“Nothing you didn’t already know, most likely. Let’s see. He has a palace of his own in a rather remote part of the Gardens. He refuses to take part in ritual meals, has a special diet, and makes a general nuisance of himself. They’re all terrified of him. Supposedly he’s making some kind of secret weapon for them.”
“Why would Narvenes need a weapon?”
“I’m only telling you what my contact told me, my friend.”
“Sounds like an interesting man to have about. Getting up to Narva is a feat unparalleled. I can see why Vaustus would want him back. Perhaps I’m playing this all wrong.”
“He sounds like more trouble than he’s worth,” said Derrin. “Anyway, I suspect he’s too fastidious for your kind.”
Jairus gave his strange, low laugh. “Perhaps you’re right.”
I had heard enough. I’d started to reach out for the scaffold when my armor clanked against the side of the hull. “Now I did hear something,” said Derrin. I froze and tensed. The ghularch put his head out the window. He smiled down at me. “Jairus,” he said, “I thought your quantum of nuisance took himself off for a cure.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” said Jairus. “Was my information lacking?”
“It would seem so,” said Derrin. He opened his mouth to say something more. Like lightning, I reached up, took hold of his tunic, and dragged him through the window. He dropped a few levels before he succeeded in catching hold of the scaffold.
I was already scaling the side of the ship. I reached the deck just as Jairus emerged from the hatch. He wielded a great double-handed steel sword. He was grinning, and the moonlight glinted on his sharp teeth.
* * * * *
Without issuing a challenge I threw myself against him. I fought to kill. Jairus was bare-armed and bare-chested, but he put aside my thrusts with languid ease. He seemed almost bored.
Enhanced by my armor, my strength was more than a match for his, and my speed and agility made up for the length of his reach. But his longsword seemed three blades at once. I was continually finding it someplace I didn’t expect it. I couldn’t pierce the circle of his defense. Time and again I found myself beaten back, so that my armor was like to have been burnished by blows. Soon I was streaming with blood from many small wounds.
“My boy,” he said at last, “you’re fast and you’re strong, but it’s plain that you don’t know how to handle a sword. Go back to your vermin in the desert, where you belong.” And with that he struck me such a buffet on the helm that I staggered back five paces. Blood burst from my nose, and my senses swam.
The Misfit pressed home his advantage. He aimed a blow like to swap off my head, but it caught on a projecting point of my cuirass. I crashed sideways to the deck, nearly breaking my neck. Rolling out from under the descending sword, I made a great leap for the opposite side of the deck. Jairus came bounding after me, eyes aflame, teeth bared. I jumped to the railing.
“Ach!” he cried. “Running away? I thought you had more honor.”
“Honor,” I said, “is a game for princes. We’ll meet again soon.” I sheathed Deinothax and dove off the edge.
The Misfit’s men, roused by Derrin, had begun to position themselves around the vessel. I shot over their heads, making for the western wall of the pit. Volleys of fireballs streaked through the night like lost meteors. One bounded off my shoulder, singeing my hair and burning my neck and the side of my face. I faltered and dropped toward the earth but regained my trajectory.
Another projectile passed along one of my wings. It didn’t touch the veins, but the membranes were melted. I went into a spin. The wall flew toward me. I folded my wings in mid-air and braced myself for impact. With a tremendous crash I collided with the foundation and dropped to the staircase below.
I struggled to my feet and looked out. The fighters were streaming toward the base of the wall. Fireballs pelted the masonry around me. Using the balustrade for cover, I scrambled up the steps, leaving a trail of fragrant resin.
The Misfit’s men gave up the chase when I reached the top. That should have warned me, but I ran heedlessly on, dodging the derelict furniture and machinery that littered the streets. The great wall of the Cheiropt loomed up out of the darkness. A challenge rang out in the night. Deaf with bewilderment, I leaped to the parapet with a single bound.
