The Weight of the World

by Tom Toner

  They crested the first low hills, pushing past some sticks of bleached driftwood—a prisoner-built fence, made with all the finesse of a shanty wall—and looked down into the power station.

  Amid a cluster of massive pyramids of twinkling black coal, sections of the second chimney had fallen, avalanching one side of a coal hill and pouring it all into the river that ran past, damming it until only a trickle snaked blackly through.

  Ghaldezuel’s eyes followed the course of the dry river to the burned-out shell of the boiler chambers, where a furnace would have been constantly stoked to heat the water into steam. Beyond, relatively untouched, the shambolic red-brick fortifications of the turbine hall reared into the side of the mountain, blocking the view of the road that led deeper into the complex and on to the valley containing the prison itself.

  “Look,” Ghaldezuel said to De Rivarol, pointing into the wasteland of shattered equipment, pulverised bricks and twisted piles of blackened, rusted metal. “They’ve tried to take the generator apart.”

  De Rivarol nodded, continuing on down towards the first of the great heaps of coal where the remains of the fallen chimney had settled. Ghaldezuel reached a hand into his pocket and brushed the fold of black material he’d brought all the way from the First Province. He gazed around and followed the Amaranthine, clattering along the tin chute leading to the burned ruins of the boiler chambers. Perhaps the other two stations would prove equally useless. If that were so, then the last portion of his mission would be in darkness.

  “The water was choked with an extremely potent strain of bilhar-zia,” De Rivarol said, gesturing down to the nearly dry watercourse that had once fed the boiler. “The poison came from somewhere at the stream’s source in the mountain, an old addition to discourage escape along the river.”

  Ghaldezuel looked at the brackish, brown-slimed pools sitting in the bottom of some exposed pipes and stepped over them, walking to the shattered remains of the first chamber and into shadow. Pipes and brickwork were still standing in places, leaving an empty shell filled with blasted machinery. Scuffed footprints in the ash of the floor showed where the released Prism had tried to salvage parts. He raised his rifle and scanned the upper floors of the ruined shell, looking down the hallways as he crunched over shrapnel towards the turbine hall.

  “This Wulm. He will be receptive,” De Rivarol said from behind.

  Ghaldezuel turned slightly, unsure whether he’d been asked a question. “One hopes.”

  “Harald Hundred was once imprisoned here, you know,” the Amaranthine continued, inspecting the remains of the furnace, a thirty-five foot-high cube of blackened metal. Its vast, bullet-pocked grate hung loose from a single waist-thick hinge.

  “He escaped?” Ghaldezuel asked, intrigued.

  “Of course not,” De Rivarol replied sharply. “He was pardoned.”

  “Must have humiliated him sufficiently, to be locked away with Prism.”

  “That was always the point,” the Amaranthine said, somewhat coldly. “A fate worse than death, for some.”

  “I’m surprised he survived it. How long was his sentence?”

  De Rivarol smirked. “A day or so.”

  Ghaldezuel shook his head, stepping through a broken arch and into the turbine hall, a circular chamber dominated by huge silver blades festooned with complex piping. Ghaldezuel paused to look at them, taking in the hundreds of wooden buckets that covered the floor, each filled to the brim with the same scummy brown water.

  “A trap?” he muttered, not turning to De Rivarol.

  “Or the condensers were leaking,” the Immortal replied, knocking one with his boot. It tipped over and splashed. Ghaldezuel stepped neatly back.

  “What’s the matter, Lacaille?” De Rivarol dipped his finger into another of the buckets and touched it to his mouth with a smile.

  Ghaldezuel shook his head angrily, turning his back on the Perennial and stepping away through the maze of buckets. Beneath the gleaming rotors, drips and drops fell, plopping into buckets and splashing the floors. He felt a few drops of the deadly water patter onto the back of his cloak. He shook himself, stopping when he saw what was ahead.

  Bones.

  A yellowed tangle of ribs and vertebrae had been dumped into the vats of the turbine hall. Dried flesh still clung between some of the ribs like peeling brown sailcloth. Ghaldezuel navigated the rest of the buckets and walked slowly up to the piled skeletons, wary of his exits as he inspected them. A long skull grinned at him from beneath the heap.

