The Nightmare Stacks

by Charles Stross

  Alex’s eyes don’t glaze over, but they lose the tight focus as he visibly makes an effort not to let them drift south towards her chest. “How would you like to go see a movie together after work some time?” he asks.

  “I’d like that a lot!” She pulls out her phone. “Hmm. Busy Thursday. A week next Friday I’m off to Whitby for the goth festival . . . how are you for tomorrow? Wednesday?”

  “Tomorrow? That would be”—he blinks, surprised—“good.”

  “Me too! Text me your number and Facebook name,” she says, and he turns his phone towards her: there’s an address book entry in the name of Alex Schwartz, and a menu option to send contact details. Bingo! Agent First thinks triumphantly as she keys in her own mobile number. She can barely believe it: Has he really told her his true name? (The urük seem oddly fearless about identity theft.) A moment later her phone vibrates. “YesYes!” Cassie beams at him like an out-of-control searchlight. “We have a date!”

  8.

  INTERLUDE: INVADERS MASSING

  That night, Agent First returns to the location whence she first arrived in this world. The actual spot is inconveniently close to the middle of Burley Road, which carries more traffic than she is comfortable with, so she waits until the backside of midnight, fuming. It will be necessary to relocate the anchor spot to a more convenient location, one connected to the local ley lines, but she doesn’t yet have enough mana to do so. Finally the traffic subsides enough to allow her to walk into the road, reopen the portal, and call the first of her agents through from the shadow roads where they have been waiting.

  As luck would have it, the cloaked figure steps out of the glowing portal and begins to look around just as a late-night delivery truck rounds the bend, headlights flaring against the darkness. Agent First swears and bundles her disoriented minion out of the way before he’s flattened.

  Hell of a way to run an invasion, she thinks distractedly. “Agent Second, report!” she commands in the High Tongue.

  “I hear and obey, mistress.” Agent Second stares at her oddly, the whites of his eyes showing all around his dilated pupils: then he shudders and pulls himself together. “Salutations from All-Highest, and you are to forward your report immediately. I bear a courier beast for your convenience . . .”

  Agent Second throws back one side of his cloak and relaxes his grip. The coatl tastes the smoke-fouled air and hisses vehemently, then raises its hackles. The beast is venomous and can lash out if it feels threatened, even against those it is bound to. Agent First doesn’t flinch. “Good,” she says. She reaches into the top of her dress and tugs one of the memory gems loose from her necklace, then holds it in front of the courier. “Excellent creature, bear my offering to All-Highest with all available speed.” A forked tongue flickers out, sampling the air again. Evidently satisfied, the beast’s feathers droop slightly and it extends its neck, jaws gaping. There is a trickle of moisture and her hand lightens infinitesimally as the coatl swallows the crystal. It will reside in the beast’s gizzard while it makes its way through the shadow roads to All-Highest on his charnel throne, waiting for news from the enemy land. “Release the beast,” Agent First commands. Her subordinate makes obeisance to her, then carefully releases the coatl from beneath his garment. There is a flittering of scaly membranous wings and a diminishing hiss, then a flicker of light so far into the violet that it approaches invisibility as it returns to the unreality from which it was summoned by the Host’s magi.

  She takes a deep breath and focusses on Agent Second. “Come,” she commands. “We have much to discuss.”

  “I hear and obey, mistress.” She looks at him through half-human eyes, seeing to first approximations a tall, thin man, delicate-boned; the corners of his eyes smoothed by epicanthic folds, the helices of his ears stretched towards points at the top. His lips are plump, his long hair gathered in a braid—gender signifiers among their kind are not as they are among the urük. Like most of their species his skin is the brown of almonds, his hair black. The human tongue Cassie speaks has a word to describe him: elfin. It is no mere metaphor.

  “Follow.” She turns downhill towards Kirkstall Road, leading him along a side street past rows of hunched red-brick dwellings and trees that are still barely recovering from winter. Something, she thinks, is not quite right. “Walk with me on this raised pavement: do not venture into the road lest”—she is nearly bowled over as Agent Second leaps aside in shock when an elderly hatchback shoots past his right elbow—“that.”