Something struck my chest with unbelievable force and threw me on my back. The wind had been knocked out of me. I felt as though my insides were crumpled flat. I staggered to my feet. A blow on my helmet laid me prostrate again. Dimly I saw two hoplites in black armor racing toward me from far down the wall.
A huge, pale shape dropped silently from the shadows. It seized one hoplite by the neck and shook him as though he were a rag doll. The other guard leaped off the wall in panic and vanished into the night.
I closed my eyes and knew no more.
38 Oceans
The sound that rolled in my ears was something I’d never heard. And yet I seemed to have been thinking of it all my life, like the gigantic rhythm of my mother’s womb. It was a dreadful groaning and roaring, with distant booms like giants beating on giant drums, and weary hisses and sighs.
My open eyes met with a dawn-pale sky divided by a black strip into two equal halves. The line seemed a solid ribbon at first, but the light streaming through gaps and chinks showed it woven of black iron. A string of cars galloped along it, their noise drowned out by the everlasting rumor.
My armor had been removed. Crude bandages, now stiff with blood, had been tied around my more serious wounds. Gingerly, I felt the side of my face. My skin was hot and blistered. My head hurt and all my limbs ached.
I sat up slowly, wincing at the pain in my chest. Giddiness overtook me; the whole world seemed to rock. I shut my eyes and clutched at the low metal wall, afraid I would be sick. When I opened my eyes again I saw what had happened. I was on a bench in a kind of box, suspended from a metal scaffold. It swung back and forth with my movements.
I cast my gaze wider. There at last was the boundless sea, piled wave upon wave to the sky. The viaduct waded through water and cloud on feet of iron, marching toward the vague horizon. Tracing it up over my head, my eyes met the scaffold again, a gigantic wheel with cars evenly spaced along its circumference. I followed it up, around, and down, toward the landward side behind me. It was at right angles to the cliff edge, and my car was beyond the brink, suspended over the water. The cliffs plunged to a gray, shingly beach bedight with tidal pools like living gems.
I was at the seaward limit of a small island forested with decrepit machinery. The contraptions reminded me of the gauntlet in the dungeons. Most were badly corroded, but a few retained wrappings of white leather.
The city faced me across it all. The wall of compacted masonry that was the foundation’s edge formed a continuous face with the sea cliffs below, and the buildings were crowded right up to the brink at every point, peering over one another’s shoulders as though watching an emperor pass by. In the south I descried an artificial harbor around the mouth of a steep-walled bay, where several barges were moving out to sea. The anchorage was enclosed by moles, and beyond these on either side were jetties sheltering a counterpane of marine stockyards and gardens.
The viaduct emerged at right angles to the cliffs and strode across the middle of the island. Another train rattled by overhead. I watched it pursue its course over the waves, bearing happy pilgrims to Bel, which, magnet-like, drew all Enoch to itself. For a moment I felt unbearably exposed and lonely there in my box, suspended between the crumbling edge of the world-city and the limitless ocean eating away at it.
The light increased. The sun came up over the towers, dispelling the sea vapors. Its rays sped across the waves, turning them green and gold and foam-white. I began to cast about for a way to descend from my perch without dropping to my death in the sea.
It was then that I saw the cyclops. How long he had been there I don’t know. He was standing at the base of the machine, watchi
ng me.
“Help me,” I said.
The creature laid hold of the wheel and spun it until my car was at the bottom. I climbed out onto the pavement.
“Thank you,” I said. “You saved my life last night.”
He sat cross-legged before me, keeping his double eye averted. He had grown more hale than when I’d last seen him. The white hairs of his face were stained pink. I guessed what meat he had found to eat in the city.
“Where is my armor?” I asked.
The creature rose and strode away. A few minutes later he returned with my things. Piece by piece I put it all on, then slung my sword at my side. I bowed deeply. “Farewell,” I said, turning to go.
The cyclops laid a hand on my shoulder. “Let go of me,” I said, shuddering. “You paid your debt. What was between us is at an end now.” Still the creature kept hold of me. “I’ll be forced to draw against you again,” I warned. At that the cyclops withdrew.
