The Hanging Mountains

by Sean Williams

  Sal winced at the sight of the wound. Ragged and round, its lips were inflamed and red. A clear, thin liquid trickled freely from it. Rosevear dabbed at the ghastly puncture with a clean white cloth, and held it up for Sal and Shilly to examine. The fluid possessed no colour at all.

  “This could be anything,” said the healer. “I can tell you what it isn't, though. It's not blood or bile, which you'd expect from a wound of this sort.”

  “What about the other wound?” asked Shilly. Her dark skin had paled, but she didn't look away. “Is that the same?”

  Rosevear nodded. “I've never seen an infection like this. Even with access to a greater range of herbs, I'm not sure what I should do to treat it.”

  “Then we'll keep our fingers crossed that someone else will,” said Chu from the entranceway. The flyer moved to join them, her patched leather uniform creaking stiffly. “There must be people in the forest. Where else could my ancestors have come from? And the snake too, if you think about it. There's a good chance it was swept downstream, so whoever's upstream might have seen its like before.”

  “That's true.” Rosevear seemed slightly reassured as he bound Kemp's wound. “I was talking to Warden Banner this morning. She's been trying to work out where the hullfish came from. They're not river creatures, and they've never been found inland before. It's possible that someone brought it all the way from the coast…perhaps traders intending to sell it.”

  “Who would they sell it to?” asked Shilly. “The best market for something like this is right back where it started.”

  “Exactly. And the carcass was fresh, when the meat should have rotted completely from the bones before it reached anywhere near the Divide. Maybe your mysterious forest people can tell us about that, too,” Rosevear said to Chu, “when we find them.”

  The deck moved beneath them, not enough to signal casting-off, but a sure sign it wasn't far away.

  “Excuse me,” said Chu. “I'd better get back to work, while the light lasts.”

  “Good flying,” said the healer. “Keep your eyes peeled.”

  “I will.” She hurried off. The wing needed a degree of elevation for her to make it safely into the air, so she would have to climb the Divide wall until she found a suitable launching point. Sal had watched her take off on a number of occasions. Each time brought back giddying memories of his one brief flight with Skender, and the near-crash his friend had called a landing.

  “How are you feeling now?” Rosevear asked him.

  “On the mend.” He had no physical symptoms of overusing the Change, beyond exhaustion and a mild headache. His major discomfort lay in his disconnection from the rest of the world: until his full potential returned, he would remain cut off from the usual ebb and flow of life around him. “But Marmion had better keep us well away from monsters for a while, or he'll be on his own.”

  “Have you seen Tom anywhere?” asked Warden Banner, sticking her curly head through the entrance and looking around.

  “No,” said Shilly. “Why?”

  “He's gone missing.”

  Only then did Sal realise that the young seer hadn't been on deck during the argument. Everyone but him.

  “We can't leave until we've found him. Come and help me look. Everyone else is busy getting us under way.”

  What the unnamed boneship lacked in sophistication, it more than made up for in size. The main cabin area was just one of several bulbous spaces nestled inside the bony hull. Most had been filled with gear the wardens had brought with them, including collapsible tents, food stores, and all manner of cross-country equipment. Few such spaces were large enough for a person to stand upright; some measured barely a metre across.

  “We're actually sailing the boat backwards, you know,” Banner said as they moved aft, where the bony chambers joined to form cramped tunnels and dead-ended tubes. Sal was too big for most of them. “These used to be the hullfish's sinus cavities.”

  “Great,” said Shilly, her voice muffled. She had just wriggled headfirst into one of the smaller spaces. “I suppose it could be worse.”

  “Much worse,” agreed Sal, thinking of the prow where Marmion perched. He didn't want to know what part of the hullfish's anatomy that corresponded to. “Tom?” he called. “Are you about?”

  A faint movement came from deep within a tunnel too narrow for him to squeeze into. He craned as far as he could and saw the hem of a blue robe peeking out from around a corner. “Tom? What are you doing down here? There's no reason to hide.”

