Campbell, Alan - Iron Angel

by Campbell, Alan

  Some trick of the weather?

  Rachel turned her attention to the east. Across the horizon jagged the silhouette of the Shale Mountains, over which lay the Yellow Sea. Millions of stars crusted the heavens above. The river Coyle, a faint silvery line, wove across the plain below the foothills, although Rachel could not spy any of the river towns in the gloom.

  Yet there were other lights.

  Some leagues southeast of where they stood, a great phosphorescent patch covered the Deadsands. From this distance it looked like a town—or perhaps a traveling festival, so garish were the colors. Shades of aquamarine, permanganate, yellow, and ochre throbbed, shifted, and bled together under the night sky. The trail Rachel and Trench had followed through the petrified trees led down the slope towards it.

  Trench pointed. “What is that?”

  “Cinderbark Wood,” Rachel replied.

  “Some form of sorcery?”

  “Hardly,” Rachel replied.

  “Then why does it shimmer?”

  “Deepgate’s chemists painted it with toxins,” she said. “They conceived of the idea during the Southern Clearances. The stone trees were originally supposed to act as a warning to the surviving tribes, an aggressive display of the chained city’s power. But it’s also a trap for the unwary. Every branch and thorn down there is saturated with poison. One scratch can kill.”

  “Might a cautious man walk through without harm?”

  “It’s not that simple,” Rachel said. “There are poisonous roots buried under the sand, and caches that leak toxic vapors. The dunes are constantly shifting within it, so trails soon disappear. Sometimes the trees are completely covered by drifts. You don’t know what you’re walking on. What might seem like a safe path is often perilous.” She wiped sweat from her brow. “The chemists used the trees as a canvas, colouring their poisons while creating ever more devious ways to bring death to their foes. It became a proving ground, with each man striving to outdo the work of his peers.”

  Trench unplugged his water bladder and took a sip. “We could skirt it.”

  “We need water,” Rachel said, stalking grimly on ahead. “The only clean spring for many leagues lies within Cinderbark Wood.” She glanced back to the north again, to the queer bank of mist hanging over the Deadsands, and frowned.

  It appeared to be moving south towards them.

  Caulker hated horses. They smelled as bad as the Heshette who rode them, and had less flesh on their bones than a bag of boiled knuckles. To make matters worse, he had been forced to share a horse with one of the savages. The cutthroat now perched on a skinny gelding behind his bearded companion, wincing with every hard-boned step the beast took, while the horseman in front of him swayed easily in rhythm. This particular bastard seemed to have an unnatural fondness for horses. He was forever patting and stroking the beast’s neck and mumbling to it in his heathen language. For all Caulker knew, the two were man and wife.

  Anchor strolled up ahead, chatting with Ramnir. The Heshette leader was mounted, yet such was the giant’s size that the pair of them were almost face-to-face. Often they glanced back at Caulker and spoke in whispers, and then Anchor’s laugh would boom out in the fog, rolling back along the long line of horsemen. Since this morning, their ranks had swelled, from six to almost thirty. The initial party had apparently been part of a larger group of raiders.

  “Your master has a good heart,” said the horseman seated in front of Caulker. “He boasts a cheerful spirit.”

  “He’s an idiot,” Caulker muttered. “And he’s not my master.”

  Yet Anchor’s fame was growing among the heathens. Ramnir had sent riders out beyond the fog to spread the word and beg news from other tribes. Each time the scouts returned, they brought with them more of the savages, curious to see the giant and his rope for themselves. Anchor welcomed them all with his big dumb grin.

  In this way scraps of news filtered in from the desert. A vast explosion had rocked Deepgate, spewing debris for leagues around. None of the tribesmen had ventured close enough to inspect the chained city, but the damage was rumored to be extensive. The red mist that had enveloped Deepgate of late had dissipated—an observation that had greatly pleased the tethered giant.

  The scarred angel’s two companions had been taken to the chained city by airship three weeks ago. And one of them—the Spine woman—had since been spotted fleeing across the southern Deadsands with a labourer from Deepgate’s workers’ settlement. They were last seen heading in the direction of Cinderbark Wood, so Anchor had decided to make a detour south to look for them. Carnival herself had not been seen, and yet the apparently fortuitous destruction of three skyships the night before suggested she might still be in the area.

  They made camp just before nightfall to allow Anchor to discuss this last information with his master in the skyship above. The entire exchange consisted of muttered questions from the giant and unheard replies from the god above while Anchor frowned in deep concentration, but when it was over the tethered man made an announcement:

  “It is no good,” he said. “Now Cospinol is convinced that his witchsphere is lying to him. Always it tries to steer us away from the scarred angel, and warns of Heshette treachery. Always lies. The witches have been poisoned by Cospinol’s brother, Rys.”

  Caulker snorted. “What makes you so sure it’s lying?”

  “It says we should trust you,” Anchor said.

  The Heshette laughed, but the cutthroat only seethed and wrapped his blanket more tightly around himself. Hadn’t Anchor himself lied to Caulker in order to lure him out into this wilderness? And what exactly had the giant been whispering to Ramnir about?

