The Unweaving

by D. P. Prior

  Shader stiffened, and fought down the memory of lashing tentacles, the despair as Shadrak’s blade plunged into his back and the Dweller rolled over him.

  “Blightey found what he was looking for in Sektis Gandaw: curiosity, ambition, a mind both ripe and receptive. He promised great things, persuaded the homunculi of Gehenna to instruct Gandaw until one day he would have the means to generate a corridor between Earth and the Abyss.”

  “But they later fought,” Shader said, “and Blightey was driven back into Verusia.” Where his evil still grew like a cancer, inexorably creeping toward the wider world, with only the Templum to drive it back, again and again.

  Gilbrum gestured for them to stop before a knotted wall of mangroves. “My point is that the Liche Lord and the Technocrat were both deceived by the Abyss, one way or the other. Deception is insidious. It takes root where its presence is not suspected. The dwarves of Arx Gravis learnt this to their horror, and this is why they are afraid to act: they lost faith in their scriptures, and now they no longer trust their own judgment.”

  “So what can be done?” Shader asked. How could the truth in the Liber be separated from the lies? Was the task even possible anymore? How could his own reasoning be trusted, if it was founded upon Nousian morality?

  “I cannot say,” Gilbrum said. “But if this Nous of yours is anything like the god once worshipped by the dwarves, then you must act as he would act.”

  “And how is that?” Shader said.

  “With love.”

  Shadrak was watching them from the shadows of a crooked tree, its limbs intertwined with its neighbor’s to form a braided overhang.

  “My mother would’ve liked you,” he said without any warmth. “Simple truths for simple people; but those are the dangerous truths, the ones more complicated men will pay people like me to suppress. But you, Gilbrum, ain’t exactly a simple man. Why is it you look at me every time you mention these homunculi?”

  Gilbrum faced Shadrak’s crimson stare. “The homunculi were begotten, not made. They are creatures formed of the substance of the Demiurgos himself.”

  “Figures,” Rhiannon said, striding back to hover over them like she couldn’t wait to get on.

  Shadrak shot daggers at her but then turned back to Gilbrum. “And you connect me with them? Why? Coz I’m short? I was raised in Sahul, I tell you. I’m as human as they come.”

  Gilbrum stood absolutely still, his cloak a mélange of greens and browns that gave him the appearance of a lichen-covered trunk. “What about your parents?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Did you even know them?”

  Silver flashed from beneath Shadrak’s cloak.

  Shader’s gladius batted the dagger aside before he’d even registered its flight.

  Gilbrum remained impassive.

  Shadrak was visibly stunned by the speed of Shader’s reaction. He fumbled with a pouch but then stiffened as a black blade pressed against his throat.

  “Touchy little shogger, aren’t you?” Rhiannon said.

  “Foster mother,” Shadrak said softly. “I knew my…” He broke off and fixed his eyes on Gilbrum. “With all this talk of deception, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that you’re nothing but the dream of a mad god, the bastard son of the Demiurgos, by incest, if I heard it right from that scutting bard.” He shot Rhiannon a look, and she tensed.

  The elf stooped to pick up Shadrak’s dagger, reversed it, and handed it back to him.

  Shader nodded to Rhiannon, and she stepped away, thrusting the black sword into the ground and leaning on it.

  Shadrak’s expression was concealed by his hood, but he sheathed his dagger and crossed his arms.

  Gilbrum scanned the trees, tilting his head back slightly to sniff the air. “They have left us. Skeyr Magnus and his lizard-men. It seems they fear to approach the Perfect Peak.”

  “We’re close?” Shader asked.

  “We’ve arrived.” Gilbrum parted a tangle of vines between two mangroves and invited him to look.

  The Sour Marsh gave way abruptly to bleached sand that spread into the distance, merging with the cobalt horizon. A oily river of sludge ran around the edge of the desert like a moat. Dark vapors effused from its surface, and for as far as Shader could see, malformed limbs splashed free of the goo and groped blindly before slipping from sight.

