by D. P. Prior
He shouldn’t have let her come—not that she’d given him much of a choice. She seemed to need it, need something to make up for Sammy. And it wasn’t just her brother she’d lost, either. Her parents, her self-respect, her… he almost wanted to say honor, but that didn’t sit right. What did her honor have to do with what Gaston had done to her? He was the one who’d acted dishonorably, and that was putting it mildly.
Poor Gaston; the thought crept in of its own accord. Had he made up for it in some small way back at the templum? Had his self-sacrifice for the priests been enough? Could anything ever be enough? Shader shuddered and closed down that avenue of thought. Maybe that’s what he’d meant by harder: He needed to keep things simpler. More black and white. And yet the lure of the golden thread wouldn’t quite release its grip. Ludo had always said with Nous things were never that straight forward. They were simple in a way—unimaginably so—but you had to know how to look. “Head to heart,” he used to say to a classroom full of blank looks. He’d thump his chest, as if that made it clear. “Head to heart.”
Was it all about love, like Rhiannon had said? Something about the way Dave spoke, the way he condemned, seemed to say not. If the hunchback was who he said he was, if he really was the Voice of Nous, where was the love? Could be that it was about something else entirely, like good and evil. That’s what Shader had always believed: do the former and avoid the latter. Maybe that’s what he meant by being harder. Maybe it wasn’t just about avoiding evil; maybe it was about rooting it out and excising it wherever he found it. Isn’t that what surgeons did to gangrenous limbs? Cut away the bad so that the good might live?
If only it were that easy. If only he could rip from the Liber all that Blightey had contaminated it with. The problem was, Blightey wasn’t that crude. There were no obviously evil passages in the Liber. If there were, they’d have been removed centuries ago. What the Liche Lord had done was much more subtle. He’d woven together strands from various traditions and sown the seeds of confusion. The early Templum fathers had fallen for the wisdom he’d offered: the wisdom of popular appeal.
But how to sort one thread from another, that was the problem. If love was indeed the answer, what kind of love? Or was it even simpler? Everyone knew good from evil, didn’t they? It was ingrained in the soul. That’s what Exemptus Silvanus had taught: identify the disease and eradicate it. Maybe he had a point. Call a spade a spade, and stop making excuses. It was the kind of thinking that said Gaston was damned, and that’s that. You touch fire, it burns you. You only have yourself to blame. Two standards: one for Nous, the other for the Demiurgos. One thing or the other. You couldn’t make it any clearer than Trajinot, when the Seventh Horse had ridden against the undead hordes of Verusia. Simple, sure, decisive. Not like Shader’s fatal delay atop the Homestead. Dave had a case to be answered: that indecision may just have condemned the worlds.
The hunchback craned his neck and peered back at Shader. He pursed his twisted lips and gave a nod that seemed to say, “That’s better.” Shader returned the look through narrowed eyes. Some of the luminaries were supposed to be able to read your soul, so it was entirely possible that Dave had been following his thoughts. He wasn’t so sure, though. The chill pricking its way up his spine told a different story. When Dave broke off and continued on ahead, Shader was back to wondering how you could tell one way or the other. Was Nous trying to get him back on track, or was it something altogether more sinister? A third option was that he was imagining things, growing paranoid, like poor old Hagalle. A look over his shoulder at Rhiannon lunging and slicing with the black sword as she walked made the possibility seem that much more real.
They picked up a weather-beaten road, its pavestones cracked and riddled with mosses and lichen, and followed it mile after mile.
So much of Aethir reminded Shader of Earth. The tufted plains rolled on and on but gradually gave way to lush prairies and gently sloping downland. Purple thistles grew in clusters, standing up out of fields of dandelions and seas of daisies. It was all just a bit too beautiful, too good to be true. If it hadn’t been for the twin suns skittering erratically in the gray-blue skies, he could have been persuaded he was in Britannia, hiking across the hills surrounding his father’s Friston estate.
“So much for infinite variety,” Rhiannon said, obviously noticing him looking. “You’d at least expect another world to have different plants.”
