The Madman's Bridge: FireWall Book 1

by Mark Johnson

  Insects hummed and fluttered. Sweeper Crattas’s broom whisked against the colonnade’s cobblestones, and men at makeshift trade stalls laughed and clanked metal tools on blades and home wares. She recognized the four guards from Armer at the Wall’s southern end, in the wide area marked out as a combat practice yard by threadbare sandbags and banners. Another nearby guard swung at trainees with long, wooden arm extensions with nails at the end.

  She noticed the short, dark-haired Armen man, Paan, shaking his head as if confused. The muscular blond one, Zale, pointed ahead of her, at a pavilion. The other three followed his gaze.

  Near the manline, an initiate stumbled from the pavilion and ran northward.

  Nocev. She’d lifted her skirt in both hands.

  People stopped to watch her, mildly interested. Sarra went to follow her, when a pale silver figure flashed before Sarra, joined moments later by five more. Three male shapes, three female shapes, their arms outstretched, pleading, imploring her to stop. Their most direct interaction ever.

  Nocev fell near the center of the Commons.

  She screamed curdling shrieks that halted people at their tasks, turning them toward the brown, cracked earth where Nocev writhed. The tin statue alsatios watched motionless from atop the pavilion roofs.

  The ghosts disappeared. As they faded, they’d looked as confused as Sarra felt about what was happening to Nocev. Sarra lurched forward, her thoughts a jumble. Her only friend was in pain. But she’d couldn’t think what the pain could be.

  People approached Nocev, some running, others walking. After a few moments, men crossed the manline, heedless of arbitrary boundaries.

  No one touched Nocev. She tore at her throat. Her tongue was thick and swollen, her eyeballs bulged as blood seeped from tear ducts. Rivulets of blood made small streams as they joined the downpour from her nose and ears, pooling on soil beneath her head. Her limbs spread, mighty tremors shaking her body, arms and legs pounding the bloody earth.

  Sarra strained to get closer to Nocev, but felt hands on her shoulders and around her waist. Shouts all around her. Calls for help. Warnings to get back.

  Nocev was dying.

  There were no vibrations or chaos at work here, Sarra could see that. Her chest tightened, and she couldn’t breathe. The greatest weaver in all the Territories, her friend melting and burning from the inside, and she couldn’t think what to do. She couldn’t even hold Nocev’s hand as some unseen, unknown evil came to life.

  This was supposed to be the safest place in the astes.

  And at her only friend’s death, Sarra couldn’t even help ease her passing.

  By the time the healers, the Elders and Miss Harient arrived, Nocev was barely recognizable. The hundreds-strong crowd had made a wide ring around Nocev’s thrashing body.

  Sarra’s throat rippled with a wailing noise while women held her upright. Nocev’s skin blackened, then pitted and charred. A distant part of Sarra’s mind noticed a small, strange distortion just above Nocev’s skin. Contradicting all she understood, minute black flames spread over her friend’s body. Flame was supposed to be red, or yellow, or sometimes blue — she had forgotten the reasons why — but black flame was impossible.

  The slowing of her friend’s limbs gave Sarra hope that Nocev’s pain was lessening.

  There was a smell. Not of a rotting body, but something fresher, keener and more repulsive, which Sarra couldn’t recognize nor compare to any other smell. Someone vomited. Older children cried and clung to nearby adults.

  One figure stood with Nocev throughout, not moving from her apprentice’s tormented husk. Miss Harient’s eyes hadn’t opened since she arrived. Her weaves had explored every inch of Nocev’s body. Specks of blood dotted the hem of Miss’s skirt, where crimson drops had burst from Nocev’s face. Strands of blonde hair fell from the rotting scalp and caught under Miss Harient’s shoes.

  When the TowerMiss finally opened her eyes, she sought Sarra’s face within the gathered crowd.

  Through everything else, Sarra felt the weight of her mistress’s thoughts. And for no reason, she thought of their journey to the Walls of eastmost Humility, where a suspected smuggler had died of massive, unexplained blood loss overnight.

  In the room next to theirs.