  A mile or so from where they stood, a lone mountain jutted from the sand, perfectly symmetrical and black as coal, save for the veins of malachite picked out by the glare of the twin suns. A cloud of dirt covered the peak, and at intervals of a few seconds, jags of lightning flashed through the smog. Where they touched the sky, threads of discoloration spread like cracks in a mirror.

  Glints of silver zipped and whirled around the base of the mountain, rising and swooping with astonishing speed.

  Gilbrum’s cloak whitened to match the desert. He crouched to scoop up some sand and let it run through his fingers. “The Dead Lands,” he said. “Not sand, but bone.”

  “Bone?” Rhiannon wrinkled her nose.

  Gilbrum stood and made a visor with his hand, peering at the black mountain. “Nothing lives here,” he said. “Gandaw made sure of that before he built the Perfect Peak.”

  Shadrak’s eyes tracked the movements of the silver objects flitting around the base. “They follow a set pattern,” he said. “But I’ll wager that’ll change the moment we approach.”

  “We’ll never know if we just stand here all day gawping,” Rhiannon said. She stepped away from the border of the Sour Marsh toward the river of sludge.

  Shader made to follow, but Gilbrum put a restraining hand on his shoulder. One of the silver shapes was speeding away from the mountain so quickly that, by the time Shader had blinked, he could see it clearly as a metallic sphere, spinning and reflecting sunlight from its surface.

  Rhiannon froze where she stood.

  The sphere came to a hover mere yards from her and began to circle her at head height. A slim metal tube emerged from its shell and pointed at her chest. In that instant, Gilbrum released an arrow. The tube twitched and spurted red flame, and the arrow turned to ash.

  Shader lunged for Rhiannon, grabbed her wrist, and tugged her toward the marsh. The sphere sped past them and resumed its circling.

  Shader drew the gladius without a thought, its blade meeting a second stream of fire and deflecting it into a tree. The trunk fizzed and blackened, then split down the middle. The nozzle swiveled in his direction, but a thunderous crack sounded, and the sphere spun backward before dumping itself in the dust.

  “Get back,” Shadrak said, pointing toward the mountain with his smoking pistol.

  Two more spheres were racing straight for them.

  Shader dragged Rhiannon back toward Gilbrum and the cover of the trees. Shadrak followed them, walking backward, with the little black weapon covering the spheres. Once they were all back within the the marsh, the spheres broke off and returned to their patrol of the mountain.

  “Anyone got a plan to get past those things, now would be a good time,” Rhiannon said, throwing herself to the ground like a sulking child.

  “We go underground,” Shadrak said. “If what Mr. Pointy Ears says is true, we pay these dwarves a visit.”

  “Then we need to find Arx Gravis,” Shader said. “Let’s just pray we have time.”

  “I’ll leave the praying to you,” Shadrak said.

  Gilbrum’s shoulders slumped, and his eyes grew dull. “I cannot lead you there. It is far beyond the bounds of the Sour Marsh. You must journey east, and yes, you must pray. The cloud and the lightning above the Perfect Peak were not there before. I fear you are right: the Unweaving has commenced.”

  “Do you have a map? Landmarks for us to look out for?” Shader asked.

  “I am sorry,” Gilbrum said.

  “Then how—” Shader’s words stuck in his throat as he saw they were being watched.

  “Nous is merciful to sinners, Deacon Shader.” Dave the Slave
shuffled out of the undergrowth, his twisted frame the avatar of an angry god. “You are still his right hand, despite your failure to act.”

  Ice crept up Shader’s spine. It wasn’t the first time the hunchback had appeared out of nowhere. He should have been used to it, what with Aristodeus popping up all over the place, but in both cases, it had the feel of wrongness to it. Of course, it was possible, as the Voice of Nous, Dave had some divinely bestowed power. Possible, but not very likely.

  Gilbrum’s eyes widened, and he spoke in a low voice to Shader. “There is the taste of deception about this creature. I would not—”

  “Nous has shown me the way to Arx Gravis,” Dave said. “Come with me, if you would redeem yourself.”

  The hunchback limped away through the marsh, murmuring under his breath, but whether he was praying or cursing, Shader couldn’t tell.

