The turning of the corridor tightened. Alcoves lined the interior wall, deep niches containing odd-looking objects identified by nameplates that made no sense to Sal: Main Logic Board—Atlanta. Reverse Gate—NL320-U. He had seen displays like this in the Haunted City, where spaces had been set aside to exhibit unusual artefacts recovered from Ruins all over the Strand. A faint tingling of the Change radiated from the niches. He noted each one as he traversed the long corridor, his biological father close at his side.
The motley group came to another set of double doors. No guards inspected them or asked what they were doing. After a dozen breaths, the doors swung ajar. Flickering green light spilled from the room beyond, painting their faces in sickly tones. A strange smell, not unlike the sparking of a chimerical engine, made Sal wince.
Griel straightened his broad shoulders and walked forward through the doors. Sal followed, not knowing what to expect.
Beyond the doors lay an octagonal room with black walls lined with bookshelves. Each wall reached high above their heads and curved inwards to a point, forming an eight-pointed star overhead. Its rays gleamed in the green light that came from a wide font resting waist-high on three attenuated legs in the centre of the room. Thirteen dark-robed shapes stood at varying distances around the glowing pool, their faces hidden by hoods. The one closest to the font, and therefore more brightly lit, looked up as they entered.
To Sal's surprise a human face greeted him from beneath the hood. Not one of the Panic. A man with rounded features and glowing skin, he regarded each of them in turn, then moved to speak to his companions.
The words that emerged from his lips were unlike any Sal had heard before. Although he strained to understand them, their meaning eluded him completely.
“Bahman acknowledges you,” boomed a voice from behind them. Sal turned to see a female Panic also dressed in robes. Hers, however, were silver and her hood hung limply down her back. Her hair was grey and straight and her face deeply lined; with stately, measured paces she stepped out of the shadows to confront them. “Bahman recognises you.”
Griel genuflected before the Panic female. “Tarnava.” The name rolled respectfully off his tongue. “Forgive this interruption.”
“It is of no consequence,” declared a second female on the far side of the room. Dressed like the first, whom she distinctly resembled, she stepped into the green glow and smiled as though at a massive, secret joke. Her full lips stretched impossibly wide. “The Quorum was expecting you.”
“They told you we were coming?” Griel stood and glanced from one figure to the other.
“They remembered,” Tarnava corrected him.
Both Panic females turned to listen as a conversation broke out between the robed human figures. Incomprehensible words flashed between three in particular: the man who had first spoken, Bahman, and two women. Sal found it difficult to judge the tone of the exchange; it could have been angry or simply impatient. Their gestures were odd, as impossible to interpret as their words.
“Who are they?” Sal asked. “What are they saying?”
“Elomia, explain.”
The second Panic female came around the font in response to Tarnava's request. The conversation among the strange figures ceased for the moment. Their eyes gleamed in the green light, watching her.
“The Quorum is unique in this world,” Elomia said. “Its members may look human to your eyes, but patently they are not. You can hear their speech for yourselves. Their words are obscured to all bar those with the gift, such as I and my cousin possess.” Tarnava bowed slightly; Elomia acknowledged her with a nod. “This is not the full extent of the mysteries surrounding them. They, like the stone ones you call man'kin, see time in a way very different from us. They have knowledge of the future—as full as we have of the past. However, the past is as obscure to them as the future is to us, and the difficulty lies in interpreting what they tell us.”
“And asking the right questions.”
“Indeed. Only those of royal lineage possess the ability required,” said Tarnava proudly. “We were raised in this very room so our talents would achieve their full maturity. As adults we now serve as interpreters and guardians, teaching those who follow us to do as we do.”
Elomia whispered to one of the Quorum, who responded with a stream of babbling speech. This triggered another rapid-fire discussion that Sal couldn't follow.
This was an entirely new sort of frustration for him. He had travelled from the Strand to the Interior and back again; he had argued with bloodworkers and grappled with man'kin on the bottom of the Divide. Not once had he encountered a language barrier like this. When people talked, he understood their words, at least.
He glanced at Highson, whose expression perfectly matched his own state. Not even the twins, the sole survivors of the world before the Cataclysm, had seemed so alien as these incomprehensible beings.
“What are they saying now?” asked Schuet, watching the strange assembly with ill-disguised unease. At his side, Mikia clutched her arms protectively across her chest and seemed to have forgotten how to close her mouth.
“They are talking about your man'kin.”
“He doesn't belong to us,” said Sal automatically. “He's his own person.”
As if to prove the point, Mawson chose that moment to address the members of the Quorum in their own strange speech.
The reaction was sudden and dramatic. Elomia and Tarnava furiously closed ranks and descended on the man'kin. Their lips stretched wide in sharp-toothed growls. The Panic holding him upright almost dropped him in the face of their anger.
“Silence, stone man,” Tarnava snarled. “It is not your place to speak.”
“Not here, not ever!” Elomia removed a black cloth from beneath her robes and tied it tightly around the stone bust's mouth, as though to gag him.
“What did you do that for?” asked Sal, wondering how much more of this strangeness he could endure.
