The Hanging Mountains

by Sean Williams

“There might well have been a dozen good reasons, all forgotten now. But no one ever told me I shouldn't go back. I take that as a good sign.”

  “People have a way of forgetting things they don't want to remember.”

  “Do they?” she asked with a hint of sharpness.

  “Not me, of course,” he amended, kicking himself. Whatever had happened between the two of them that night in Laure, he desperately wanted to remember, but no amount of mental persuasion or cursing himself could shake the details free. He had barely touched araq since then, for fear of a repeat performance.

  “I just worry,” he said, “that you might be disappointed.”

  “I bet you say that to all the girls.”

  They flew on in silence over the darkening land.

  The wardens slept in shifts as the boneship sailed onward through the night. Tom and Highson occupied the camp beds next to Kemp and Sal. Shilly stayed up, watching with a feeling of apprehension as blackness slid across the sky, stealing away the stars. She couldn't see the clouds, but she could feel them creeping over her, their mass increasingly oppressive and ominous. Ever since Skender's warning of an obstruction ahead, she had been unable to sleep. When Sal had returned to oblivion, still drained from the encounter with the snake earlier that day, she had come forward to meditate on the boat's deck, her thoughts as dark as the sky above.

  Whoever wins gets to choose the way the world ends…

  Water rushed by the boneship's charmed bows with a sound of heavy wind. Marmion sat on the prow, as unmoving and solid as a figurehead, the stump of his right hand cradled protectively in his lap. Almost she moved to join him, but in the end decided against it. The night was quiet; she wasn't going to push her luck.

  The Divide walls drew steadily closer together as the boneship continued eastward. That, combined with the spreading roof of clouds above, gave her the feeling of a trap closing around them. Periodically, one of the wardens keeping watch would play a powerful beam of mirrorlight across the way ahead, checking for obstacles not seen in the dark. Each time the light flashed, she swore the cliffs were nearer and taller, rising like black wings to sweep them away.

  Two tight turns came and went. The water grew choppier, more restless, whispering like people engaged in a furtive argument. Shilly felt the boneship straining forward, rushing headlong to their unknown destination.

  Gradually, over the muttering of the river, a new sound became audible: a roaring that put her in mind of the flood itself, all bass and treble mixed up into one growing cacophony.

  Shivering, she did eventually move forward, exchanging her wariness for the desire not to be alone.

  “What is it?”

  Marmion looked at her with dark-rimmed eyes, then turned his attention forward again. Although she could make out very little in the darkness, she knew that wardens had ways of negotiating water not available to ordinary people. They could see well even under faint starlight. The Change made many such things possible, for those with the knack of tapping into it.

  “Waterfall,” he said.

  “How far away?”

  “Around the next bend, I think.”

  “That must be the obstruction Chu saw.”

  Marmion nodded. “All complications are unwelcome, but this one particularly so. We'll have to stop until dawn, then survey the ground ahead. If we can't raise the boat over the falls, we'll be forced to continue on foot.” He looked at her. “Walking long distances will be difficult for you, I know. Don't doubt that I'll do everything I can to spare you that chore. And Kemp.”

  She studied him as best she could in the darkness. Was he trying to be nice to her? It seemed so. But his choice of words was unfortunate. Irrespective of her own feelings, she was sure Kemp wouldn't like to be lumped in with a complication like a waterfall.

  Instead of berating him, however, she tried a small joke. “Here's hoping it doesn't come to full-on mountain climbing, or we'll both be in the shit.”

  One corner of his mouth curled upwards, then both went down. His eyes turned forward. “I still feel it,” he said, shifting his bandaged stump a little. “The fingers…They itch. I long to scratch them.”

  “I still dream I'm running, sometimes.” She wanted to tell him it would get easier, but there was no way she could promise him that. Her leg had healed to the point where at least she could walk again. Marmion didn't have that hope to cling to.

  “We're an odd lot,” he said. “Cripples, fugitives, wild talents, failures. Does it seem fitting to you that we're the ones racing to meet doom head-on, not some brawny band of adventurers?”