  The hem pulled out of sight.

  “Come on. What are you frightened of? Is it something you've seen?”

  The reply came in a tiny whisper. “I know he's dead. I saw it.”

  “Who?”

  “Kemp.”

  “Is that what you're worried about? Well, it's okay now. I killed the snake. And Kemp is just injured.”

  “I could've warned him, but I didn't. He died because of me.”

  Sal retreated to tell Banner to go back and inform Marmion that Tom had been found. While the boneship's journey resumed, Sal and Shilly would sort out what was bothering him.

  “Listen to me, Tom. No matter what you saw, Kemp isn't dead. He's sick, but he is still with us.”

  “No, he can't be. He has to be dead. That's the only way it'll work.”

  “The only way what will work, Tom?”

  No answer. Shilly elbowed Sal out of the way to wriggle into the opening and have a go.

  “Why don't you come and see Kemp for yourself, if you don't believe us?”

  “I know what I've seen.”

  “But so do we, Tom. And you can't stay here forever. We're casting off any second.”

  The boneship moved beneath them at that moment, and Sal felt the slight hollowing in his stomach that came whenever they moved on the open water. The shouts of wardens came distantly through the bone walls.

  “We're going forward,” said Tom. It wasn't a question.

  “Yes.”

  “Into the ice.”

  “If you say so. The mountains, anyway.”

  Shilly pulled backwards out of the opening so suddenly that Sal couldn't avoid being poked by her walking stick. She unfolded from the cramped space to reveal that Tom had decided to emerge as well. Long and thin—so long it amazed Sal that he had fitted into such a small space—with a shock of black hair and worried eyes, Tom shepherded them ahead of him until there was room in the hullfish's sinus cavities for the three of them to crouch together.

  “Kemp is really alive?” he asked, looking from Sal to Shilly and back again.

  “We wouldn't lie to you about that,” Sal said.

  “Will you tell us what you saw?” Shilly asked him.

  Tom sat heavily and put his head in his hands. “I saw the thing under the ice again,” he said. “The dark, ancient thing. It's stirring, getting stronger. The creature that attacked Kemp is frightened of it, like the man'kin and the golems—like everything in the world. I'm frightened of it too.” He looked up and took Sal's arm in a strong grip. “Kemp is important. He helps. But he has to die first. It has to be that way.”

  “Why? Help how?” Sal retreated from Tom's sudden intensity, but couldn't pull free.

  “Kemp is the only one who stands between you and Shilly when the end comes.”

  Tom spoke with such conviction that a chill went up Sal's spine.

  “Between us?” echoed Shilly.

  Tom turned to her, and nodded.

  “You mean physically, or like in an argument?”

  “Both.”

  “What's the argument going to be about?”

  The seer let go, looking like he wanted to crawl back into his hole. “Whoever wins gets to choose the way the world ends.”

  “The world?” Again Sal felt something creep through him that was more than physical. “Do you know who wins?”

  He shook his head. “I can't see. There's nothing.”

  “It's hidden from you?”

  “There's
nothing,” Tom repeated.

  Sal remembered something Marmion had told Shilly about the Haunted City's seers failing to see beyond a certain point in time.

  “I don't like the sound of that,” said Shilly, undoubtedly thinking the same thought. “I knew we should've christened the boat before we left. It's unlucky to sail in a ship with no name.”

  “But it's not as if we never argue,” said Sal in a weak attempt to rob the moment of its gravitas. “And Kemp really didn't die. We know that.”

  “He's not out of the rip just yet.”

  “But what if he doesn't die? And how could either of us possibly choose how the world will end, anyway?”

  “How can two people live in the same body at once?” she shot back. “How could the twins cause the Cataclysm and still be alive today? How could the Divide have come to be flooded?”

  He took her point. “I think we should talk to someone about this.”