  “What is-is—” Agent Second stutters.

  “Our historic records of this world are defective.” Agent First is secretly pleased that her own reaction to this realm is not untypical. She is less pleased by her Second’s wild-eyed look. She hasn’t worked with this man for long, but something about his attitude seems subtly off. “These are not savages: there is a civilization here, but it is very strange. They use very little mana, but they are not without powerful artifices—as you just saw, artifices that they make available even to serfs. They lie extensively and willfully, even to their lieges, using obfuscation and misdirection to conceal what is true—I have met only one individual who seemed bound by geas.”

  “Ah.” Agent Second is silent for a while. They pause at a street corner until there is no sign of traffic, then Agent First leads him on a mad feline dash across the road. Once they gain the safety of the opposite sidewalk, Agent Second asks hesitantly: “Then these wheeled carts that speed so—they are used by serfs?”

  “There are too many of them, far too many. Their breeding has spiraled out of control, and they live in huge hives and barrack-cities of which this one is far from the largest.”

  “All-Highest will certainly wish to thin the herd,” Agent Second opines.

  Agent First’s stomach lurches at the idea. Cassie has a word for what she feels—squeamish—but the High Tongue lacks the concept. She pauses. “What news of home?”

  “The situation is desperate,” Agent Second reports. His head swivels ceaselessly as he scans his surroundings: “One of the supply depots was found to have been incorrectly sealed when we retreated into slumber. Those responsible have paid for their error, but the Host now have barely enough fodder on hand to feed the heavy brigade’s mounts for another tenday. After that time they will have to deploy the cavalry, or start eating the serfs.”

  There is a third option, of course, but Agent First doesn’t even bother to enquire after it. Slaughtering the mounts is a non-option, for without the heavy brigade the Host will be unable to conduct offensive operations. She knows her father well enough to know what he will do. “When is the attack scheduled for, and where?”

  “All-Highest has not seen fit to confide in me, my lady. But the Intelligence Section is tasked as a highest priority with capturing and returning to headquarters a magus or other officer with credentials sufficient to gain access to the enemy palace. Bound to All-Highest’s will and alive for questioning. I suspect he plans a swift assassination under cover of a decoy offensive: conquest by subterfuge.” Agent Second glances up and down the road, taking in the brutally oppressive buildings of fire-baked clay and stone. “Are we alone?” he asks.

  Agent First pauses at another pedestrian crossing, glancing both ways along the road. Her sense of danger crystalizes in a split instant. “I believe so,” she says, careful not to look directly at Agent Second. “Why do you ask?”

  A grunt. “Alas, I am bound and commanded to deliver the fond salutations of your stepmother—”

  A dagger plunges through the darkness but misses its target. Agent Second grunts, falling into a defensive crouch. His movements are jerkily over-controlled.

  Cassie’s grief and rage mingle as she pulls the veil of darkness tight around her and steps behind her former subordinate. That he was loyal to her she does not doubt: nor is there any doubt that Second Wife has chained him by power of her rank and turned him into an weapon. She can h
ear the tension in his panicky gasps as he finds his body compelled to perform actions that threaten to tear him apart, making an oath-breaker of him regardless of outcome. Agent Second cannot disobey the geas of the wife of the All-Highest, she who in other times could call herself Empress of the Morningstar. But the wages of treason are death: if his blade drinks Agent First’s blood his own life is forfeit under the geas she holds him with. It’s elegantly cruel, Cassie realizes: if Agent Second kills her he, too, will die, and thereby serve her stepmother’s purpose, but if she slays him her command will be weakened.

  “Stop this,” Cassie commands, casting her voice to echo off the damp brick walls behind.

  Agent Second spins warily in place, unable to see her. “I can’t,” he hisses, pained. His face is creased in anguish. “She won’t let me.”

  “If you persist, we may both die.”