I turned to face him. His huge round eye was still cast to the ground. “Look at me,” I said. The cyclops obeyed. It was like looking into the sun, which blinds by its excess of light. Panic threatened to overwhelm me once again. But I withstood it, and mastered myself, and saw into the giant’s open heart.
I saw a wayfaring prince, the issue of an incarnate god, trapped in the city and forced to fight, then tarrying though he had gained his freedom, waiting to serve the one who had saved him.
When I looked away again my head ached and my face was streaked with tears. “My name is Keftu,” I said, taking his hand. “You I’ll call Arges.” His gray flesh was warm and dry and slightly rough, like a schyroth’s paw.
“You came here for a reason,” I said. “Perhaps you sought the sons of Eldena, a race of architects who had dealings with anakim of old. I’m no Eldene, but a son of a kindred race. I’ve met one magus, a man named Gaspar, but he’s dead now. So I may be the closest you’ll get.
“I first came here to find the food of immortality in the land of the sun’s setting. I’m from beyond the mountains where your people live; I’d never head of the sons of Ocean, or else I would never have fought you.
“My intentions have changed now. I am the Phylarch of Arras, which is to say, a hunter of fell beasts. A man—the one I fled from last night—seeks to release chimeras into the city. The Enochites treated me much as they did you, but they’re prisoners of the Cheiropt just as much as we were. More so, for they don’t know that they’re prisoners. The Cheiropt won’t protect them from these monsters, so I’m going to do it, if I can. That’s the task I’ve set myself. If you would help me, I’d be glad of it.”
The cyclops bowed before me, touching his forehead to the pavement.
“Come with me, then,” I said. “First I mean to track down the source. I don’t know the way yet, but I hope to discover it soon. Meet me tonight at the place where I’m staying, on an island in the methane marshes, at the top of the tallest tower.”
Arges squatted on the ground as though indicating that he would remain in that spot until the moment he went to find me. “Farewell, then,” I said. I sped off into the thicket of machinery.
39 Dragonfly Rising
I crossed from the island—which was, I discovered, actually a peninsula—to the cliffs, and climbed the carved stairs to the esplanade that ran along the buildings’ feet. From there I went south toward the bay. The alleys and streets were all empty; I might have been the last man in the world.
But the pit surrounding the bay itself was crawling with phylites. It was like a huge amphitheater, with concentric terraces climbing from iron quays, crowded with sellers’ stalls and air-conditioned shops, a mart for sea-spoils and imports. I began working my way down to the tunnel-mouth of the river, moving through the crowds with ease. Clad as I was in my armor, I had no place in the phylites’ minds.
I perused the wares as I went. Laid out on trays of ice I saw pelycopods and brachiopods, bellerophonts and prosobranchs, ammonites and belemnites. In jewelers’ shops were coiled shells ornamented with delicate fractal designs. Bolts of byssum were also there sold, dyed with dyes unfading obtained from the soft-bodied things of the sea. Glass tanks held living eurypterids like gigantic scorpions, and abyssal isopods, and thick-bodied trilobites.
The phylites avoided the tunnel, and when I reached it I discovered why. The foetor of the city’s bowels struck me like a solid thing. But the river itself was no mere excretion. I had a vision of a silver ribbon running down from the mountains, snaking across a green plain planted before man was a dream. It drew me on into darkness.
The handrail was crumbling to pieces from corrosion. Reflected sunbeams danced on the ceiling of the first reach; trilobites and belemnites sported in the channel. Then I rounded a bend, and sunlight gave way to the feeble glow of gas lamps, and the smell of the sea was overpowered by the humid breath of the under-city.
The river narrowed by stages as I crossed the thundering outflow of the sewers. The low ceiling dripped with condensation. Stalactites of lime hung down over the scummy water. There were old fountains shaped like shells and decorated with broken images, and echoing foyers, too. But most had been walled off, and the walks were empty. The thought of the city piled over my head oppressed me.
