Campbell, Alan - Iron Angel

by Campbell, Alan

  At least it was now dry.

  His wrist throbbed, and he could see a faint red mark where the young woman had inserted the splinter. He rose groggily, and threw back the shutters.

  But the view beyond the window had changed. A second set of closed shutters now prevented him from looking into Mina’s room—these ones on the inside of her windows.

  It seemed she no longer wanted to speak.

  Dill sat on his bed, brooding. He thought he could still smell a whiff of perfume. He closed his eyes and pictured her: her soft dark eyes, her honey-coloured skin, and the deep curves of her dress. A creak startled him. The base of the bed, he noticed, had raised itself a little higher from the floor.

  Should he knock on her window?

  And embarrass himself? She clearly wanted privacy. Perhaps she was feeling awkward. The bond they now shared was unusually…intimate. He decided to wait until she was ready to talk.

  Living inside an incarnation of one’s soul had a certain appeal, Dill continued to discover. As long as he didn’t damage himself—by dropping a vase, for example, or accidentally slamming the dresser door too hard. He quickly learned to change his environment by simply willing those changes to happen.

  In time he learned how to control the pain, and he began to experiment by conjuring flames. If he wanted a fire in the hearth, he simply thought about it, and it sprung into being. Only afterwards did he realize that there had never been a hearth in the room. That had appeared, too. At first the leaping flames sent jolts of pain through the chimneystack, but by degrees he managed to overcome the discomfort. He fireproofed himself, and the pain dwindled. It was an odd feeling, sitting on a rug while part of your soul burned before your eyes.

  But was it really burning?

  Other things happened without his conscious thought. The window drapes often changed colour to match his mood. When he was frustrated, he noticed they had turned orange. This observation filled him with awe, which then changed the curtains to gold. They stayed gold for a long time. The windowpanes became larger, while the shutters on this side of the glass diminished, creeping back into the surrounding walls. Eventually they disappeared altogether.

  Mina Greene kept herself sealed in the darkness of her own room.

  Time passed.

  Hasp never closed his door, although he had made Dill swear not to step through it under any circumstances. From the god’s castle came the constant thud of arrows striking wood. He had taken to practicing with a bow.

  Dill studied the paintings: those thirteen people who now shared his soul. They watched him soundlessly. Sometimes their expressions changed, but only when Dill wasn’t looking. He thought he recognized a few of them: two of the younger lads from the temple kitchens, and a girl in a scullery apron. Of them all, only the assassin unnerved him. The man bore tattooed marks on his neck—the sign of a failed tempering procedure—and his painted eyes smouldered with madness.

  Could Dill conjure his own painting?

  He created a blank canvas surrounded by a heavy gold frame. But the painting itself eluded him. Should it be a scene from the Codex? The Battle of the Tooth? Perhaps he should just paint himself painting himself?

  Too self-indulgent. He dismissed the idea.

  He tried to clear his mind and think of nothing at all. The lights in the room went out.

  Dill hissed in exasperation. I’m thinking too small. Everything in his environment was malleable. He could create anything he desired.

  So what did he actually want?

  When the lights came on again, he found himself looking up at a painting of Mina Greene.

  Harper’s towering new form afforded her a good view of the open foundations below. She watched the scene through glass eyes. The great castle that was the upper section of this Soul Midden had crawled away, leaving a large open wound in the Maze itself. Blood from broken dwellings had leached into the chambers below, partially flooding them. The men and women in that pit, now fully exposed to the skies above, gazed up in horror.

  “Clear them out,” Harper said. “And ask King Menoa to send us a Worm.”

  Most of the Icarates hobbled down into the labyrinth of walled spaces, their pale armour crackling with blue fire. Instead of hammers they carried tridents, for there would be no further need to smash down walls. What followed now would be a simple matter of collection.

  Only the Icarate high priest remained: a stooped figure clad in ill-fitting white plates. The protrusions on his back were larger than those of his warrior comrades, like the pale fungi found on the boles of dead trees. Verdigris crusted his copper mouth grille, but he did not require it, or even a mouth, to speak.

  It is done. Menoa will send a Worm.

  The Worm came as soon as Menoa’s armoured warriors had cleared the souls from the bleeding pit. It appeared as a black thread, snaking higher and higher up above the far horizon, and then rushed nearer until it was weaving through the hot red mists towards them. Massive and uncertain, this conduit of souls looped above Harper’s head and then plunged down into the pit before her.

  It was not one demon, but many linked together for one purpose. Their black scales rippled, serpentlike, across the Worm’s skin, but all the claws and teeth were within. Waves of peristalsis flowed back along its length as it fed on the remains of the Middens and burrowed itself deeper into the ground.

  Harper studied her sceptre, searching for a psychic disturbance in the ground below. If the archon felt the presence of the Worm, then he might panic and try to flee. And then she would know exactly where he was.

