vegetative border of the Sour Marsh was in upheaval, a writhing, undulating mass. The scarolite mountain itself was the only stationary point, an anchor amid the chaos, just as it should be. And, of course, it wasn’t really chaos if it was planned for, was it? These were expected side effects, the grumblings of nature as it prepared to be unwoven.