  Crumbs of dry dirt stuck to Sarra’s palms. Her cheeks were wet and her breaths came in ragged heaves.

  A small, distant part of her mind screamed that she was missing something obvious. Why was she obsessing over that, not Nocev? Why now, did her fear of blood press at her temples?

  Miss Harient and Toreng shared a look Sarra didn’t recognize, as the old man held a weeping child’s head to his shoulder. Few people spoke over a whisper. The crowd was dispersed by weavers preparing an energetic autopsy. No one moved Sarra.

  She sprawled on the parched ground, as weavers with thick gloves, jackets and facemasks gingerly placed Nocev’s remains into a sack. The ghosts, the artefacts’ silver projections, gathered within their pavilions. As if seeking safety or solace.

  “Nothing. No traces at all, TowerMiss,” said a woman, her voice cracking.

  Sarra didn’t, couldn’t, take her eyes from the pavilion from which Nocev had fled. Where she’d first shown Nocev how to use artefacts. Later, Sarra knew, she’d be asked questions. She could answer most of them honestly. Then her attention slipped to four masculine shapes, gesturing at the pavilion from the other side of the manline.

  Those four odd men from Armer. They didn’t look, move nor speak like any other men in the Wall. They moved with an elegant and powerful grace that made her think of secrets. They just didn’t fit in. Like four wolves surrounded by hundreds of unsuspecting hounds.

  Their story of finding that evil piece of metal beneath the earth had never made sense. Unless they’d somehow first seen it under the ground. And before Nocev died, they’d been confused at something in the pavilion, and had pointed at it.

  But, Gods, they had seen something.

  Hands gripped her shoulders. Sarra let herself be pulled upright and led from the Commons. Up the stairs. Round the corner. Through the TowerMiss’s thick wooden doorway. Sat down on her old bed in Miss’s small guest bedroom. The first place Sarra had ever seen. She’d awoken her first morning in HopeWall in this room and this bed, with Miss sitting beside her on a stool.

  “You’ll stay here tonight, Sarra.”

  Sarra knew she should’ve responded, but couldn’t.

  Her only friend. There had been a few girls Sarra had played with before her novitiate, but no one special. Most girls had been more interested in where she’d come from or how she wove so well. But Nocev had been her friend. Had cried and been cried upon. No replacement. No second-place friend taking her position. The only one who had cared.

  “Sarra?” Miss crouched before her, resting her arms on Sarra’s knees.

  When Sarra said nothing, Miss brought a small object out of somewhere in her dress. “We can’t have you going catatonic again, Sarra.”

  “What?” said Sarra. She’d not heard that word before. Nor ever seen that red owl-figurine. “Mamma. Mamma I’m fine. I… I’ll be fine.”

  Their unspoken agreement was that Sarra called her Mamma only in private, and only when she needed her.

  Miss stroked the metal owl with her thumb.

  “What’s that?” said Sarra.

  “Perhaps, Sarra, you need to remember this.” Miss put the owl back in some voluminous pocket. “There wasn’t much blood, so you won’t get the nightmares.”

  What nightmares? “What happened to her?” Sarra said instead.

  “I’ve not seen that before,” Miss said, squeezing Sarra’s hand. “It was a trap. I’m guessing it was set to trip at a particular weave.”

  Her heart thumped hard and fast as realization dawned. She’d been the target, not Nocev. Something had known to look for weaves interacting w
ith the pillar artefacts. Which meant the Enemy knew the pavilions were artefacts, for only the Enemy could have done this. Sarra hadn’t used vibration weaves, because she wove instructions in the silver energy. The Enemy had somehow seen Nocev using the artefacts, and struck her down.

  Nocev would be alive if she’d not taught her those weaves.

  Gods help her! She’d killed her own best friend.

  Nocev had trusted her, loved her, wanted to give Sarra the life she’d dreamed of. And Sarra had gotten her killed.

  She had no one, now. That was her consequence. All her plans dashed. How could she ever move to OremWall if she’d gotten its lead weaver’s daughter killed? She had fewer people right now than ever before. No friends, and an adopted mother the age of a grandmother.

