Against the Unweaving

by D. P. Prior

  Albert got the message clear as mud, without another word spoken. Shadrak gave a satisfied nod; reckoned he was a dab hand at non-verbal communication.

  Cramming the rest of the pastry in his gob, Albert shuffled to the end of the wagon bed and sat on his arse so he could get down. The wagon bucked when he dropped off the end, the horse nickered, and Fargin cursed. Then Albert was trudging off over the plain like a chastised kid, waving his arms and swinging his hips. He blundered first one way, then the next, without a shogging clue where to look. Suddenly, he stopped and waved excitedly, then squealed and ran off toward a hole. Shadrak could just about make out a brown-stained piece of cloth fluttering in the breeze that Albert dashed toward and snatched out of the air. Another one of Fargin’s?

  “Yes!” Albert cried back at him. “Papa’s hanky! Now I know we’re in the right place.”

  He skipped ahead like the other sort of kid—the one who’s just got what he wanted for his birthday—and rebounded as if he’d hit a wall, landing flat on his back.

  “What the shog?” Buck said, looking up from attaching a feedbag to the horse’s nose.

  “Reckon he found it,” Shadrak said.

  “Year but what? I don’t see nothing.”

  “Make sure you keep it that way,” Shadrak said, pointing the gun at him before holstering it.

  “I’m looking the other way,” Buck said, “even if there ain’t nothing to be seen.”

  Shadrak leapt from the wagon and winced at the jolt of pain from his shoulder. He trudged over to Albert and started feeling in front of him with his fingers splayed out.

  “Thanks for helping me up,” Albert mumbled as he stood and brushed himself down.

  “Bad arm,” Shadrak said, without pausing in his search.

  “Only one,” Albert said. “Nothing wrong with the other. Unless you’re telling me it’s numb from too much—”

  “Got it!” Shadrak said, finding the invisible recess and pressing the button.

  The door slid open to reveal a rectangle of stark light hanging in midair.

  Before he could step across the threshold into the plane ship, a voice spoke in his head—a voice like the rustle of dry leaves.

  “I need you here, Shadrak.”

  “Shog you,” Shadrak replied. “I done my part. You got no hold on me now.”

  “What’s that?” Albert said. “What did you say?”

  Shadrak glared at him then turned away and whispered, “I’m finished with you, understand?”

  “You’re finished when I release you,” the Archon replied in his mind. “The first threat has been eliminated, but there is a bigger plan, and a great deal of… work for one such as you. You are contracted, Shadrak. Your life is owed to me.”

  Why didn’t the shogger show himself? He might’ve been powerful, but he weren’t no god, not if what the bald bastard said was right, not to mention what the Archon had said himself. Shot to the head might do for him, and even if it didn’t, it would be worth the try just to piss him off.

  “Do not fret,” the Archon continued. “I will grant you some leeway.”

  “Suppose you’re leaving, then,” Albert said from behind. “I can’t persuade you to—”

  Shadrak held up a hand for quiet. “Leeway?” he muttered. “What’s that s’posed to mean?”

  “Stay here. Stay in New Jerusalem. I will call upon your talents from time to time, but other than that, do as you please.”

  “And the plane ship?”

  “Use it to re-stock, but no more than that. Try to flee, and there will be grave consequences. Very grave.”

  “Yeah? Such as?”

  “Kadee,” the Archon said. “Death is not the end it once was. You know that, don’t you, from the Anglesh Isles, when I permitted you to speak with her?”

  “Where is she, then?” Shadrak hissed. “Harm her, and I’ll shogging kill you.”

  “You lack the means.”

  Much as it was tempting to put him to the test, that wasn’t Shadrak’s way. He didn’t know enough about the Archon yet; he still needed to watch and learn. That pretty much made his mind up for him.

  “Leaving?” he said, turning back to Albert. “You must be joking. Thought you had a proposition for me?”

  Albert stared dumbly at him for an instant, and then his eyes lit up. “Taking over the guilds?” he said. “You’re in?”

  “Wait here,” Shadrak said as he ducked into the rectangle of light. “I need some supplies. With any luck, I’ll find another of those long-gun things, like the one I shogging dropped atop the Homestead. And Albert…”

  “Yes?”