  “I agree.” But instead of moving off, she turned to Tom. “Why didn't you tell Kemp what you'd seen? Or Marmion, or us?”

  “I wanted to. Honest.” Tom's voice had reverted to the singsong tone he had used as a child. “But I had to let it happen. It's all connected: the snake and Kemp; the Cataclysm and the Homunculus; the two of you and the rest of us. The whole world is connected. Sometimes I can see the pattern. Other times it's just one great big tangle. When it's clear, I don't have any choice.”

  “We know the pattern changes,” said Sal, thinking of Shilly's dream. “I've changed it, once, in the Haunted City.”

  Tom looked more miserable than ever. “I don't understand how that works. I can only see inside this pattern at this time, and then only occasionally. It's like…” He fumbled for a way to explain. “Like trying to walk backwards while looking in a mirror. Maybe there's a different path to follow, but I can't see it.”

  Shilly touched his arm. “That's okay. You're doing your best. Why don't you go forward and reassure Warden Banner while Sal and I talk for a moment? Then check on Kemp. We'll be there soon.”

  Tom nodded, but didn't immediately move off through the bony cavities. “It does have a name, you know.”

  “What?” asked Sal.

  “The boat. It's called the Eda.”

  “Really? Where does that come from?”

  “I don't know, but that's what it's called.”

  Tom crawled away, leaving Sal and Shilly to untie the knot of information he had wound around them. Giant snakes; strange visions; grim prophecies; mysterious names. Things were getting weirder the further up the Divide they went. What awaited them at its terminus, in the foothills of the Hanging Mountains, Sal was afraid to contemplate.

  “What is today but yesterday's tomorrow?

  What is memory but a dream of the past?”

  THE BOOK OF TOWERS, EXEGESIS 19:2

  From the air, the Divide looked nothing like a river. Skender had seen maps and he knew how tributaries snaked across the land, curving and winding in search of the Earth's lowest points, eventually meeting at the Strand where sea took over from stone. He had a rough idea that rivers started off fierce and furious in the mountains, then became languorous and lazy in their old age. He had read of rivers slow and wide-backed, choked by silt; of rivers crossing their own path and pinching off stagnant lakes; of rivers full of fish and reptiles, lined with overhanging trees and vines.

  The Divide was none of these. A jagged split in the world, it zigzagged like a lightning bolt without respect for highlands or lowlands, or for human habitation. Skender knew that the city of Laure had been struck in two during the Divide's formation centuries ago, causing massive subsidence and loss of life. People lived there still, against all odds, although the city was haunted by the Divide's reputation as a home of horror and mischief, as well as its physical hardships.

  From desert to mountain, and possibly beyond, the Divide stretched without pause or deflection. For all Skender knew, it stretched right across the face of the world.

  In the last week it had become a course for water originating somewhere high in the Hanging Mountains. That didn't make it a river. The water was held in the channel created by the sheer, rugged walls. It might bite into the wall here, or make sandbanks there, but the flow of water couldn't radically alter the path given to it. That would take centuries or more. Perhaps, Skender thought, if the water kept flowing, future Van Haasterens might look at the old maps and wonder what became of the sharp-cornered Divide, where now flowed smooth-banked, sinuous tributaries instead.

  If there ever are any future Van Haasterens, he thought.

  On the night Kemp was injured, Skender and Chu rode updraughts billowing from the hot Earth with the fading sun behind them. The charm she used to see the wind guided her truly through a scattering of dirty clouds that scudded ahead of them, forming and dissolving ragged limbs as though aspiring to but never quite achieving particular shapes. Some resembled animals real and fantastic, while others reminded Skender of faces he had seen in old books or paintings. Chu ascended in a gentle spiral between the clouds, always keeping the shrinking dot of the boneship below within sight.