  “Then you will have to slay me, my lady, for I cannot help myself.” He lunges and lashes out again, his eyes screwed shut. Cassie dances backwards a step, two: she recognizes the tactic. Darkness will not be sufficient. She begins to spin a web of mist and night, muffling sounds. “I am sorry,” he adds, knife tip circling.

  She risks everything on a question. “Does All-Highest know of this treachery?”

  “I know not.” Agent Second moans faintly, a string of drool dangling from his lower jaw. “His wife ordains your death, my lady. I am sorry—”

  For a moment he rallies. Tendons stand out in his neck as his back arches, fighting the dragon lady’s geas. He stumbles, arms thrown wide, and Cassie recognizes a gathering rumble behind them.

  The moral calculus is hazardous, unavoidable. She darts forward and punches his shoulder, shoving him off-balance.

  “I’m sorry, too!” she mouths, as a horn blares and brakes screech. Agent Second seems to fall forever, but it can only be a split second before he vanishes beneath the wheels of the articulated lorry. She doesn’t stay to watch, but whirls and runs, horrified, metallic-tasting stomach acid rising at the back of her throat. It was one or both of us, she rationalizes, trying desperately to un-see what she witnessed, to un-hear the sounds of Agent Second being dragged beneath the wheels, the driver’s face a pale circle glimpsed through the windscreen—

  After a couple of minutes, Cassie slows to a walk, panting. Her mood, uncharacteristically light until recently, is now tainted with fear and apprehension. It is not because she mourns for Agent Second. He was demonstrably incautious, and allowed her stepmother to corner him in isolation for long enough to impose her murderous compulsion. His weakness brought its own reward down upon his neck. But at the end he rallied, resisting the enemy’s will for long enough to give Cassie an opening. She recognizes that she is alive through his act of self-sacrifice, and that her position has gone from marginal to precarious. She is still under orders, charged by All-Highest with gathering intelligence on the urük empire’s occult rulers. She can no more fight that geas than she can still her rebellious heartbeat by will alone. But now she knows for a fact that the mistress of dragons wants her dead. She can be certain that any aid that will be granted her is tainted with treachery, voluntary or compelled. Her own command has been compromised and her own agents can no longer be trusted. She is alone in this place of exile with only the knowledge of the coming invasion to reduce her isolation to something she can comprehend—and the invasion itself will imperil her.

  Perhaps the report she dispatched via Agent Second’s coatl will serve to redeem her name in her father’s esteem. But somehow she doubts it. In truth, she’s even coming to doubt her sanity, or at least the value of her stolen memories.

  The messy decentralization of Cassie’s world is a calculated affront to the intellect: it makes no sense to one of Agent First’s kind. They know that there can be no society without mana to provide power and geasa to bind the weak and empower the elevated. All-Highest is as likely to be offended by the ugliness of her report as he is to be persuaded by her insight. At home, everyone can see the intricate web of obligations that connect them to the great chain of being, all the way from All-Highest at the apex to the lowliest slave at the bottom. But Cassie feels the imprint of no such will upon her memories and upbringing. Nor does she recognize the pattern Agent First is seeking. Cassie’s queen is not a terrifying sorceress presiding over her empire from a moonlit throne atop a tower of skulls, but a figurehead in a pink twinset and pearls, smiling and waving. She presides over a raucous parliament of self-important men in suits: the only thing they can strike dead with a glare is a sound bite.

  Agent First might reluctantly credit Cassie’s understanding of her world if there was truly no mana here. But there are magi: she’s met one. She senses it on Alex’s skin, smells it curdling on his breath. If he’d show her his teeth she could see it for herself. She has walked the streets around Quarry House and every footstep set her skin crawling, raised the hairs on the nape of her neck with the numinous power embedded in the fresh concrete paving slabs. The only explanation she can see that fits the facts is the hand of a hidden puppeteer, animating the ministries of state through the strength of their will-to-power and their magically enforced oaths of fealty. There is magic here, and where there is magic and will there is power, and where there is a source of power there is a ruler, and a ruler is a single point of failure that can be dominated and controlled. But finding that ruler, and a weakness by which she can reach them? She barely knows where to begin.