  “Perhaps it's fate.”

  “Fate is for fools,” said a familiar voice from below them, barely audible over the rising sound of the waterfall.

  Shilly turned to look at Mawson where he sat on the deck behind her. The dome of his stony skull was barely visible. “Can't sleep either, huh?”

  “I do not ever sleep.”

  “Tell us, then,” said Marmion. “What does Tom see, if not the workings of fate?”

  “He sees history in reverse. You look back and see connections between events; he looks forward and does the same. You both see an illusion. The connections are transitory. From moment to moment, all things are separate.”

  “To you, maybe,” said Marmion, “but not to us. Our lives are entirely about connections. Without them, we are no better than animals, devoid of conscience, morality, hopes, and dreams.”

  “I am not without such qualities.”

  “How can you dream if you don't sleep?” Shilly meant the question facetiously. She knew better than to get into an argument about time and destiny with a man'kin. The stone intelligences saw all things at once, and more besides: some things that didn't happen Mawson claimed also to know about.

  The man'kin didn't grace her comment with a reply, as she'd expected. Marmion called over his shoulder to indicate the last turn before the waterfall. Shadows shifted around them. Looming limestone cliffs slid smoothly by. A faint gleam of green light caught her eye, and she squinted to make out where it came from. It couldn't be a star, since the dense cloud cover obscured everything in that direction, and it was too low to be a signalling flash from Skender and Chu.

  She was about to point it out to Marmion when the boneship rounded the corner and she had her answer.

  Shilly gasped, and heard Marmion's indrawn breath at the same time.

  Before her, the Divide narrowed in fits and starts to a jagged bottleneck. One of the canyon's steep slopes had collapsed into the water flow below. The tops of massive boulders poked out of the turbulent water like the heads of submerged giants; rounded natural steps led to the top of the Divide on the southern side where the earthfall had originated. Between that side and the other, through a gap in the top of the landslide, the water had forced a way.

  The sight was magnificent. Shilly knew that the sea at night glowed sometimes. As waves rolled in and out at the beach near Fundelry, tiny sparkles of green glittered in the foam; the short-lived trickling gleams had captivated her as a child. In the waterfall at the base of the Hanging Mountains she witnessed the same phenomenon, only magnified a thousandfold. A great sheet of water, divided into three unequal sections by protruding spars of dark stone, jetted over the lip of the rock shelf six metres above them and plunged in a glorious green rush to the canyon below. The splash it formed was an explosion in viridescence. Shimmering concentric ripples of light expanded in vivid waves across the river. What caused it, she didn't know. Some happenstance confluence of the Change at this particular location, perhaps, or an ancient charm long-buried in the Divide, awakened by the flood. Either way, it was beautiful and eerie at the same time.

  She glanced at Marmion, and saw that he was looking down into the water ahead of them, not up at the falls. The water's glow, although quickly diluted, still cast enough light to see by. Squinting down, she could make out what lay at the bottom of the river amongst the rubble tumbled too recently to be covered with silt.


  There she saw faces: a multitude of upturned eyes and mouths gazing back at her with mute appeal, the bodies they belonged to pinned between stone slabs heavier than houses. Hands clenched and unclenched as though trying to reach her; legs kicked futilely for freedom. The boneship sailed implacably over their resting places, mute witness to the fate that had befallen them.

  “Man'kin,” she breathed.

  “Yes,” Mawson replied. “The Angel told them to run, but still they didn't escape the flood.”

  Shilly thought of all the man'kin swept away from the walls of Laure when the flood had come. Those obviously weren't the only ones caught in the raging torrent.

  She shuddered. The man'kin weren't dead, but they were trapped. If silt ever buried them, they would remain in darkness forever.

  What sort of fate was that? Couldn't the Angel have warned them to run faster?

  Shilly thought of Tom and his own dire warnings. She had had quite enough talk of end times and the failure of prophecy for one day.