Shader was inclined to agree, but then a thought struck him. The Dreamers of Sahul believed Aethir sprang from the mind of a dog-headed ape, the Cynocephalus, who was somehow cocooned at its center. Before Aethir, he had drifted alone in the cosmos, abandoned by his mother, terrified of his father. The two worlds were linked by dreams, they said, but perhaps the dreams flowed both ways, and the Cynocephalus’s mind had only given birth to what was already in the minds of men.
They stopped above a deep valley veined with branching streams and carpeted with bottle-green grass. To their right, smoke billowed from the summit of a distant volcano that was skirted by a sprawling forest. Far, far ahead and to the left of the valley, the ground climbed toward craggy knolls and, beyond them, mist-shrouded mountains.
Dave began fussing around, laying tinder for a fire, rummaging through his pack. He unwrapped the remains of the goat, and the stench of rot hit Shader like a fist. He covered his nose and mouth and fought down bile. Rhiannon cursed and reeled away from the others. A few seconds later, Shader heard her spilling her guts. Shadrak simply buried himself in his hood and approached Dave in a wide semicircle. Shader didn’t need to get closer; he could see the meat writhing from where he crouched. The carcass was riddled with maggots, and yet it had only been a few hours since they’d slaughtered the animal.
“Knew there was something rotten about this world,” Rhiannon said, stumbling back and wiping drool from her chin with her sleeve. “Shog, that’s rank.”
“Maybe it ain’t the place,” Shadrak said, circling Dave like an uneasy shadow. “Maybe it’s him.”
Dave hastily wrapped the goat-flesh and hurled it down into the valley. “Nous has given, and Nous has taken away.”
“Well, tell Nous, thanks a bunch,” Rhiannon said to the sky. “Now what are we supposed to eat?”
Shader opened his mouth to chastise her, but her hard eyes told him not to bother. His stomach grumbled, but he gritted his teeth and offered it up as a sacrifice. Did Nous not provide for his children? Did he not sometimes feed his luminaries with berries brought by ravens?
“No point stopping, then,” Shadrak said, kicking away Dave’s kindling. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”
Shader’s feet were raw inside his boots. Given the choice, he’d have flopped to the ground and rested, taken his boots off and soaked his feet in cool water. Ain only knew how many miles they’d covered, and there was no indication of how far there was to go.
Dave eyed him curiously and then pointed to the distant mountains. “The scarolite mines, and nestled in the earth below them, Arx Gravis. Two more days, and we will be there.”
“Two days!” Rhiannon said. “You gotta be kidding. What, we supposed to ask Sektis Gandaw to put the end of the world on hold while we’re traveling?”
Shader instinctively looked back the way they’d come, but the Perfect Peak had passed from sight. There was a smudge in the sky, but it was hard to tell if it was rain coming or the effusion spilling from the mountaintop.
“There is time still,” Dave said. “Nous sees all things. He is with us.”
“However far we go this way,” Shader said, “we still have to go back.” It had been troubling him for hours. They needed to get inside the Perfect Peak, yet here they were getting farther and farther from it.
“Have faith in the Voice of Nous. Have faith.” Dave shouldered his pack and turned back to the trail.
They followed the ancient road across the top of the valley until it entered a sea of man-high grass flowing around clusters of hillocks, which on closer inspection
turned out to be heaps of slick vegetation. The whole region stank of cabbage, and the swaying of the grass sometimes gave the illusion of the hillocks breathing, shuddering, slithering. Here and there, the road was entirely obscured by thick growths of vines and dark leafy plants. Silence settled over the group, and Shader felt Rhiannon edging closer to him. Dave seemed oblivious, but Shadrak took the lead, drew his pistol, and motioned for them to stop.
The wind whistled momentarily, and then even that died. Shader held his breath, and his heartbeat thudded so loud in his head that he felt certain its clangor could be heard all the way to Arx Gravis.
Rhiannon lightly touched the back of his hand. He scarcely dared turn his head to look at her, and when he did, her eyes were wide and unblinking.
What was it? What had Shadrak—
A flutter of wings, a gobbling screech, and then bang!