“Because his kind are not to be trusted,” Tarnava said, turning to Sal. A long thick nail stabbed at him and a thin ring of white flashed around each deep black iris. “His words sound innocent enough, but they will charm your mind into knots.”
“He's a friend,” Sal insisted. “He has earned my trust.”
“You might think so,” Elomia said with a sad shake of her head, “but you would be wrong. Man'kin do not know the meaning of the word ‘friendship.’”
“He spoke to the Quorum,” said Schuet from the sidelines. “Are you sure it's not that that you find most upsetting?”
The cousins hissed and moved away to stand among the hooded humanoid figures. “Such rudeness. Such ill-mannered guests. What are we to do with them, Elomia?”
“Throw them overboard?”
“No. We shan't do that just yet.”
“Imprison them?”
“Perhaps, perhaps.”
“Shouldn't you at least ask who we are and what we want?”
Both Panic females turned to face Sal, grinning as though they found the question hilarious.
“Why should we?” Elomia retorted. “We either know the answers already or don't care what they are.”
“Interrogating you is my job,” said Griel in gruff tones. “If I may…?” He genuflected again, inclining his head low before the two women.
“Yes, of course.” Tarnava waved a hand dismissively. “The Quorum will not detain—”
A sharp utterance from one of the robed figures cut her off in mid-sentence. An angular woman stepped forward to pluck at Tarnava's sleeve, her movements jerky and oddly uncoordinated, as though her limbs weren't quite working properly. She whispered something too low to hear into Tarnava's ear, then stepped back. Sal glimpsed the face of the woman beneath the hood, and found her to be surprisingly young.
Tarnava frowned. “I am instructed to ask about the Homunculus. Specifically, has it arrived yet?”
At Sal's side, Highson's posture became suddenly rigid. “Arrived? So it is alive.”
<
br /> “How would they know that?” Sal asked Tarnava. “How do they know anything about the Homunculus?”
“Their sight is not as ours. I told you that.” The Panic female's demeanour became irritable again. “Well? Answer the question.”
“We haven't seen it,” said Highson, addressing the hooded woman directly, not her interpreter, “but if you say it's alive, then it's almost certainly travelling in this direction as we speak.”
Elomia relayed the information. The robed humanoid woman didn't respond in any visible way.
Goosebumps shivered down Sal's arms as he realised that, almost as one, the members of the Quorum had looked up to stare at him. Their eyes glittered beneath their hoods.
“Time to go,” said Griel, turning and ushering his captives towards the door with sudden haste. “Our thanks,” he said, bowing to Tarnava and Elomia as he left. The Panic females didn't acknowledge him at all.
The doors boomed shut behind them, cutting off the piercing green glow. Normal colour returned in a welcome rush.
“What was that all about?” Sal asked.
“The Quorum advise the Heptarchs and they see things we don't. They can tell what is important. I needed to know how they would react to you before proceeding.” Griel kept talking while he retraced their steps along the corridor. Sal had to hurry to keep up. “Now I have, and the Quorum acknowledges you. That means you have a part to play in what's to come. No one can say, now, that you're to be lightly disposed of. Not Oriel, not the Heptarchs, not Jao—not even me.”
“How likely was that before?” asked Schuet, his expression sober.
“In the current climate, it's best you don't know.” They came to the outer door, where the female called Jao awaited them with relief naked on her unusual features. Her prominent brows unbunched; her thick lips relaxed.
“Where to from here?” she asked, joining the party hastily following Griel's lead. “Take on Oriel single-handedly?”
“Yes,” he said. Griel stopped suddenly at a ladder and spoke to a soldier. “Ardif, take these five to the holding cells. I'll deal with them later. No, don't argue,” he said to Sal, who had opened his mouth to do just that. “It's for your own safety. I won't be long. You have my word.”
Twice now Griel had promised to deal with them fairly and thus far the Panic soldier had been as trustworthy as Sal could reasonably expect. His prisoners remained unharmed. Sal was certain Elomia and Tarnava were only trying to frighten them when they had threatened to throw them over the side of the city. Fairly certain, anyway.
“All right,” he said. Had Shilly been there she might have pushed the point harder, he thought, but Griel looked harried and distracted and Sal didn't want to give the soldier any reason to deal with them more harshly.
Griel inclined his head and hurried up the ladder with Jao not far behind him. They moved much faster now they weren't burdened by clumsy humans. The sound of their arguing faded into the distance.
“Wait,” said Sal as the Panic soldier left in charge raised a hand to hurry them away. Sal crossed to where Mawson sat cradled in the arms of his bearers. With a short tug, he pulled the gag off the bust's mouth. What real effect it had had—if any—he didn't know, but the man'kin seemed to have a less indignant appearance when it was removed.
“What did you tell the Quorum?” he asked.
“I simply answered their question about the Homunculus.”
“But they hadn't asked it yet.”
“To their minds, they had, and the answer given was insufficient.”
“What do you mean? If the twins are still alive, they must be on their way here. We know that from their past behaviour.”