  “Do you still want to wait until dawn?” she asked Marmion, indicating the phosphorescent waterfall. Its light was bright enough to cast a shadow.

  The warden considered the alternatives for a moment, green gleaming off his balding pate. “Perhaps not. We'll wake the others and consult the Engineers. I trust their opinion on such matters better than my own.”

  He turned to move from his perch, and Shilly went to follow him.

  An arrow flashed out of the darkness and thudded fast into the bone between them. So violent was her recoil from the vibrating shaft that she would have fallen over the bow but for Marmion's good hand pulling her back.

  “Ware!” the warden cried, rousing the crew. “Archers!”

  He pulled Shilly after him to the relative safety of the boneship's central cavities. The Sky Wardens hauled the ship around, presenting a smaller target to the Divide walls. Shilly peered out at where the arrow still protruded from the boat's bony flank. It had come from the south side of the Divide. Green light glittered off it as though from glass.

  Marmion's dark eyes took in more than hers, darting from the cliff face to the shimmering veil of the waterfall and back again. Other wardens crouched on the deck, in positions of relative safety, doing the same. Shilly saw no obvious weapons, but she didn't doubt they had some at hand. Not without good reason did Sky Wardens rule half the known world.

  The boneship kept turning until it was facing back the way it had come. Nothing moved in the surrounding darkness. The only sound was the river's steady gurgle. Shilly tensed, struck by the thought that the archer might be in the water, not firing from the shore. However, she could see no sign of anyone swimming in the luminescent current.

  They completed one full rotation without incident. Marmion raised a hand and the boneship steadied, began to move forward again. Light flashed as one of the wardens signalled Chu and Skender, high above.

  Shilly felt a familiar, warm presence join her. Sal's hand slipped into hers.

  “What's going on?”

  She pointed out the arrow. “We're not alone.”

  “A warning shot?”

  “I think so,” said Marmion, “but I won't assume it to be so. A hand's-length to the left and Shilly would've been hit.”

  Sal looked at her in horror. She brushed off his concern. “Either of us could have been targets. They're just trying to get our attention, whoever they are.”

  “They certainly got that,” Sal breathed. “If they were trying to warn us off, though, the message obviously didn't sink in.”

  Marmion raised a hand for silence as the warden signalling the lookouts overhead reported what he had learned. “Chu has spotted movement along the edge of the Divide, but she's finding it hard to see through the vegetation up there. If she flies closer, she risks crashing or being fired at herself. The base of the cloud cover is limiting her movements as well.”

  “Tell her to keep well away,” said Marmion, “until we find out who shot that arrow and why. If anything changes, tell her to use her judgment but not to land until we signal her.”

  The warden moved off to relay the order. During the brief conversation Shilly's gaze, frustrated by the lack of light elsewhere, had alighted on the glowing waterfall. Its magnificence only increased as the boneship drew nearer. The ceaseless flow of water and the roaring it made had a faintly hypnotic effect. She hadn't blinked for at least a minute.

  When she did so, she realised that the oddly shaped twist of water that had snagged her gaze wasn't water at all, but a person bathed in green, standing with one foot higher than the other on a stone. Willowy and tall, possessing a slightness that hinted at femininity, the figure stared calmly back at her, making no gesture or sign of recognition. Even across the distance between them, Shilly felt that patient gaze meet hers.

  Before she could open her mouth to raise the alarm, the mysterious glowing woman stepped back into the water and disappeared.

  “Hail!” cried a man's voice across the water. A dozen dark shapes swarmed down the sides of the waterfall: men and women in dark uniforms with weapons upraised. Blades mainly, but two bows among them. They took up position on the stone steps at the base of the waterfall, waving for attention.

  “Hail, travellers!”

  Marmion stood. “Hail!” he called back. “Is it your custom to fire on innocent people?”

  “Not us,” shouted the leader of the band through cupped hands. “Pull to, and I'll explain.” He gestured and the men and women with him sheathed their weapons. The two archers placed their bows carefully on the ground and held their hands in the air. Shilly couldn't make out their faces. By the unnatural green glow of the waterfall, their uniforms looked black.