  He was glad she had let him come with her. All grudges and hostilities stayed on the ground when they flew together. She hung behind him, which enabled her arms and legs to maintain the greatest control over the wing above them. Her warm presence comforted him. He felt her shifting her balance from side to side, smooth muscles stretching and compressing with limber ease. At times he found himself instinctively helping her, swaying with the wing as it rode the endless currents of the air.

  Officially they were watching the boneship's progress for any sign of obstruction. Unofficially, Skender sensed Chu's restlessness with the task they had been given. Always the nose of the wing turned to point forward and upward, at the line of clouds that marked the beginning of the fog forests—a shelf of white that stuck out from the buttressed flanks of mountains. The land hidden by those clouds was supposedly fertile, perhaps even fecund. A hint of green at the base of the shelf was enough to convince him of that.

  But the details were utterly obscured, and that ate at Chu. Given her freedom, she would have flown steadily eastwards—of that he was certain—into the cloud and in search of the wonders beyond.

  “Now I see why they're called the Hanging Mountains,” Chu said into his right ear, face held close to be heard over the sound of the wind. “Look. Magnificent!”

  He did look, but could see nothing to solve that particular mystery. All he saw were clouds, really. The fading sun painted them all manner of oranges and reds and yellows, and he imagined fleetingly that he could see the shadow of the wing and its passengers writ large on those distant, ever-changing ramparts.

  “Yes, but—what?”

  “The name isn't referring to the mountains behind the clouds, but the actual clouds. They're the Hanging Mountains. Get it?”

  And suddenly he did. Instead of trying to look through the clouds or at colours or shadows painted across them, he saw the clouds themselves. They did resemble mountains cut free from the land below and set dangling in the sky. Incredible, flat-bottomed, weightless mountains of whiteness.

  “I get it,” he said, “but I'd maintain that poets shouldn't be cartographers.”

  She laughed and sent the wing tilting to his right. “You're no fun.”

  “So what do we call the real mountains, then? Don't they have a name?”

  “I don't know. Do they need one?”

  “Everything has a name, even if you only ever see it on a map. Otherwise we'd get lost.”

  “Names don't always matter, not in the real world. I can find my way back to Laure perfectly well without knowing the names of any of the places we've flown over.”

  “But what if you had to ask for directions?”

  “I'd take a pointed finger over a name any day. Anyway, we're not likely to get lost out here with the Divide to follow.”

  “True enough.” He sought out the boneship in the fading light
, and found it taking a sharp turn to port around one of the Divide's sudden corners. He wondered what was happening down there. A twinge of guilt reminded him of the responsibilities he still had, no matter how far above them he flew.

  “Look,” he said, pointing. “What's that?”

  The wing tipped as Chu peered in the direction he indicated. “Where?”

  “There…” Close to the base of the clouds, something broke the Divide's regular lines. A smooth, circular patch bulged from one side, while the edge facing away from the mountains vanished in haze. “It looks like a lake.”

  “There must be a blockage,” she thought aloud. “Still several hours away, at the rate they're travelling.”

  “We should let them know anyway.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Skender reached under his robes and produced the shuttered mirror Warden Banner had made for them. His memory recalled the details of the code with perfect acuity, enabling him to construct a brief message. Obstruction ahead, he flashed through the medium of stored starlight. Lake. Three hours.

  He waited for the flash of acknowledgment before putting the mirror away. Duty done, he was able to concentrate on the obstruction itself while the light lasted. It wasn't the first they had encountered along the way. The worst had been a section of the Divide not far from Laure where a tight turn had become choked with debris and rapids, necessitating the building of a channel deep enough to allow the boneship to pass in safety. That had held them up for half a day, with Chu and Marmion chafing impatiently for very different reasons.

  The dusk deepened. Red-tinged clouds formed an impenetrable wall ahead of them, while behind them the last glimpse of the sun faded into the haze of distance. The wind grew colder, and Skender hugged his windswept robes tighter about him.

  “What are you hoping for from the people in the forest?” he asked. “Your family left them generations back, and you've never known why. What if they moved on for a very good reason?”