  “Zeltabras and Elepins from the stables,” De Rivarol said. “Killed in a frenzy.”

  “This is a surprise?” Ghaldezuel replied. “You left your prisoners here to starve.”

  “To weed out the weak,” the Amaranthine snapped back. “The Long-Life wants only the hardiest defending his interests.”

  Ghaldezuel didn’t reply. Through a tall, glassless window he caught a glimpse of sunlight flashing crazily off metal. He ducked.

  Bolts slammed into the turbine hall, piercing the wall where he’d just been standing and pulverising the brickwork in a rolling cloud of red dust. He brought the rifle stock to his shoulder and snapped on the binocular lens. More shots whined through the smashed bricks, popping holes in the wooden buckets and slopping their poisonous contents across the floor.

  He glimpsed De Rivarol moving to the edge of the chamber. “Wait!” Ghaldezuel hissed, knowing the Amaranthine would only bring down half the mountainside if he tried to help in any way. They hadn’t penetrated the darkest globe in the Firmament just to leave empty-handed.

  More bolts smashed into the stone floor around Ghaldezuel’s outstretched boot. He pulled it in and took a breath, popping up and sighting on where he’d first seen the flash. Whatever their assailant was had slipped behind its cover of stones once more, but hadn’t contended with a Pifoon-made lumen rifle. Ghaldezuel snapped off fifteen shots, the invisible charged light blowing jagged holes in the cairn of rubble across the valley and scattering it. A grey stick figure jumped into focus as it scampered for cover. He sighted calmly. Lacaille. Nothing more than an overqualified sentry lain in wait for many days. Not the Wulm they’d come for, but a fine marksman nonetheless. He took the shot, blowing out its jaw as its head bucked upwards, only a tendon keeping the neck intact.

  Ghaldezuel ducked back, waiting for retaliatory fire, sure none would come. He held a gloved hand up to the Amaranthine and headed for the chamber’s great southward-facing brick arch, working his way along the outside wall until he had a view of the valley again, then crouched and sighted on the far hill. Much to his surprise, he spotted another distant figure scampering back along the ridge. He put his eye to the scope, understanding he had only seconds before it disappeared over the rise, firing a moment later. The first shot tore a hole in the creature’s foot, hobbling it. He took a breath and squeezed off another, missing its shoulder by a hair.

  And then it was gone.

  Ghaldezuel unclipped the scope, breathing harshly as he shouldered the rifle.

  “And?” De Rivarol asked, appearing in the sunlight under the arch.

  Ghaldezuel rose to his feet and looked around, irritated. “We’ll need to hurry.”

  The Amaranthine tutted. “You missed?”

  “I slowed him down.” He glanced back at the rise. “Can you run in those skirts of yours, Immortal?”

  They crested the rise, wary of other spotters in the hills. Ghaldezuel dropped to his stomach, hurriedly signalling for De Rivarol to do the same, cursing as the Amaranthine pointed to his opulent clothes, shaking his head.

  Below them lay a vast valley of hills formed by the roots of the mountains. In one of the crevices, Ghaldezuel could see the remains of a high, fortified wall. Within it lay the Thrasm, dangling like a corkscrewed stalactite of light red brick from the overhanging rock. The single guard tower, which Ghaldezuel remembered from the images had protruded like a chimney stack, lay in pieces on the valley floor.

  The place itself was no
thing but melodrama; it was what lay within, what they sought, that possessed the power to change things. Ghaldezuel did not stare at it long. His eyes flicked across the slopes that led down to the prison, settling here and there, searching for peripheral movement. A couple of hundred feet down on the hills below them, he caught sight of the scampering sentry. He frowned, scrambling to his feet, not checking whether or not the Amaranthine was following. The sentry appeared to be trying to find cover. Ghaldezuel took aim.

  An eruption of sparks suddenly glittered across the lower hills, coursing along the mountainside beyond and starting a dozen small avalanches of boulders before the thunder reached them. Ghaldezuel glared around at De Rivarol, then back to the distant figure. The Prism had stopped short of the cover he was running for. Hobbling, the Lacaille turned to face them.