  “Not a word to Fargin.”

  Scut like that couldn’t be trusted to keep his mouth shut, but when the time was right, he’d make the perfect kingpin: easy as shog to put the frighteners on, and thick as two short planks.

  ***

  There should have been a sense of triumph, of jubilation, but for two days Shader had prayed and prayed and prayed, and he’d met with nothing but aridity. Had he really expected a response from the woman on the pendant? Had he really expected some deeper insight from the Liber—maybe even the faintest glimmer of the fabled golden thread?

  His eyes were sore from poring over the text with only the flickering light of an overhead strip of crystal to read by, but at least he’d found something to go on: Causa Salutis, the inscription on the pendant, appeared in one of the more obscure passages in the Second Book of Unveilings, toward the end of the Liber.

  That particular book had always struck him as a confusion of mythological images that had no authoritative interpretation. It was seldom, if ever, read at public worship, and yet Ludo had studied it assiduously, as if that’s where he hoped to pick up the first strands of the golden thread. “The cause of our salvation will be,” is how the passage translated from the Aeternam, “the Immaculata”—the immaculate one—“who crushes the deceiver beneath her heel.” It was a good start to assume the passage referred to the woman on the pendant, but if Shader hoped to find out more than that, he was bitterly frustrated. If there were a hermeneutic that could shed light on the passage, it was beyond him. As an Elect knight, he’d been grounded in theology, but not enough to wrestle with the deeper mysteries. He wasn’t even sure if the Adepti and Exempti had the knowledge he sought. If only Ludo had been there to ask.

  Mephesch had set them up with rooms on the level beneath Gandaw’s control center. Shader’s was spartan, purely functional—a steel-walled square with a chrome wash basin and a shelf made from some malleable gray material that served as a bed. It molded itself to his shape when he lay upon it, and though his sleep wasn’t restful, it was at least comfortable.

  He’d given up trying to speak with Nameless. The dwarf had grown sullen and withdrawn, and for the most part stayed behind the locked door of his chamber. Rhiannon was little better. Whatever relief she’d shown at the thwarting of the Unweaving had quickly evaporated into a simmering silence. She could barely bring herself to look at Shader, never mind talk. Given the choice, Shader would have gone straight home, only that was in Aristodeus’s hands, and he didn’t appear to be in any hurry.

  Coupled with which, Shader no longer knew where home was. He’d not had the breathing space to give it much thought. He could hardly go back to Oakendale after abandoning the White Order, and the brothers at Pardes made no bones about not wanting him back. What did that leave him? Britannia? With Jarl dead and Gralia cloistered with the sisters on the Isle of Vectisin, there was nothing for him there. That really only left Aeterna, but after absconding with the Sword of the Archon, even if it had worked out for the greater good, would the Templum still want him? And with the shattered state of his faith, would he even want to go back, return to the life of the Elect? There was always the priesthood, he supposed, but it was for Nous to give vocations, or at the very least, it was a decision of the Templum. Was it possible to be a priest and not share the staunch faith of the luminaries? Mind you, unless Tajen,
Narcus, and the others he’d met in the Abyss were all simply parts of Shader’s deception, they’d not exactly ended up rewarded for their faith.

  But in spite of his doubts, in spite of his failures with prayer, he knew of no other way. If he dug deep enough, if he joined Ludo’s quest for the golden thread, maybe he’d find something worth looking for. The alternative was too dispiriting to consider, a darkness too absolute to bear.

  When he was there, Aristodeus seemed to spend all his time in Gandaw’s chambers, rooting through his personal laboratories, and making himself at home as the new lord of the Perfect Peak. But he still continued to come and go like he always had, never lingering in one place for more than a few hours. It had been the story of his life since Shader first met him, always breaking off mid-lesson and leaving no sign as to where he’d gone. Shader had grown to expect it, but after what Gandaw had said before sending the white tower back into the jaws of the chasm, he was starting to suspect a more sinister reason for the disappearances. Was the philosopher really in the grip of the Demiurgos, trapped in the Abyss, yet somehow managing to escape for short periods? A projected image, yet at the same time solid and capable of delivering stinging blows with a practice sword, as Shader had experienced as a child? It was something Shader meant to ask him about, if ever he got the opportunity. Aristodeus had been scathing about Gandaw’s theory, but he’d also looked uncomfortable. Had he been deceived all along, or was he as in control of the situation as he always seemed to be?