  Caulker noticed the way the other heathens looked at him, all shifty, as though they meant to do him harm. Well, Jack Caulker had no intention of allowing that to happen. He had taken to keeping a knife in his sleeve and one eye always on the pouch of pearls in John Anchor’s belt.

  “Have your master send this witchsphere down to us,” one of the Heshette remarked. “We’ll roast it over an open fire until it decides to cooperate.”

  Anchor shook his head. “It is only a few hags,” he said. “I think the gods have made them suffer enough.”

  This false display of pity only increased Anchor’s standing among his fawning crowd of followers, while the Heshette who had advocated torturing their enemy’s agent was shunned by his companions. Caulker felt his bile rise all the more. What did these savages know about the world?

  And who were the Mesmerists?

  The cutthroat had been able to gather a little about them. From what Anchor had said, the Mesmerists appeared to be the ruling force in Hell, an elite group which now sought to expand the borders of their realm. Yet wasn’t Lord Iril himself supposed to have complete authority in the Maze? Some even said that Lord Iril was the Maze—an even stranger concept. Could a god actually be Hell? Deepgate’s priests had often spoken of an endless labyrinth of red corridors, like the network of roots beneath a tree through which the damned wandered. But what did those bastards know?

  Caulker had begun to think of the Mesmerists as kings. It thrilled him to think that Anchor and his master were afraid of them. What sort of power would they wield? As he watched the heathens pack up their horses, he imagined the ground opening up beneath them. He imagined red warriors rising from the earth, and the tethered giant cowering on his knees before them.

  Like every other Sandport crook, Caulker had always known he’d end up in Hell. Deepgate’s chains had never been for him, and he didn’t subscribe to the heathen religions. The certainty of his damnation had even steered some of his decisions in the past. He had murdered, stolen, and raped, and rejoiced in his sins.

  And if he was bound for the Red Maze, then wasn’t it better to be on good terms with its rulers? Once he was in Hell, the Mesmerists might reward him with far more than he could ever hope to steal in this world. He had valuable information to offer. If he could only beg an audience with them without first openin
g his own throat…

  He peered up into the skies above him, where Anchor’s rope disappeared into seemingly endless fog. Whatever this witchsphere was, it was clearly aware of him.

  13

  CINDERBARK WOOD

  A WIND FROM the south had picked up; it blew sand around their shoulders and into their faces, obscuring the trail they had followed from the last stone forest. Rachel blinked and rubbed her eyes, and for a moment the view ahead blurred.

  Drenched in phosphorescent toxins, Cinderbark Wood lit the eastern skyline like a festival celebration, its tangled branches and boles throbbing with a furious mix of colour. To each hue Rachel tried to apply the name the chemists had invented for their creation: Hot-Mylase and S661, Sugarglaze and Arkspot, Lemonbrine-4, Red-Seven, Deadeye and Lossus Green, Asphyis-manganate and Crawling Peach. There were poisons to blind and to rot bones, toxins which hardened split flesh, rare psychotropics extracted from lizard’s skin and frogs, hog’s livers and anemones. Thorns glistened with black and red fluid, denoting venoms or accidents stumbled upon in a lab.

  Originally a proving ground for the Department of Military Science, the trees had been used by Deepgate’s chemists as a canvas for their own imaginations. They had applied the caustic tars liberally, leaving no twig or patch of bark untouched, till ultimately this had become their greatest work of art. One careless touch might kill a man, or perhaps much worse.

  For not all of the poisons were fatal.

  The chemists had, of course, left the woodland’s spring unspoiled. It was the only clean water for leagues around, as many desperate nomads had discovered to their peril.

  Rachel hesitated at the edge of the wood. Faced with its dazzling colours she reconsidered her plan. They could probably reach the northern edge of the forest well before dawn, head north to the caravan trail, and find one of the Acolyte springs by tomorrow evening.

  But this would bring them closer to the Spine patrols, or possible attack from desert raiders. If they continued east they would reach a source of clean water in perhaps two hours, and then be clear of Cinderbark Wood before sunrise.

  All they had to do was stay alert.

  She turned to Trench. “Don’t touch anything, do you understand? Absolutely nothing. Most of the poisons in there are designed be absorbed through the skin. And stay close to me, for there are other dangers.”

  She was thinking about the caches buried beneath the sands, the jars of rotting chemicals deemed too virulent to keep in Deepgate’s own fuming Poison Kitchens. Vapors regularly leaked from these hidden hoards and made colourful mists among the trees. It was a beautiful sight.

  And so they walked into the vibrant hush of Cinderbark Wood. Overhead the branches clashed in a riot of pinks, greens, blues, yellows, a dizzying spectacle that resisted starlight and imbued the sands below with different, gentler hues. Something crunched beneath Rachel’s foot, and she looked down to discover the tiny skeleton of a bird under her heel, its fragile bones polished by erosion. Scattered hither and thither were the remains of hundreds of others, too: the chalky beaks and claws; the wings reduced to delicate spokes. Some of the larger specimens she identified as sand-hawks, owls, and vultures, but she couldn’t put a name to the smaller remains. The sight of those unidentified birds, those tough little harridans of the Deadsands, filled her with a profound sadness. How many had been attracted to this false oasis from the sand and scrub only to meet their death?