  But as she watched the Worm feed, a sensation of dizziness came over her, as though something inside her own body had shifted momentarily, throwing her off balance. She heard a weak tapping sound.

  Harper raised her mirrored shield and gazed at her reflection.

  The manikin peered back from inside Harper’s own glass skull. This tiny manifestation of her former self already looked much frailer than it had been. It swayed unsteadily on its feet. Shadows had appeared under its eyes. It cupped one hand into the shape of a bowl, made a spooning gesture with the other.

  The manikin was starving.

  Mina Greene’s shutters remained firmly closed. To Dill’s horror, the wood had begun to deteriorate. Damp had softened and warped the lowest edges, and the shutters now appeared to sit crookedly in their frame. He spied patches of white mould and rust on the hinges.

  “Something’s wrong,” Dill told Hasp.

  “Something’s wrong with most of the people down here,” Hasp replied. “She’s bound to be miserable. She’s in Hell. And souls get worn thin over time. It takes great force of will to maintain your surroundings. Ignore her; she’ll be gone soon.”

  “Gone where?”

  “Nowhere. She’ll just slip between the gaps and become a shade. Her room will eventually bleed to death and drain into the Mesmerist canals. Happens all the time. Some people just aren’t strong enough to survive here.”

  “Then she needs help.”

  “What she needs,” the god said, “is oblivion. The Veil. That’s the best thing for her now, and that’s where she’s headed. Trust me—I’ve seen it a billion times before. Don’t get involved.”

  Dill rubbed his wrist where Mina had inserted a tiny splinter of her soul. He imagined her sitting alone in the darkness surrounded by those dusty shelves of skulls. He pictured her chamber rotting around her as she lost the will to maintain it. Perhaps he should just check that she was all right?

  He knocked on her window.

  It was a queer sensation. As his knuckles struck the glass, a vision flashed in his mind.

  —A crowd of Sandporters cheered and clapped in a wide town square—

  He knocked again.

  —A brightly painted wagon stood in a sandy glade, surrounded by colourful trees—

  “I told you to leave her be,” Hasp said.

  “There’s no response,” Dill replied. “I’m going to open the window.”


  “Not a good idea, lad. How would you feel if a stranger broke into your soul?”

  But Dill was already searching for something to break the window with. And then he realized that he didn’t have to search at all—this little part of Hell was entirely malleable. He glanced down to find that a crowbar had already appeared in his fist.

  Hasp growled. “Don’t do it. That kind of contact sends tremors through the whole damn Maze. You’re not just risking her soul.”

  Dill hooked the crowbar under the window sash and pushed down on it.

  —A mangy little pup sniffed around the deck of a ship—

  The sash sprang open. He hoisted it up. Now only the closed shutters stood between him and Mina’s room. Behind him, Hasp threw up his arms in frustration and stormed back inside his castle.

  Dill pounded his fist repeatedly against the shutters.

  —Something padded through darkness, a powerful hunched shape. Blood dribbled from a sword into a clay bowl. A wild beast howled—

  The rotten wood had split where Dill had struck it. One of the shutters was already coming away from its hinges. Dill pressed both hands against the wood and shoved hard. The shutters flew open.

  —An odor of loam and bark, and of freshly butchered meat—

  Dill stared. The room beyond the open window bore no resemblance to Mina Greene’s opulent chambers. It was much smaller—a dull brick-walled space with an earthen floor. To the left, a single doorway led to another similarly gloomy cell. There were no pillars, no grand cupola, and no furnishings except for a long wooden box sitting in the middle of the floor. It looked big enough to contain a corpse.

  “Mina!”

  Dill climbed up onto the window ledge and was about to step through, when he heard a scraping sound. Mina backed through the doorway, dragging a second—much smaller—wooden trunk behind her. When she reached the long box, she paused to catch her breath.

  “That’s far enough, Dill,” she said without looking up.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Packing.” Mina opened the small chest. Then she tilted the long box up, standing it on one end. It was almost as tall as she was. With some effort, she lifted it up, and then lowered it down again so that its narrow base rested inside the open chest on the floor.

  Dill watched in astonishment as the tall container slid down until it had disappeared completely inside the smaller one. Mina went back through to the other room. In a moment she returned with yet another chest, smaller again than the one remaining on the floor. She repeated the whole process. By placing the narrow end of one container inside the wider mouth of the next, she eventually managed to reduce her luggage to the size of a jewelry box.

  “Where are you going?” Dill asked.

  “I thought I’d have a wander around,” she replied cheerfully. She made comical bug eyes at him. “See some demons. Catch some ghosts.”

  “That’s not normal,” Dill said.

  Her dark eyes gleamed. “It is for me.”

  “But what happened to your room? Where is everything?”

  She wandered over to him, holding up the little jewelry box. “All the important stuff is in here,” she said. “Iril’s canals can drink the rest after I’ve gone.”