Shadrak blew smoke from the barrel of his weapon and re-holstered it. Some kind of wild turkey scuttled in a tight circle with blood spurting from where its head had once been. Its wings spread wide, shuddered, and then the thing dropped dead.
“Shog Nous,” Shadrak said. “Found that one my—”
A gurgling roar erupted from behind. Thorny tendrils burst through Dave’s chest and ripped him apart in a bloody spray. Shadrak was swatted head over heels by a sinuous limb before he could react. Shader spun, just as a glutinous mass of vegetation loomed over him, creepers and barbed lianas whipping about the living hillock that formed its body. A vine lashed about his wrist before he could draw the gladius, yanked him straight toward a cavernous maw. He yelled and closed his eyes as breath like overripe compost washed over him, and then he hit the ground hard, rolled, and came up on one knee.
The limbs all went slack together, and the central mass quivered then sloughed away to both sides, revealing a corpse-gray human head with milky eyes and a toothless mouth that drooled greenish slime.
Rhiannon stepped away from the monster, fighting the black blade clear of its putrid flesh. A shiver passed through her, and she lifted her eyes skyward, raising the sword above her head. Her whole body tensed, and she gasped with what could only have been pleasure. Then she looked down at the thing she had slain, and the color drained from her cheeks.
Shadrak approached, brushing crud from his cloak and aiming his pistol at the decomposing mess.
Shader found his feet and fought to hold in the contents of his stomach as he made a slow circle of the thing. There was at least part of a human within the vegetable shell: the grotesque head, a flayed ribcage, the tail end of a spine, all fused with plant matter, and here and there banded with steel or braided with copper wire.
“What the shog is it?” Rhiannon said, stumbling back.
Shader licked his lips and shook his head, but he couldn’t speak.
“Ain’t natural, that’s what,” Shadrak said. “Reeks of tech.”
“Ancient-tech?” Shader asked. “Here on Aethir?”
“Gandaw,” Shadrak said. “What the shog’s he done here?”
It hardly seemed to matter. Whatever vile experiments the Technocrat had conducted on Aethir, they would all cease to exist along with everything else once the Unweaving took place. How could anyone be so warped as to create something like this? And then to want to un-make everything? Gandaw was a lunatic at best. They had to get to the dwarves, had to find a way to put a stop to this. And then Shader’s hope sank into his guts as he remembered. Dave had been cut to ribbons before any of them knew what was happening. Who was going to guide them now?
“Praise Nous,” the hunchback said, climbing awkwardly to his feet.
There wasn’t a mark on him. Had Shader imagined it? Imagined the limbs tearing through his chest?
“What the shog?” Shadrak said, taking aim at Dave’s head.
“You’re dead,” Rhiannon said, advancing on him with the black sword. “I saw it kill you.”
Shader narrowed his eyes. What devilry was this? How could Dave be standing there as if nothing had happened?
“For Nous, all things are possible,” Dave said, and then he looked directly at Shader. “You of all people should know. He is merciful, Deacon Shader. Trust in him. Have the faith that can move mountains.”
Shader felt Shadrak watching him. Rhiannon, too. There was nothing he could say. He was as dumbfounded as they were.
“What do we do now?” Rhiannon said.
“Keep going,” Shader muttered; and then more loudly, “We press on.”
What other choice did they have?
“You’re the boss,” Shadrak said in a voice dripping with venom. He rammed his pistol back in its holster. “But the turkey’s coming with us.”
Rhiannon struggled to re-sheathe her sword and sling it over her back. “Amen to that, but I’m not stopping to eat here, got it?”
“For once,” Shadrak said, snatching up the dead bird by its legs, “I couldn’t shogging agree more.”
STARTING AT THE BOTTOM AGAIN
“Here, catch,” Buck said, flinging something shiny across the kitchen.
Albert caught it on instinct, turned it over in his hand. “A potato peeler. Why, thanks.”
Smoke wafted up from the brazier atop the clay oven. Whatever was sautéing (if one could stretch the meaning of the word) in the cast iron pan was charred black on the outside and no doubt completely raw in the center. There was a steaming cauldron beside it, bubbling and spitting with far too much vigor for the sludge congealing inside. The stench was hard to discern—lamb, perhaps, but with more than a hint of tarragon (not right at all) and so much turmeric, the water had turned yellow and ponged like an Ashantan brothel (speaking from hearsay, rather than experience).