  Silister Trench seemed unaffected by this miniature graveyard. Instead, he appeared to be afflicted with a kind of awe. Like a scholar in a rare museum, he moved between the gaudy boles with his hands clasped at his chest—a posture less instilled by fear, Rachel suspected, than reverence.

  The petrified woodland seemed largely impervious to the gales blowing beyond its perimeter. Only the tips of the highest branches shifted, glassy thorns tinkling overhead, and these tiny notes only heightened the deep sense of stillness. Rachel kept a hand on Trench’s shoulder as she led him onwards, alert for sudden mists or exposed roots. She looked for poisons she recognized, trying to fit hue and texture to the incongruent names the chemists had devised. One bowed trunk had been daubed in Whooping-Silver and spattered with purple Sirsic Acid ember. She saw Blood-Lime and EM9 on the bark of another tree, fused with streaks of Raven Stain, Rosemary’s Throat, Blushlilly, Dogweed, and Generic 120. Nothing but the sand itself, and the tiny skeletons, had been left un-painted.

  There was no path to follow, no stars visible to keep them on course. She relied on gut instinct and those few memories she retained from her one previous visit here.

  She’d been seventeen when the Spine had brought her back from Hollowhill for punishment. Her hands were still bloody from the fight with the Deepgate reservists, and those hands had been manacled, chained to a line of Heshette pilgrims bound for the Avulsior’s justice. None of the other prisoners would speak to her, despite what she’d done for them. Rachel didn’t blame them. As a Spine Cutter, the most she could expect was a whipping, or to endure one of Devon’s toxic dreams. The other captives, all Heshette heathens, were bound for Sinners’ Well.

  Seven leagues west of Sandport, the head Spine Adept had announced they would take the path through Cinderbark Wood. His pale face had given nothing away when he’d told her why. They’d take the southern route, he said, away from the busy caravan trails, to spare Rachel her humiliation.

  Four Heshette had died among the poisoned trees. The first man had rested a hand against bark when the party stopped to rest. His screams and bleeding eyes had prompted a second, younger warrior to attempt to flee. This boy—he had been only a boy, she remembered—had tripped over a root in his panic. His feet had been bare, his death violent and stinking. A third, a greybeard at the end of the line, had breathed a lungful of pink air before the Spine Adepts had hastened the party away from the mist. The fourth had been a young woman, one of the maidens Rachel had saved from the reservists’ tents. Weeping, the girl had wrapped her arms around a colourful trunk and refused to let go. The Adepts had carefully unchained her and left her where she was.

  When the party finally reached Deepgate, Rachel never received her whipping.

  Now the assassin looked at the physical form of the young angel before her, at the bloody stains on the back of his shirt and the ruined fingers he kept close to his chest, and her breathing became suddenly heavy. Where was Dill’s soul now, she thought sadly. She inadvertently tightened her hand on his shoulder.

  Trench glanced back at her and quickly away again.

  The night stretched on. Thorns chimed like memories. Further in, the woodland grew even denser. Low loops and snarls of branch had to be negotiated with care. Poisons glowed softly all around. Occasionally they were forced to alter course to skirt wandering mists or solitary spires of clear hot vapor, or thickets where the trees blazed like colourful fire. Chemical smells constantly assailed them, queer sulphuric odors that stuck to the back of Rachel’s throat. Time seemed to move to a more solemn beat here, to belong to a different world entirely. Their footfalls were soundless as, unconsciously, they had both become light-stepped and adept at avoiding the skeletons underfoot.

  It was Trench who found the spring first. The angel pointed through the wood towards a muddy hollow with a clear pool rimmed with red and lavender grasses. Silver fish, no larger than Rachel’s thumb, hovered in the water. The tracks of small three-toed beasts pocked the mire. But there was another larger and more familiar imprint, and the assassin stared down in wonder.

  The queer trail they had followed previously resumed here.

  Rachel instantly crouched down to inspect the wet earth. The imprints were clearer here: a shallow trench about the width of a person surrounded by other marks like scuffs. The tracks led off into the trees, becoming more insubstantial in the dry sand extending further away from the pool. She saw no foot- or hoofprints. Whoever or whatever had come here to drink had wriggled along.

  Quickly she filled their water flasks, then, aft
er a moment’s hesitation—the fish in the pool were alive, unchanged, therefore the water it contained should be fine—took a sip.

  “We’re halfway through,” she whispered to Trench, offering him a flask. “But there’s still worse to come.” She eyed those strange tracks in the mud again…wondering.

  Trench drank and handed the flask back to her. While she refilled it, he found a safe place to sit. “I think I recall this woodland from my previous life,” he said quietly. “Long before Deepgate’s poisoners changed it, my brother and I used to hunt here.”

  “What did you hunt?”

  “Heshette.”

  Rachel stared at him coldly.

  “You don’t approve?”

  “I’ve done worse,” she said.

  He grinned. “Crueller things happen on earth than in Hell. Perhaps the Mesmerists are afraid of mortals. They can only reshape souls into things they understand—machines, simple demons. They cannot forge people.”