  Whether All-Highest will even bother to review her full report, or hear her thoughts on this subject, is anybody’s guess. The only way to convince him would be to present him with incontrovertible evidence—nothing less than a captured enemy magus would do. And she is on her own, with no way to get word home before the invasion force itself arrives.

  What’s a spy to do?

  * * *

  In his pale throne room beneath the bones of a long-dead sea, All-Highest awaits the report of Agent First of Spies and Liars. Honorable Second Wife, Highest Liege of Airborne Strike Command, occupies the lower throne to his left, chin propped on fist. To his right stands Her Excellence, Highest Liege of Heavy Cavalry. Arrayed behind them are the various members of their staff and assistants.

  Their attention is focussed on a chair of limestone where Cassiopeia Brewer sits, fettered with bonds of iron. Skin stinking of terror, mouth stoppered with a gag of leather to muffle her shrieks, she cuts a pathetic figure: clearly the urük place little weight on displays of stoical fortitude in the face of inevitable martyrdom.

  “The message.” All-Highest gestures languidly at the slave woman in the stone chair: “Put it to her.”

  “Yes, Highness.” Honorable Second of Analysts and Communicators steps forward, robes swishing against the floor. He bears a skullcap to which is wired the memory jewel so recently borne across the shadow roads by the coatl. The urük female squirms in the chair, trying to slither away from him. Tears trickle down her cheeks as she shakes her head violently, trying to mewl in her barbarous tongue.

  All-Highest regards her with disfavor. Her noises are an irritating distraction. He would have had her tongue removed if he had not been waiting for this message from his daughter.

  Second of Analysts grips the back of the barbarian woman’s neck and forces her to submit. As he lowers the skullcap atop her shaven head—she sports a tonsure, a recent imposition made necessary by the process in hand, but one which fails to make her look any less stupid and brutish—she stiffens as if in a seizure. Her eyes roll up in her head, and her neck becomes limp, so that her head is held up only by Second of Analysts’ grip. Then the spasm passes. The woman lifts her chin, a new intelligence glowing in her eyes. The mewling stops. “Remove the gag,” commands All-Highest.

  “Father.” The woman ducks her head briefly, as great a gesture of submission as her bonds permit. “My memories are yours to command.”

  All-Highest permits the merest ghost of a smile to f
lit across his lips. His daughter’s soul is fearless, even in such dire circumstances—entangled with an urük slave before a committee of all the powers. He is not unaware of the way Agent First’s stepmother glowers. This is to be expected. He would be astonished if she did not have plans for the offspring of his previous whelpings. Behind his right shoulder loom the golems of Punishment and Exemplification of Obedience, ready to excruciate any who should question his will. His new wife is not stupid: he trusts her to leave Agent First alone until she completes her report.

  “Tell me, daughter, of the world you have found.”

  For the next few hours Cassie’s mouth labors awkwardly around the unfamiliar lilting tonal phonemes of the High Tongue. Her accent is slow and barbarous, but behind the mangled words a keen intellect delivers news of its labor. Agent First speaks of lies and paradoxes, of a civilization without mana and a hidden empire that denies its own manifest existence. Much of her report is profoundly shocking to the staff of the Host of Air and Darkness: she sings of a dirty, terrifyingly overcrowded land where contrivances of mere mechanism run riot and a foul culture has taken root, showing signs of barbaric vigor but bereft of beauty. She sings of a monstrous, seething anthill capital that is in turn the regional hub of an even more populous center to the southeast. And then she sings of a fastness of honey-colored stone surmounted by a gleaming metal spire reeking of mana, that stands atop a hill in the midst of the city: a fastness surrounded by wards of power within which secretive magi work by day and night at tasks unseen.

  This last captures All-Highest’s attention. “Speak now of this hidden master you have identified,” he demands, as Second Wife leans forward attentively beside him.