  Ghaldezuel cursed beneath his breath as the crack of falling rocks echoed in the mountains. Higher up, some snow had been disturbed which now fell in a vast, misted curtain across the lower slopes further west. He examined the Prism from a distance, aware that this one would have killed hundreds in his lifetime, certainly more than Ghaldezuel himself, glad that he had it now in his sights.

  The scrawny Lacaille, a Dyed-White from Sprit by the look of him, stood and stared, challenging. It was what Ghaldezuel—staring at death along the barrel of an expensive lumen rifle—would have done. A test, perhaps, of honour; one last chance of survival. Ghaldezuel shook his head, squeezing off a shot. The Lacaille’s body tumbled, faceless and leaking, down the slope towards the Thrasm.

  He rounded on the Amaranthine, throwing the rifle at De Rivar-ol’s feet. “You take it! You take it, when you next decide to act without thinking!”

  The Amaranthine stared at the weapon, his thin lips pursing. “The Long-Life’s regard for you will not last for ever,” he said, raising his eyes, static tingling between them. “Remember that, primate.”

  Ghaldezuel shook his head, grabbing the rifle and setting off quickly down the slope, his only comfort lying in the realisation that he’d made the right choice; had they taken the tunnel path, his imbecile companion would only have brought the place down around them.

  He sighted his weapon again, panning the rifle across the valley, looking for any sign of a camp in the hills. But there was none. He scanned the upper slopes for any wisps of smoke, any of the litter or well-worn trails that folk living in one place couldn’t help but make, seeing nothing.

  Ghaldezuel unscrewed the scope and pocketed it among his clinking stock of pistol ammunition. He might as well have worn a giant bell around his neck. The prisoners already knew they were here.

  APOSTATE

  Ghaldezuel and De Rivarol approached the Thrasm along an avenue of the same vast, rusted guns they had seen on the airstrip. Their barrels were all scrawled with one word, painted in blood, excrement, chalk and charcoal in five different Investiture alphabets:

  CUNCTUS

  Ghaldezuel mouthed the word as he read, catching the Amaranthine’s eye.

  Skewered upon the two leading guns were a couple of sun-withered corpses. From the expressions on the Vulgars’ faces, it looked as though they had still been alive when they’d been impaled, anus-first, and pushed down the barrels. They continued on, their pace checked, watchful.

  The prison had been blown open by a retreating bomber carrying the last of the Pifoon guards, but they hadn’t made it far. Its remains lay smashed side-on into the ground at the end of the avenue; a sad, scattered heap of rusted shrapnel and bent guns. Had they left, the inmates could almost have been on the other side of the range by now, walking north into uncharted land that Ghaldezuel knew was nothing but more of the same. Maybe they had, leaving two of their best to guard the rear, but he thought it unlikely. He imagined what he himself would do, knowing as they almost certainly did that the dissolution of their prison was not some simple act of mercy, and came to the unfortunate conclusion that he was walking into a trap.

  Ghaldezuel was reasonably well known in the Investiture, even if his name wasn’t. The Bult crew he commanded was unique. He ought not to have feared a mortal soul. But there was one, one anomaly in the grand landscape of the Investiture, who had always unsettled him slightly. One who had marked his territory here.

  The prisoner kept his birth name, they said, eschewing all others. He needed no more than one, not in these times, and yet still he’d collected them over his thirty years of terror as he had followers, his greatness attracting the weak and malicious from all corners of the Investiture. Cunctus the Ragged, some called him. Cunctus the Tick. The Cethegrande Prince. The Apostate.

  And no one—no one who dared to speak of it, anyway—had ever seen him.

  The Apostate was the name by which Cunctus was known among the Lacaille, having robbed the Grand Bank of Maniz a year before his capture, making off with the entire wealth of the country of Baln. Not a soul in the surrounding small city had survived, Cunctus’s team of assassins dumping an Amaranthine skycharge as they fled. So it was that his crime was not discovered until a few days later, by which point Cunctus had paid his way into the Firmament to hold the Satrap of Alpho hostage until more of his demands were met. They were only apprehended after an entire Lacaille fleet had pursued them a few light-years out through the Never-Never to Eriemouth, at the very edge of the Investiture, and arrested them in the name of King Eoziel.