“That isn't what the Quorum asked. They wanted to know how long the Homunculus had been in the world. How long, in other words, the Void Beneath had been open.”
Understanding dawned. Elomia had said that the Quorum could see the future, but had no knowledge of the past. “And you told them.”
“Yes. Twenty-three days.”
“Why is that important?”
“It marks the beginning of the end for us, and the end of the beginning for them.”
That didn't make any sense, on the face of it. “So how did you know how to talk to them?”
“I talk to them the same way I talk to you,” said the man'kin, “only backwards.”
Before Sal could ask what Mawson meant, their Panic guards decided that the time had come to move on. A firm hand on his shoulder propelled Sal along the corridor and he didn't resist.
“I don't understand,” said Highson through the Change. “Does that mean the Homunculus is alive or not?”
Sal could only shake his head, and swear that he would try to unravel the mystery later.
“‘If wood is no more than stone,’ the people
of the forest say, ‘build me a fire out of rocks
and set the hills ablaze.’
Sometimes I am tempted to do as they ask,
just to see the looks on their faces.”
STONE MAGE ALDO KELLOMAN: ON A PRIMITIVE CULTURE
The city of Milang occupied both sides of a steep ridge-face that jutted precipitously out of the rising mountainside and up into impenetrable cloud. Its sides were nearly vertical in places but densely covered with trees regardless, and in the trees, almost smothered by the sheer canopy, was a teeming city. Ordinary stonework would have utterly failed to cling to such a slope, not without heavy-duty charms similar to those that held Skender's home together. He quickly learned that the foresters who inhabited the city had much more powerful tools at their disposal: the trees themselves. The massive trunks and boughs he saw before him dwarfed any they had passed so far. While his knowledge of plant biology was limited to the desert species most Stone Mages wrote about, he understood the root systems of such trees had to be extensive and very strong to hold their weight against gravity. These were what enabled the trees to cling to and thrive on the edge of a mountain with a small city in their arms.
At the end of the rope bridge he and Chu crossed, his gaze was drawn upwards, along an avenue of trunks strung with vines and exotic flowering plants. Branches crisscrossed overhead, forming a dense mat across which walkways and floors had been laid. The deeper into the forest he looked, the more such levels he discerned, and the more people he saw moving back and forth.
His gaze didn't know where to settle. Even as Heuve urged them onwards, along the path leading from the bridge to the city, he swung his head from side to side taking in the details. Only the sight of an enormous stone face staring back at him through the trees gave him reason to pause.
At least four metres tall and bodiless, the head leaned out of the side of the mountain between two thick tree trunks with its mouth half open. Its solemn, slitted eyes were blank, but they seemed to see him. He stared back at it, frozen by its odd appearance and wondering what it was doing among the trees.
Chu had noticed his sudden distraction and had pinpointed the source. “There's another one up there. Look.”
He followed the nod of her head, up and to his right. Sure enough, a second stone face peered out at him, partially obscured by a wild spray of ferns. As he took that knowledge on board, he noticed a third, and then a fourth at the limit of his vision, barely visible through the mist.
“They're everywhere,” he breathed.
Only then did he realise that the deep moaning he had become aware of while crossing the bridge wasn't the wind blowing along the canyon. The mournful sound originated from ahead of him, not behind.
“It's them.”
“Yes, it is,” said Heuve. “Now get moving. We don't have all day.”
Skender forced himself to concentrate on putting one foot ahead of the other, even as his mind remained fixed on the enigmatic statues and their unearthly calls. Were they man'kin or something else entirely? Was this handful the total sum of them or were they scattered through the entire mountain range?
The party of mixed foresters and capt
ives entered the city of Milang at its base, past a steep wall of foliage between two giant trees that looked old enough to have been around since the Cataclysm. Skender had never seen such trees before. Their branches were angular and evenly spaced, tracing out—he realised with a shock—the shape of two giant charms, one for security and one for hospitality. The path between them was wide and well travelled, thickly coated with pine needles so their footfalls were almost silent.
Sentries watched them from the branches above, holding bows at the ready. Delfine saluted them briskly but didn't stop. The way gradually steepened until it reached the level of the first platform, Delfine leading them across a walkway onto a level surface woven from branches, all carved with whorls and swirls like the one Skender had seen in the forest, and secured every square metre or so by winding, living vines. That was the last time in their journey that they touched the ground.
From there, they followed ramps and stairways up through the trees, rising ever higher into the city. There were few traditional buildings, as Skender knew them; individual dwellings blended into one another, overlapping as organically as did the trees themselves, linked by walkways that ranged from simple planks to broad thoroughfares covered with thatch. The cliff face and the plants that inhabited it were always visible, thickest in shadowy nooks and on miniature plateaus. The sounds of foraging animals and birds came clearly through gaps in the floors and walls. They made the trees their home, just as the foresters had. Skender wondered how well the many species coexisted, and thought uneasily about bugs and spiders getting into everything.
Within the canopy, it was hard to see very far. To make up for that, a complex system of bells, sirens, and whistles sounded constantly, enabling the citizens of the city to communicate across distances greater than a few metres.
The Hanging Mountains Page 13