  “But…” A hollow ache had taken root in Dill’s stomach. He didn’t want her to leave. Absurdly, a loose thread hanging from a seam on the side of her dress caught his eye. Why did he find this tiny imperfection so suddenly endearing? She was so close he could smell her perfume: the warm scent of desert spice on her skin. Without thinking, he shifted his position on the window ledge.

  “Dill!” she warned.

  Dill reached up to grip the sash above, but the window flinched away from him. Suddenly he was gripping nothing, and overbalanced. He fell forward into the girl’s room.

  A moment of extreme disorientation overcame him, as though he had stepped outside of himself, and was looking back at his own face. It was the oddest sensation, both familiar and utterly strange to him. He saw the wings of an archon, his wings, with a plush room behind, but he was also staring at a dark brick-walled space and a screaming girl in a rainbow-coloured dress.

  He saw, or felt, Mina shudder; Dill couldn’t be sure. His senses were reeling now, confusing him. He heard the savage howling of a wild animal. He reached out to Mina, or thought he did, but suddenly he was reaching out to himself, a young angel standing in a dismal cell. A girl stood by the window, her arms outstretched.

  His fingers brushed another hand. The touch sent a powerful shock through him. Nausea cloyed at his throat. He heard shrieking, followed by the deep growl of a hound. Perfume mingled with the thick stench of animals. It was too much to bear. He staggered back from the angel, from the girl in the bright dress. His hands gripped something. A window frame?

  He fell backwards.

  “Fool!” Hasp’s voice roared somewhere behind him. “Close that window now! You’d better hope the Mesmerists didn’t feel that commotion.”

  Dill’s thoughts still spun. “What? I don’t understand…”

  “You stepped inside her soul,” Hasp growled. “Did you think her reaction to an intrusion like that would be subtle? You just violated that girl in the worst possible way.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dill stammered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

  But he was cut off by a sound like an earthquake. His whole apartment—his whole soul—groaned and shook.

  “Light and Life,” Hasp said. “Get back from that window!”

  Dill rose unsteadily. Through the open window he could still see Mina. She was wailing uncontrollably, clutching the jewelry box to her chest. Dust shuddered free of the walls and clouded the air around her.

  “Get back! Don’t make me come in there.”

  But how could Dill leave her in such distress? Whatever was happening was his fault. By setting foot in her room, he had triggered this.

  He shouted back to Hasp, “What’s happening?”

  “Menoa’s hordes are coming.” The god smiled coldly. “And it sounds like they brought a Worm.”

  The rear wall in Mina’s room suddenly cracked and then burst inwards. Chunks of brick and mortar showered the earthen floor. Something smashed through, and then pulled away again, leaving a ragged gap.

  Claws?

  Mina screamed again.

  Bricks exploded to dust behind her. In one heartbeat the entire rear wall of the room disappeared. In its place Dill saw what appeared to be a wide tunnel, sloping upwards at a shallow angle. The interior of this space was moving, seething like a swarm of insects.

  Demons? They were crowded together in the darkness, a crush of anthracite-like bones and curved claws and teeth all woven together by strands of red muscle. This moving mass receded as far as the eye could see. The leading rim of the tunnel had pressed firmly up against the edge of Mina’s room, while the nearest limbs reached in and tore away more sections of wall, passing the debris back to ranks of snapping teeth. A gale blew out from the tunnel, as heavy and dank as stale rainwater. The edges of the room had already begun to bleed.

  Dill gasped. Further back, among the tunnel’s connective tissues, the crowd of demons were passing objects forward through their ranks towards those in front. These looked like pale gelatinous spheres, and the demons handled them with particular care. The objects, he realized, were eyes: thousands of them all staring back at the young angel.

  Still screaming, Mina dropped to her knees and pressed her palms over her ears.

  “Take my hand,” Dill cried. He reached back through the window. “Come with me, quickly!”

  She didn’t look up at him.

  “Get away from there, lad!” Hasp roared from the doorway.

  The tunnel consumed more and more of Mina’s room, chewing through the walls as though they were paper. Cracks shot through the earthen floor. Fragments crumbled away only to be plucked up and skirled by the howling wind.

  Dill scrambled back into Mina’s room, where her agony hit him
like the blast from a furnace. He staggered but managed to grab her and drag her back towards the window.

  Hasp pounded on the doorframe. “Leave her!”

  Somehow Dill bundled them both over the window ledge. With the tunnel of claws and teeth mere yards behind them, the pair collapsed in a crumpled heap on Dill’s floor.

  Or was it a floor? For a confusing moment, Dill glimpsed forest all around him—dark, ancient oaks crowding his vision. The rich perfume of soil and mulch filled his lungs. He heard Mina give a gasp…

  …Then silence.

  Dill’s vision faded abruptly; he was sprawled on the floor of his room again. Groggily, he shook his head and looked around.