  There were still some who claimed Cunctus himself did not exist at all, that the scapegoats the Lacaille had captured were nothing but an excuse to encroach into Vulgar territories. Others said the Vulgar themselves were responsible, thieving as much as they could from the Lacaille under the cover of an honourless gang. Ghaldezuel personally suspected that there was not one Cunctite gang but many, with the name transposed from one gang leader to the next, a conglomeration of Prism companies nominally in league with each other for the purposes of distraction and alibi. It would certainly explain the curious lapses in skill and judgement present when one studied their many jobs, and as if in confirmation of his theory, plenty had come forward claiming to be Cunctus over the years, with a tally of six executed to date. As such, he was also known with more than a dash of irony as Cunctus the Everlasting, for the talent of being reborn again and again into new Prism bodies. Ghaldezuel had no idea what they would find here, but whatever and whoever Cunctus was, the Long-Life wanted him.

  Silence. A thin haze of tiny snowflakes had begun to fall. A tin bucket rattled over and rolled. He hissed at De Rivarol as they closed the distance to the wrecked bomber, walking between the last of the great guns. His fine Prism eyes picked out a set of milky glass bottles standing perfectly in order of height on one of the ship’s bent guns.

  The Long-Life’s command to end the tenure of the place had not included sending provisions of any kind: no food or clothing, no equipment. It was a ruthless mind indeed that had ensured only the survival of the strongest here. Ghaldezuel squinted up at the Thrasm’s breach, a small, charred hole in the bulk of the stalactite, and along to the line of tiny steps running up into the rock face to where the prison’s guard tower had been, seeing how far and high the climb across naked brick had been to get from the hole to the steps. Many must have fallen or refused to leave. Another test.

  Snow drifted and settled, leaching the colour from the rocky slopes. They came to the end of the avenue, warily inspecting the downed carcass of the bomber and its odd little collection of artefacts. It was deserted and stripped, useful only as cover.

  Ghaldezuel lingered at its mangled hull, looking through the thickening snow at the Thrasm and up into the fading mountains. “This valley’s like a funnel,” he said to De Rivarol. “There’ll hardly be any cover from here on in.”

  The Amaranthine scoffed, kneading his thin hands. Snow had fallen to line his clothes like white fur. “Oh, let them try. I’ll teach them some respect.”

  Ghaldezuel didn’t look at him. He was suddenly immensely tired. “You won’t have time. He’ll have the best shots in the Investi
ture up there. We don’t stand a chance in the open.” He took in De Rivarol’s white-coated robes and glanced up, holding out his glove. “Unless . . .”

  The snow was falling in soft clumps now, engulfing the valley in a flurry that washed out the mountains. Ghaldezuel wiped some from his eyes and stared into the white sky, hoping it would last.

  They waited, the whiteness drawing in, surrounding them, joining with Ghaldezuel’s misted breath. The snow that sank into this pocket of valley was a fluke, a spot of brightness in the dark, stippled web of mountains. But it might be enough to keep them alive.

  When he could no longer see the Thrasm in any detail, he hoisted the rifle. “All right.”

  They moved from behind the cover of the bomber, treading out into the white expanse of virgin snow. The valley’s steep sides were lost in the squall, a blank space made huge by the muffled sound of the wind. He headed in the rough direction of the Thrasm, working his way between the rocks so as not to lose his sense of direction, snow pattering on his suit and melting in the heat of his exposed skin. De Rivarol was now completely coated, all but invisible besides a suggestion of green eyes when Ghaldezuel looked behind him.

  A soft absence of sound, weighted with the sensation that they weren’t alone, greeted them as they made their way deeper into the whiteness. Ghaldezuel, after thirty-eight dangerous years, didn’t hold much to the idea of an extra sense. He trusted in his long, pointed ears, his big, round eyes. He hated superstitions: all that clapping and mumbling of oaths, as if the spirits of the worlds could be frightened off by a little noise. Indeed, whatever was out there waiting for them kept its ears open for that very thing.