  And Gandaw himself… Why did Shader feel no satisfaction that he’d finally been defeated? At the end, the Technocrat had cut such a pathetic figure, desperately pleading for an alliance so that he didn’t perish in his own Unweaving. And the deception, the betrayals by the homunculus, Mephesch… did that make Gandaw just another victim of the Demiurgos? Did that go any way toward mitigating his guilt? Maybe Shader would never know. Gandaw’s was a long and complicated history, riddled and infected with influences from the homunculi and even the Liche Lord of Verusia, Otto Blightey himself. It wasn’t just pity Shader felt, or even misplaced empathy; it was more a sense of foreboding, like they had been stripping away layer upon layer of evil—first Cadman, then Gandaw—only to find a denser, more insidious malevolence beneath it. Peel away enough layers, and there was little doubt as to what you’d find at the core: the Demiurgos, waiting, watching, manipulating from the very heart of the Abyss.

  When the knock came at his door, Shader thought it might be Nameless, then both hoped and feared it was Rhiannon. He rolled off of the shelf-bed and pressed the keyhole symbol on the panel.

  As the door slid open, Mephesch looked up at him, a curious twinkle in his pebbly eyes.

  “Aristodeus would like to see you.”

  The homunculus turned on his heel and walked away, as if Shader had no choice but to follow. Given the likelihood Aristodeus was the only one with the power to return him to Earth, Shader thought that was probably right. Without Shadrak’s plane ship, there was unlikely to be any other way back, and much as Aethir intrigued him, he didn’t feel like he belonged here. He could almost feel the weight of the Earth tugging at him, and the more he thought about it, Aeterna was where he needed to be.

  They took a disk up toward the top of the cone that had been Gandaw’s control room. Mephesch led Shader out onto a walkway and through a concealed door into a scarolite-lined vestibule. The door opposite was made of the same green-flecked black, and there was no panel beside it.

  Mephesch spoke into his vambrace: “We’re here.”

  The door slid open, and they entered an octagonal chamber with desks and screens set against every wall. Nameless was reclining on a padded black chair in the center of the room. His hauberk was up around his waist, and a tube ran into his stomach from a clear bag on a metal stand. Green liquid passed from the bag along the tube with a steady drip, drip, drip.

  Rhiannon had her feet up on a desk and her arms crossed under her breasts, in a way that plumped them up, made them look swollen. Shader averted his gaze the instant he realized it had been drawn.

  Aristodeus was seated at a desk on the other side of the room from her, rattling through some glass tubes in a case, occasionally taking one out to look at more closely. Directly above him, suspended in midair, was a long crystal case, from within which Shader could just about make out the dark form of an axe.

  Aristodeus spun round on his chair. He held up a test tube to the light glaring down from an overhead crystal. Its contents were inky and vaporous, one moment coalescing around the top of the tube, the next striking out for the bottom or dashing against the glass of the sides.

  “Cadman?” Aristodeus said.

  Mephesch nodded. “And the others contain—”

  “Later, Mephesch, later. Fascinating as all this may be, there are rather more pressing matters.” He carefully put the tube back in the case and dismissed Mephesch with a flick of his fingers.

  “Now, Shader,” he said as the door slid shut behind the homunculus, “I expect you’re wondering what I’ve been up to these past two days.”

  Rhiannon snorted, causing Aristodeus to shoot her a glare.

  “Not really. I’m more interested in getting back.”

  Rhiannon stiffened slightly. She brushed her hair out of her face and looked at him casually, disinterestedly, almost.

  “To Earth?” Aristodeus said. “Figured as much, which is why I’ve been working with the homunculi to find a way.”

  “You’ve not had any trouble popping up here, there, and everywhere before,” Shader said. “Why now?”