  “Don’t worry,” Shadrak said. “I already got a dozen ways to kill the creep. I say we follow.”

  Gilbrum nodded. “Go, but be mindful that the dwarves are afraid to act. Even if they remember the tunnels, they may not grant you access.”

  “Doesn’t anyone care that doomsday’s underway?” Rhiannon said. “What is it with this place?”

  “It’s the Dreaming,” Shader said. “Maybe death holds no fear here.”

  Gilbrum shook his head. “We share your fears, but we are bound by what we are. I am sorry I can do no more.” With that, he slipped into the undergrowth and was lost from view.

  Shader’s eyes met Rhiannon’s, but he could read nothing there. Her gaze was hard and empty.

  Shadrak holstered his pistol and pulled his cloak about him, while up ahead, Dave the Slave beckoned with a curling finger.

  With a prayer half-spoken in his mind, Shader stood aside to let Rhiannon walk in front of him, and they followed the hunchback deeper into the mire.

  NOTHING’S PERFECT

  Finally!

  It was happening, after all these centuries. The Unweaving was well and truly underway.

  Sektis Gandaw felt the resistance in his taut face relent. He’d grown so used to its mask-like rigor as to not notice, but now he felt a tug on his cheeks, the curling of his shriveled lips—the exoskeleton’s built-in apothecary hydrated them as necessary, but there was only so much you could do. He imagined warmth suffusing his desiccated flesh like he was sure it once had. Useless sensation, useless emotional response. The sort of thing he had no time for. The sort of thing that would have no place in his universe. But he couldn’t deny it; despite eons of discipline, millennia of damping down the slightest surge of passion, he was satisfied, content, a little elated, even. No doubt deserved, he acknowledged, even as he shut the feeling down with a mental command that triggered the release of equilibrating chemicals via a hundred pinpricks that barely registered, so scarred up and hardened were the injection sites.

  “Finally,” he said out loud this time, wholly approving of the detached monotone that emerged. It had begun. Endless series of meticulous calculations, hundreds of years of hunting for the pieces of Eingana that had been craftily hidden among the people of Earth. Only he could have done it. Only he had the patience, the fortitude, the scrupulous attention to detail that could deconstruct the entire chaotic cosmos, save for his mountain base. Sparing this island of imperfection irked him somewhat, but it was a necessary flaw that would be remedied once his creation had taken root. Once all else was stable, running smoothly, according to his own faultless laws, he planned to move beyond the Perfect Peak and watch as it was the last thing to be unwoven.

  He steepled his fingers in front of his mouth, eyes glancing over the algorithms dancing across his desktop screen.

  The numbers and symbols flickering before him were old friends, his children, his collaborators in dismantling and rebuilding. He knew each of them intimately. He’d pared them down, permutated them, checked and revised, checked and revised, every day, every week, every month, year after year after year. No one else could say they’d done that. No scientist, no writer, no artist could ever say that each and every single element of their creation was absolutely perfect, absolutely necessary and fit for purpose. Seeing the patterns of the Unweaving running like this, active and fulfilling their function, was as satisfying as it could get. The figures had moved beyond what they symbolized and now actualized what they stood for, all because he had unraveled the secrets of Eingana, worked out how to harness her power.

  He tensed at the renewed attack of the nagging thought: He hadn’t created the serpent goddess, so his cosmos wouldn’t really be creatio ex nihilo, would it? Of course, he wouldn’t be his own creation, either, would he?

  He thumped down on the desk and then leaned back in his chair as equilibrium was restored. The patterns continued their procession across the screen. All perfect. So perfect.

  Wait, is that an ellipsis out of place?

  Couldn’t be. Impossible. He’d scoured the algorithms with infinitesimal scrutiny, again and again and again. There was no error. Utterly impossible. That was the problem with smiling, with allowing the slightest shred of emotion: it opened a crack on imperfection, on self-doubt. This time, when he smiled, it was willed entirely, a sardonic smirk that put such human thinking back in its place.

  Nevertheless, he had to see.