  First the Wall’s safety had gone in the cadver attack, then Nocev and her dreams of another life. The future was disintegrating before Sarra’s eyes.

  She couldn’t tell a soul. She couldn’t risk Miss’s life.

  “I’m cold, Mamma,” she said.

  Miss climbed onto the bed with Sarra and held her.

  “It’s open!” Zale shouted. “Take its knee, avoid the claws!”

  The boys ducked and swung their staves, their adversary dancing sideways. The cadver lashed a limb at the nearest boy, snagging him by his jerkin and pulling him out of formation. The boy swore loudly and sank to the ground. Three more boys were laid prone within the next minute.

  “Break!” Zale called.

  The boys stilled, spearing the earth with the butts of their staves. Meanwhile, the cadver removed the wooden forearms with nails on the end, and the metallic helmet with thick bars grafted across the face.

  “Thanks, Gebben,” Zale said to the sweating man.

  “Ya,” said Gebben, his dour face as close to a smile as Zale had seen. Gebben was an experienced guard who relished cadver-play with the recruits. He kicked one of the downed boys playfully as he walked to the yard’s side for a drink of water. The boys roused themselves.

  “Let’s hear it,” Zale demanded of a pimpled teenager.

  The boy panted. “Should’a dropped back instead of trying to get our friends back.”

  Zale pointed at a boy sporting a patchy attempt at a beard.

  “Too aggressive. We kept trying to hit him,” Patchy said.

  “Next time, you’ll…?” Zale asked of one of the downed boys.

  The boy’s brows knitted. “Only strike if I really need to. And only knees and elbows.”

  “Right,” Zale said. “By the time I’d finished shouting instructions, the situation had changed. Me knowing more than you doesn’t mean keep doing the last thing I said.”

  He managed to not smile. Having those lads nod their acceptance was good. Very good. Helping out with training had brought more meaning to his life than he’d had in years. He was doing something practical and useful. Something he was good at.

  A note of greeting sounded in Zale’s mind, from Cess. He was sitting with Nic and Paan beyond the sandbags that marked the combat ring. Zale hadn’t noticed them arrive.

  “But that’s better than last time,” he continued. “Some of you might be able to practice on your forage this evening.”

  Most of the younger boys thanked him as they left. As they did, those bizarre silver silhouettes flashed into being, as they so often did around the pavilions. He’d given up trying to understand what they were. At least they were harmless, he was certain. They disappeared again. Just another inexplicable detail to add to the growing pile cropping up around this Wall.

  The three others rose to meet him. “Something new?” he said, after taking stock of their faces.

  “I’ve had some thoughts about the Invocation,” said Nic.

  Zale didn’t hold back his frustrated groan. “You need to stop thrashing those four bloody lines to death,” he said. “Look, the reason they were written on the wall was to get us to come here to Sumad. We’re here. Let it go!”

  “Then why didn’t it write ‘Go to Sumad!’ instead, Zale?” asked Cess.

  “Maybe for the same reason it killed three hundred people!” Zale shot back. “You’re really looking for logic in all this?”

  Nic carried on like he hadn’t heard. “The divine link, comes from nature, to purify and power, in His name,” he quoted. “Saarg said the Invocation was about vibrations, or energy. Now, energy isn’t really produced by nature. Vibrations are there in every living thing except cadvers, but they don’t really manufacture it like the Invocation suggests. I’ve never felt it from animals in traveling menageries, from trees, or even from forests. Our silver energy’s there in Armer’s traveling trees and Sumad’s food growth hexagons, but nowhere outside the God’s body. Or ours. The purification and powering Saarg thought the line was about, just doesn’t occur in nature.”

  Gods, this business with Polis Sumad’s holy book was ridiculous. They’d been dissecting the same four lines for a year with nothing to show for it. But the other three seemed to relish puzzling over it. Why couldn’t they appreciate simple things? Like training?

  “I was talking to Toreng, the LoreKeeper, the other night,” Nic continued. “He’d just finished telling the story of Soki and the Candlemaker, and how one differentiates between intent and effect. I asked him how the conscious and the unconscious minds differ with regards to —”

  “Nic,” said Zale wearily.