  “I travel from A to B,” Aristodeus said, “and the effort is prodigious. More so when there are passengers.” He cocked a thumb at Rhiannon. “Given that we are currently at B, it would be necessary to return to A prior to predicating a new B.”

  Rhiannon dropped her boots from the desktop and stood. The hilt of Callixus’s black sword hung from a new scabbard at her hip. “What he’s saying is that he’d have to take you to his poxy white tower first and give you the bull about not stepping outside.”

  “Because A’s the Abyss?” Shader said. “You travel back and forth from the Abyss?”

  Aristodeus closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Don’t you worry about that. That is a problem for minds far older and wiser than yours. It’s an ages-long campaign, Shader, a battle of wills, but given our progress here, I’d say I have the upper hand.”

  “Can I get up now?” Nameless asked in a dull voice.

  Aristodeus went over to the stand and squeezed the bottom of the bag. “A few more dregs and you’ll be good to go.”

  “I would have taken you back by now,” Aristodeus said to Shader, “only there was a slight problem.”

  “He can take me there,” Rhiannon said, “but not you.”

  “Why?” Shader said. “I’ve been to the Abyss before and lived to tell the tale. Why not now?”

  “Because you are my anchor,” Aristodeus said. He took out his pipe and started to fill it. “Last time you were there, it was nearly my undoing. If the boy hadn’t gotten you out—”

  “Sammy?” Rhiannon said.

  Aristodeus gave her a tight-lipped smile, and a confusion of emotions played across her face as he went on. “There was distance, if you can call it that, between us on that occasion, but both of us so close together in my tower…” He popped the pipe in his mouth and spoke around the stem. “Game over.”

  “Why? Why not with Rhiannon?”

  Aristodeus fumbled about in his robe pockets and raised his eyebrows hopefully before cursing and putting the pipe away. “Why is it no one ever has a light?”

  Shader’s fingers touched the box of matches in his pocket, but he chose to say nothing. Why should he lift a finger to help the bald bastard, after all he’d put them through?

  “Well?” Rhiannon said. “You gonna tell him? How come I can go with you, and he can’t?”

  Something was communicated between them. Shader had no idea what it was
, but it made him edgy, and something else. He fixed Aristodeus with a hard stare and chewed his bottom lip. It was ridiculous, he knew, but he felt the pinch of jealousy.

  “Too risky,” Aristodeus said. “Which is why I’ve had to come up with another way.” He turned to Shader. “What I mean is, it’s too risky you and I being in the same space within the Abyss at once. Think of it like chess. I am the king—”

  “And Shader’s your queen?” Rhiannon said.

  “Lassie,” Nameless said from his reclining chair. “Behave.”

  “That is not what I was trying to say,” Aristodeus said. “My point is, I cannot place all my eggs in one basket. I might have the advantage at the moment, but the slightest miscalculation, the smallest error—”

  Rhiannon sneered.

  “Right now,” Shader said, “I couldn’t give a damn if you win or lose. Just get me home, and then find yourself some new pawns.”

  “Yeah,” Rhiannon said, “I’m sick of it, too. Maybe you can drop us both off in Sahul.”

  Aristodeus whirled on her but then instantly softened, speaking in a cloying tone. “I would prefer it if you stayed here, at least until…”

  Rhiannon’s eyes dropped to the floor, and for a long moment an uncomfortable silence hung over the chamber.

  “All right,” Aristodeus finally said, “I suppose I could countenance that, if it’s to Oakendale you return, and if you stay out of trouble.”

  “What’s it to you?” Shader asked. “She’ll go wherever she wants, whether you like it or not.”

  Red flooded Aristodeus’s face, and he clenched his fists. “This is not about megalomania, Shader! Can’t you see that? Did I waste all those years trying to educate you, teaching you to think? Gandaw was the control freak, not me. Do you think I want to fight this battle? Do you? Have you any idea how long it’s gone on for, how many centuries? I am pivotal, Shader. Understand? Pivotal. And I am getting close.”

  Shader narrowed his eyes and kept his voice low, full of threat. “Close to what?”