  “Let's do as he says,” Marmion told his crew, “but keep a sharp eye out. That arrow didn't come from ahead of us, where these people are standing. It came from the side. There could be any number of archers waiting for us to sail between them.”

  Shilly tried in vain to see the tops of the Divide walls. The last of the stars had disappeared in the west, leaving the night utterly dark beyond the reach of the waterfall's eerie glow. The boneship could have been plying subterranean waters, for all she could see of the sky.

  Enough hallucinations, she told herself. This night is already complicated without making stuff up. She kept her eyes fixed on the waterfall as the boneship steadily approached.

  No one else appeared to have noticed the glowing woman—if she had been there at all.

  “This is a strange vessel.”

  “It's not one we'd ordinarily choose,” Marmion responded, pacing the deck from port to starboard with his injured hand tucked protectively under his robes. Sal watched from the sidelines as the two leaders sized each other up. Lidia Delfine was the extraordinarily deep-voiced woman—not man—who had hailed them from the edge of the waterfall. The boneship had taken Lidia and one of her lieutenants aboard, then moved out of range of the spray and the waves to parley. By mirrorlight her thick cloth uniform was a reddish brown in colour and decorated with two black circles stitched into each shoulder. Her black hair was pulled back into a practical bun. She stood no taller than Marmion, but radiated strength and confidence from every gesture.

  Her eyes and skin were matches for Chu's, as were those of her companion, a very large man with an edgy demeanour. The rest of her party remained on the bank by the waterfall, similarly dressed and featured.

  “We come from the Haunted City in the service of the Alcaide,” said Marmion. “Whom do you represent?”

  “The Guardian of the forest. Here.” She took a quiver her companion carried and held it outstretched. “Inspect these arrows. You'll see they're of quite different manufacture to the one sticking out of your ship.”

  Marmion plucked an arrow from the quiver and rotated it, holding it up to take in its features. Even from a distance, Sal could see that one was distinct from the other: the arrow Marmion held was long and skinny and clearly made of wood, while the
one protruding from the bow of the boneship was short and glassy, more a dart than the sort of fletched arrow he was used to seeing.

  “This proves nothing,” Marmion commented, tossing the arrow back to Delfine, who caught it lightly with her free hand and inserted it back into the quiver. “But I am prepared to take you at your word, for the moment. If you didn't fire this arrow at us, who did?”

  “The Panic,” she said, with a slight tightening of her eyes.

  “Who are they?” asked Shilly. “What do they want?”

  Delfine looked at her, assessing her with one sharp glance. “Who knows what they want, beyond banditry and murder? My orders aren't to understand them but to stop them.”

  “Are your orders to stop us, too?”

  “That depends.” Delfine looked at Marmion again. “It depends on what you're doing in the Pass, and why the Panic fired on you. Your being human might explain the latter, but there could be more to it than that.”

  The Pass was the Divide, Sal assumed. “What does being human have to do with anything?”

  “Yes,” said Marmion. “Tell us more about the Panic. Did you drive them away?”

  “Unintentionally. I suspect they saw us coming and retreated to size us up. Were our forces smaller, they might have taken us both on.”

  “Why?”

  That, however, was all they were going to learn about the Panic for the moment. Delfine laid down her ultimatum calmly and with only a hint of challenge: “What brings you here, so far from the Alcaide's seat?”

  Marmion outlined their mission in the briefest possible terms, referring only to the flood and the man'kin migration. He mentioned neither the Homunculus nor the odd readings of the seers. With the glowing waterfall as a surreal backdrop, he introduced Wardens Banner and Rosevear, Highson Sparre, and Sal and Shilly. This gesture of Marmion's pleased Sal—the two of them had been routinely ignored, or worse, by Marmion after a bad beginning to their relationship with him.

  Delfine took in everything with a sharp nod. “And what about your friends above? Tell us about them.”

  “Chu and Skender are our forward scouts. I wasn't aware you'd seen them.”