He coughed into his sleeve, wincing at the memory of poor old Papa’s hanky.
Twisting plumes of dirty smoke were winding their way up the crumbling brick flue, but much of it still wafted out into the kitchen, probably because the four-legged carcass turning on the spit obscured the opening.
Albert had to admit, though, it was a curious contraption. The spit was connected to a vertical shaft coming down the flue. Where spit met shaft, there was some kind of primitive gear. The shaft seemed to rotate of its own accord, and as it did, the spit turned, too.
“What makes it turn?” he said out loud, stepping closer and waving steam out of his face so he could crane his neck for a better look.
“Don’t know and don’t care,” Buck said, thrusting his hand into a pail of carrots and proceeding to butcher them with ham-fisted chops of a blunt knife. Made you wonder at the quality of the cuisine if Buck was the best sous-chef they could come up with. “Spuds are behind you.”
“Spuds?” Albert turned to look. “Oh, potatoes.”
“Not much for peeling, eh? Look, I’ll swap you. Come here, I’ll show you how to chop.”
Oh, please, will you?
Albert made a show of awed fascination as the cretin hacked away at the carrots like he was quarrying granite.
“See,” Buck said, handing Albert the knife and relieving him of the potato peeler. “It’s all in the wrist.”
Yes, I’m sure it is.
Albert took up position in front of the chopping board, set the knife down like a surgical implement, shrugged off his jacket and handed it to Buck, then delicately took the knife back up again.
“Don’t be shy, now,” Buck said. “Bit firmer. That’s it, show it who’s—”
Albert held up a finger for silence. “Now, Master Fargin, wait, watch, and learn. Handshake grip on the knife, index finger to the top and side of the blade, tip down, and rolling chop. Forward and down, forward and down.”
Buck was looking at him as if he were mad. “But you ain’t cut nothing yet. It ain’t like we got all day for your poncy shenanigans.”
“Stage two,” Albert said. “Make a claw of your subordinate hand…”
“Eh?”
“Claw on carrot.” He started to demonstrate as he spoke. “Slice down the middle; take o
ne half, keep the blade rolling—forward and back—feed it the carrot, root at the top. Chop away from the root, always away. Chop, chop, chop chop chop, chopa-chopa-chop-chop. Aaaand the other half.” He made short work of that one, too. “Rinse and repeat. Cut down the center, chop away from the root…”
He could tell Buck was gawping, even without looking at him. Years of practice, two years sous-chefing for the great Maurice Mouflet—Ain rest his soul—then a decade as the most acclaimed head chef in Western Sahul, until that business with the boeuf à la mode. Oh, the shame of it. The ignominy. Still, a quick shedding of Mouflet’s borrowed name, a hasty relocation to Sarum, and no one was any the wiser.
“What’s your game?” Buck said, a wary look coming over him. “You been shitting me?”
“Not at all,” Albert said. “You so shrewdly discerned my talents when we met. It is no lie that I was once the finest chef in… well, it doesn’t matter where. Don’t suppose you’ll have heard of it. Suffice it to say that I have many skills with which to serve your ambitions, Master Fargin.”
Buck bit down on his top lip and nodded. “That’s all right, then. Just like we agreed. You scratch my back…”
And I’ll ram a knife in yours, you cretinous moron.
“And I will most definitely scratch yours,” Albert finished for him.
“Good. I was hoping you’d say that. See, I knew you was gonna turn out a dab hand in the kitchen. Just wanted to see for myself. Thing is, I’m expecting someone: Magwitch the Meddler. Should be here any minute to pick up the scarolite, you know, from the back of the wagon.”
“How could I forget?” A day’s ride cooped up with that flatulent, snoring, hairy midget was going to be difficult to forget. Rugbeard had slept most of the way, only ever waking to relieve himself and bemoan the lack of booze. Even now, Albert couldn’t shake off the stench of his stale beer belches. “Is the dwarf still…”