  He knew the calculations so well that they played through his mind as he left the office and took the elevator down to the control center. Stepping through the sliding doors, he expected to see the glare of plasma screens winding their way up to the top of the conical chamber. His jaw may have actually dropped, and for an instant his mind went blank, scattering the numbers and symbols into confused streams of verbiage.

  “Mephesch!” he yelled into the dark. “Put the screens on!”

  His optics whirred into low-light mode, and he could pick out the motionless forms of the kryeh bent over their monitors, bat-wings clothing them like cloaks. The optics limned them with green, picked out the diminutive shapes of homunculi scurrying about the walkways.

  A hum and a sparkle of amber drew his gaze to the apex, where, high above him, hung the serpent statue from the array of microfilaments that wired it into the heart of the Perfect Peak. There was a sound like a roaring wind, and the statue swelled to ten times its size, its eyes flaring amber, its fangs like lightning. Within moments, the wind dropped to a long drawn-out hiss, and the statue contracted to its normal dimensions, scarcely more than a foot in height. A crackle of amber burst along the filaments, and then all went dead.

  “Bit glitchy, Technocrat.” Mephesch sidled up beside him.

  “What? Glitchy? What, what, what?” Gandaw gasped then winced as a thousand needles jabbed him to restore his euthymia.

  “Nothing to worry about. Shall we?”

  A transporter disk emerged from the floor, and they stepped onto it and let it take them up alongside Eingana.

  Mephesch gave the serpent statue a slap, and its eyes flared once more as the microfilaments pulsed with amber light. Eingana remained petrified but seemingly defiant, festooned within the gossamer effulgence of the web supporting her. “Not quite perfect, but it’ll do.”

  “Not quite what?” Gandaw said.

  “What I mean is—”

  “Then make it perfect! I haven’t labored all these centuries to have some ignorant bloody homunculus botch my power source.”

  Mephesch grimaced and gave a little bow. “The network is perfect, the programming is faultless…”

  “I know, I know,” Gandaw muttered under his breath. “But? Come on, out with it?”

  “I think she’s putting up a fight.”

  “Impossible!”

  The homunculus looked from Gandaw to the serpent statue. “I agree. Theoretically impossible, but sometimes things just can’t be explained.”

  “Rubbish! If there’s something awry, it’s in the science, Mephesch. Understand? You merely ascribe to mystery that which you have not investigated thoroughly enough.”

  Mephesch
nodded and cocked his head to one side. “You are right, Technocrat. It is a failing of mine. Only, in this case, the science is your own.”

  “Which tells us what?” Gandaw asked.

  Mephesch was dumb.

  “It tells us—” Gandaw jabbed a finger at him. “—there has been an error in the application, an error that can only have been introduced by one of your people.”

  “But we followed your instructions to the—”

  “Find it, Mephesch. Find it now.”

  Mephesch turned to look at the radiant statue. “Seems to be fine now, Technocrat. Maybe it was a bad connection.”

  Gandaw narrowed his optics, but he had to admit, it did seem to be working again. Did it really matter if there had been a mishap? Surely, if everything was working as it should now, it could still be perfect.

  “What happened to the screens?” He switched his gaze to the walkways, where the kryeh stared at blackness. “Why aren’t they working?”

  “Not enough power,” Mephesch said. “Virtually everything we have is being routed through the statue. We were certain you’d want to hit critical mass as soon as possible.”

  Gandaw let out a hissing sigh through clenched prosthetic teeth. “Is that what I said?”

  “Well, uh—”

  “You think it is acceptable to leave power for the elevators, for the lights in my office, indeed for everything but the screens? What is your rationale?”

  The homunculus’s shoulders rose to cover his ears, giving the impression his head was sinking into his torso. “I assumed the screens were now redundant, what with the algorithms being so infallible.”

  “Are you trying to be funny?”

  “No, I merely thought that—”

  “Switch them on, Mephesch. Now.” Gandaw’s fingers curled into fists but relaxed once the new infusion of drugs hit his veins.

  “Even if we have to slow things down?”

  “Even if,” Gandaw said. “I’ve waited thousands of years, and I’m not about to rush things now. Come on, I want to see this.”