After many stades the passage became more spacious. The chaotic ceiling gave way in places to open sky, with titanic towers peering down into it like mountains overlooking a canyon. When I emerged from the tunnel at last I was at the foot of the cruciform rift where the procession had taken place.
It was empty apart from a single helot picking up trash. The ziggurat where I’d almost been devoured faced me from the valley’s head. The sun shone down upon it, for it was midday.
I made my way to the base of the pile, went up the motionless steps, and climbed the wall beside the mechanical orifice. After wriggling through the crack I’d entered before I once again pursued my course to Sabhenna. The byways were nearly empty now. Those helots I did pass fled at the sight of me, being more sensitive to things out of place than phylites.
When I reached the antique mart I found it closed for the day. The discount tables had been moved into the foyer, which lay behind a locked gate.
I laid hold of the bars and with a single wrench tore them out of the wall. Two guards emerged from the shadows. I upset a table against them, pinning one to the floor. The other—the one I’d talked to before—came at me around the side. I struck him down with one blow.
From there I continued into the mart itself, where I began throwing down shelves and cases. Three guards came in, saw what was happening, and ran for their lives. The storekeeper, a tall and sinewy helot, emerged from his office. “Who are you?” he roared. “What do you think you’re doing? Do you know who I work for?”
“Tell him I’m shutting down your business,” I said. “I’m the Phylarch of Arras.”
“Never heard of it,” he snarled.
“You can call me the Dragonfly.” I punctuated the sentence with a blow to his chin. He crashed into a table of kraters and rolled onto the floor.
Next I went down the passageway to the delvers’ ward and broke into the hall. It reeked: one of the inmates had died in his cell, and the body hadn’t been taken away. The delvers were waiting for me, having heard the commotion in the mart. They all gathered around me.
“I’m looking for Jubah and Bulna,” I said. “Where are they?”
A man I recognized from my time there stepped forward in a kind of daze. “They got out when the old lady got hers,” he said. “Seems they’d been plotting to escape for a long time. That was their ticket.”
“How’d they do it?”
“Tunneled through the wall. Worked on it a little bit each day while their cellmate was delving. It’s blocked now.”
“Thanks,” I said. “That’s all I wanted. The front gates are open. It’s every man for himself.” I stood aside while they streamed through the doorway. The sounds of looting began in the mart.
Now I threaded the
maze of brick passages to the slayers’ ward. I felled the turnkey and went down the line, unlocking the cells. The inmates poured out with wild whoops and shouts. The keys admitted me through the opposite door. I headed toward the gymnasium, knocking down guards when I met them.
I let myself through the locked doors. The gaslights flared into life with the twist of a valve, their golden beams drifting down through the thicket of bars and pulleys and weights. I became a cyclone of destruction, picking up machines and hurling them across the room, shattering them against walls and battering them with my bare fists. I broke a pipe in my fury, and turbid water began to spread across the floor.
Next I turned to the gauntlet. I went through it, bending bars and breaking blades. A party of helots had gathered at the door by the time I emerged. They were watching me with a kind of awe or embarrassment. “Tell your friends what you saw here today,” I said. “I am the Dragonfly.” With that I leaned on the lever. The machinery came to life as I walked toward the guards. It began to gallop and screech and fling itself to pieces.
The helots fled, tripping over one another and getting stuck in the door in their haste. I stepped calmly after them. An explosion rocked the room, and part of the ceiling collapsed. Dust and smoke billowed in a great cloud through the door.
From there I went back toward the delvers’ ward. The corridors had all cleared out; even the looters were gone. The mart itself was a shambles. I proceeded to the elevator room and broke through the gate. The empty car was waiting for me. I drove it up through the layers of Hela, not braking until I saw daylight through the metal slats.
I was in the lobby of an abandoned tower. Footprints in the dust showed it not unfrequented by phylites. I went out into the street. It was early afternoon.
Dragonfly: A Tale of the Counter-Earth at the Cosmic Antipodes Page 21