  “Fine. He and I were talking and it got me thinking. Look, purification and powering are what energy does, not what energy is. It’s like describing a knife by saying ‘the knife is cutting’, instead of ‘the knife is sharp’.”

  “Meaning?”

  “The Divine Link must be like a process, not a tangible object.”

  Zale rubbed his forehead. The evening’s cold had come on strongly, while Nic spoke. “I don’t get it. What process comes from nature? I mean, the seasons are a process, trees are objects, but they are nature. What comes from nature? We’re still running in circles.”

  In Zale’s mind, Paan felt confused. “What’s the problem?”

  Paan blinked. “Something’s off. Energies going frantic. Can’t tell where.”

  Zale scanned the area, shifting through his sights. When he passed through the chaos range, he saw a storm of chaos energy raging around the women’s pavilion closest to the boundary line. Inside a nearby pavilion a strange bubble was untouched by the storm: a void, without any trace of energy whatsoever.

  “There,” he said, pointing. “Chaos. I’ve never seen so much. Hey, that’s Nocev. Where’s she running to?”

  Zale’s hands trembled as they returned to the men’s section.

  “I don’t know what I felt,” said Paan. He was gazing north-ward at the Tower. “Some sort of shift in the energies, like something kicked a hornets’ nest and they all went flying.”

  Zale indicated Nocev’s desiccated remains, with Initiate Sarra kneeling nearby. Even from this far away he saw the glistening orange tears reflecting the sun. She was looking in their direction, for some reason. “That void, empty of energy, followed Nocev when she ran. It never let up.”

  “Gods,” said Cess. “It’s found us. That wasn’t the second cadver attack, that was an assassination.” Four panicked minds ached together, each man’s anxiety feeding on the three others. They’d traveled halfway around the world, but whatever demon had slaughtered those hundreds, back underground in Armer, had found them again. It was the only logical explanation.

  “But how?” said Paan.

  “We worked out at OremWall cluster,” said Cess, “working with Nocev on forages. Soon as we move here, cadvers attack. And now Nocev dies.” He grimaced. “We brought this on her.”

  So much effort to fit in and lie low, and still someone got killed. Zale squeezed his fists tight until he felt his nails digging into his palms. This was on them. They�
�d killed Nocev.

  “We don’t know that,” said Nic. “There could be another reason.”

  “Such as?” Cess hissed, his fingers splaying open, palms up. “She was the person we knew best here! It’s followed us from Polis Armer and loosed arrows at us, but hit Nocev first!”

  “But why her and not us?” said Nic. “We were right next to her. Surely it’s not that hard to come from the other side of the world and shift your attack just another hundred feet to the south?”

  “We don’t know what it’s capable of,” said Cess. “For all we know, it’s aimed that attack all the way from Armer just ten minutes ago, and the next shot will be the one that kills us.”

  Paan’s lips were tight. “What do we do if it comes after us? It might kill everyone in this Wall to get at us. Like in the Immersion Chamber. I’m not living with that on my head. Not again.”

  Zale hadn’t spoken of the trail of suppression energy he’d seen the night of the cadver attack, simply because he hadn’t known what to say. But now was the right moment. “Remember when Sarra broke the cadvers’ camouflage weaves before they attacked? I spotted their suppression energy trail. It ran back toward the border, straight towards the Center.”

  “Yes?” said Cess.

  “It used repeater stones of suppression energy. I can probably track its trail back northeast, and we can find them before they find us.”

  No one objected.

  “It might not be whatever it was in the Immersion Chamber,” said Nic.

  “Whatever it was down there, it came from Polis Sumad to begin with,” said Cess. He took a deep breath. “This won’t end well. If anyone has a better idea, this is exactly the right moment to share it.”

  “This isn’t about ending well,” Zale said. “It’s about bringing a monster down on HopeWall, or taking the fight to whoever did this to us.”

  The shadows had spread through HopeWall as they spoke, sending the temperature plummeting. For the first time, Zale wished for a jacket.

  15

  What’s in there?” said Cess, peering down off the rickety roof at the collection of old houses.