by D. P. Prior
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.
“We should go,” he said. “Skeyr Magnus has brought more minions. Follow me.”
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.
Judging by the terrain he’d seen in the mirror, his test run had been more than a little successful. He wasn’t back atop the Homestead, that was for certain, but the desert told him he might be in the vicinity. Probably Barraiya lands. The mesa should be visible from miles away in every direction, so if he just nipped out and got his bearings, he’d be able to try moving the plane ship again. Either that, or he might run into a group of itinerant Dreamers and get them to guide him back to civilization in return for something nice and shiny.
Shadrak would likely kill him for this, but the little runt was no doubt miles away. Probably the best thing now, Albert thought as he entered the code and waited for the door to open, was to make his way back to Sarum and—
Well, bugger me senseless!
Two suns glared down at him from gray-blue skies. Ochre terrain spread as far as the eye could see, and here and there, outcrops of what looked like limestone stood as high as a man. There were craters dotted all over the place, reminding him of that perforated cheese he’d tasted in one of the provinces of Gallia.
He stepped out onto the desert sand and scanned the horizon. The plane ship had jumped quite a way, by the looks of it. Quite a way, indeed. Way off in the distance, he could just about make out the hazy peaks of a mountain range. Which distance, it was a little hard to say, what with there being two—
Oh, scu-scu-scu-crap.
Blinking did nothing to change the terrible truth. They were still there: twin orbs suspended in the heavens like duo Swords of Damocles. Not that they’d need to fall to wreak their havoc; Albert hadn’t felt this crushed since Dana Woodrum had scoffed at the beautiful cupcakes he’d presented her with for her birthday and accused him of making them just so he could get into her knickers (perish the thought; should have made the little trollop a tart instead).
He shivered, shaking his head to stop the thoughts from cementing.
Yuk, yuk, yuk. All those bumpy bits and her slimy, stinky grease-pot. Ugh.
He was imagining, of course, but he was sure he’d hit the nail on the head. How could it be otherwise?
Breathe, Albert, breathe.
He knew he’d nearly lost it, then, nearly shut the door on the outside world and locked himself into another endless spiral of slights and missed opportunities, embarrassment and regret. Fortunately, he’d played the Dana Woodrum scene out ad nauseam, and he had the perfect remedy: the very vivid recollection of her ever-reddening face and swelling lips, her hands clutching uselessly at her throat, and yellow drool dripping down her chin. How could he forget the stench of her shit as her organs collapsed and she slopped to the floor like a drowned invertebrate? “Allergy, allergy!” he’d screeched to her gobsmacked entourage. “How terrible, how terrible!” It had been a performance as sublime as Kenlith Brinsley’s Faerie King. Oh, the gloating satisfaction. He’d observed her forever, haunted all the parties, endured the scathing remarks, but it had been worth it to know that she couldn’t resist Sachertorte with a dollop of cream and chocolate sprinkles.
Albert became aware of his fingers questing through his jacket pockets. He could almost feel the wooden ends of his cheese-cutter and started to run his fingertip along the wire—but it wasn’t there.
Two suns.
He could have a concussion, he supposed. Maybe it was a heat mirage. Maybe someone was playing a trick on him—Shadrak, most likely. Pallid little midget doesn’t want anyone messing with his toy, now, does he?
He stared down at the ground, back up at the suns, the far off mountains. In the opposite direction, light shimmered and sparkled where the horizon became a faint strip of cobalt. Off to the left was—he thought it was another mountain at first—a city? Whatever it was, it was either very near, which he doubted, or very large. White walls—curtain walls, like he’d seen on the castles in Gallia—with tall towers and minarets poking their heads above. Now he knew the ship hadn’t just hopped closer to Sarum; they didn’t have architecture like that anywhere in Sahul. Even the gargantuan towers of the Ancients looked like rubble heaped up by cave dwellers compared to this.
He visored his eyes to squint across the stark landscape in the other direction and noticed plumes of dust swirling in the air. Was that a road? Black dots snaked out beneath the dust cloud, too far off for him to make out, but he’d have sworn on Mumsy’s grave it was a caravan of some sort, and it was heading his way. Beyond the ant-like specks, he could see more mountains, or perhaps hills that weren’t quite so distant, but other than that, he may as well have been on the moon.
He reached out behind and tapped the invisible hull of the plane ship, then crouched down and gathered some pebbles into the shape of a cross to mark the entrance. Brushing the dust from his palms, he straightened up and found his eyes drawn to one of the craters—or was it a blowhole? It was one of those things he knew he shouldn’t do, but there were times his curiosity was irrepressible.
It’ll be the death of you, Mumsy always used to say. Funny that, he thought as he set off for a butcher’s at the hole, because her favorite saying had certainly rung true for her in the end.
Blasted thing was further off than it looked. Wasn’t that always the way? Sweating like the proverbial pig, the fabric of his suit no doubt fading doubly quick in the collective sunshine, he scrabbled up a scree bank and saw that the hole was actually set into a gentle incline, where the ground had blistered into a low mound. Hole probably wasn’t the best way to describe it. Cave mouth might have been better. Gaping maw was even closer to the mark. It was as wide as a house and the height of two grown men. The edges of the entrance glistened with what looked like dew, but when Albert stepped closer to examine it, he saw it was metallic.
Oh my gilded backside! Gold!
—All that glitters is not—
—Not in my experience. He quickly shut that train of thought down. He wouldn’t be who he was today if he gave in to that kind of negativity.
The moment he stepped across the threshold, the stench struck him like a fist in the face. His guts roiled, and he had to clench his arse cheeks to avoid an accident. The smell was a cross between putrefying compost and off-meat. He whipped out his handkerchief and held it over his nose and mouth. Blasted th
ing still stank of snuff. Washing seemed to have no effect, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to throw it away. It was the only thing of Papa’s left, so Mumsy had said. He took a couple of wary steps into the cave mouth, marveling at how the specks of gold continued to sparkle even out of the sunlight. When he went in deeper, it was like walking on stars that wound downward into the receding distance. Not a cave, then, Albert mused. A tunnel. And a big one at that. Hardly looked natural, either, the way the width remained uniform, the smoothness of the walls.
He pressed on until the light from outside was lost around a bend. The steady downward gradient became sheerer at that point, and he had to touch the left-hand wall for support. He’d gone no further than a few steps when he trod in something sticky. His foot came free, sock and all, and he had to balance on one leg and bend from the waist to try to retrieve his shoe. It came away from the ground trailing a thick rope of goo. He scraped off what he could against the wall and then dropped it so he could put his foot back down. He was still wiggling his toes and straining to get his heel in fully when a blast of wind rushed past him from the depths. Rotten wind, if such a thing existed, like a belch from a toothless crone with a mouthful of vomit. Not wind, then, he realized.
An exhalation.
The ground shook as something squelched and rustled down the tunnel to the accompaniment of an echoing hiss. The darkness ahead shifted and then got a whole lot darker as the specks of gold winked out, or were smothered.
Albert took a step back, crouching so he could use his finger as a shoehorn. Another wiggle of his toes, and he was backing up the tunnel. More of the gold flecks were swallowed by shadow, and another rush of fetid breath blasted him and sent Papa’s handkerchief into a crazy spiral. He watched it like an enraptured child at a puppet show, reaching out a lazy hand to catch it. In that instant, a colossal maw ringed with serrated teeth opened right in front of his face. Albert whimpered, broke wind, and stumbled backward at the same time. The handkerchief hit the ground, the monstrosity roared, and Albert squealed his most high-pitched squeal and was running back up the tunnel as fast as his legs could carry him.