The Cloven Land Trilogy

by Simon Kewin

  “What do the letters say?” asked Fer.

  “It's not in English,” said Catherine. “Could have come from anywhere.”

  The back of the container was taken up by a tall set of double doors, an arrangement of metal levers and poles keeping them securely fastened. There were keyholes built into the contraption.

  “Why do they need locks if they're only carrying bones?” asked Fer.

  “To keep people out,” said Catherine. “There's been a lot of trouble with folks hiding themselves inside these containers, or even underneath by the wheels.”

  The thought of clinging next to those thundering wheels, the road only inches away, filled her with horror. “Why would anyone do such a thing?”

  “Desperation. Hope. Because the alternative of staying where they are is even worse.”

  Fer tried and failed to understand. She placed a hand on the lever at the back of the container and rattled it, hoping it might have been left open. It was securely locked.

  “I'll work some rust into it,” said Fer. “If I can weaken it we might be able to break it open.”

  Catherine nodded. “I'll keep watch. The driver could come back at any moment.”

  Between them, Bethany and Fer set to work on the locks, pulling moisture from the air and working it into the complicated mechanism, trying to speed up the natural rusting process just as she'd done on her escape from the library on the first day. The trick was to find existing flaws in the metal and widen them. If they could weaken the lock sufficiently, brute strength might finish the job.

  They'd picked their container wisely: this one was old and everything was half-corroded. Still, after all that had happened, Fer had little strength left. Gritting her teeth she worked away at it, stitches pinching cruelly at her sides.

  She nearly had it when Catherine placed a hand on her shoulder. “Someone is coming. We have to hide.”

  “I'm nearly there. A couple more moments.”

  “No,” said Catherine. “We can't risk it. The drivers always check round their vehicles before setting off. If they see us they'll raise the alarm.”

  Fer and Catherine retreated into deeper shadows behind another vehicle as heavy footsteps approached. Twenty yards away, the Lizard King turned off the engine of the car. Fer expected to see some armoured Genera guard, some misshapen undain demon, but instead a drab, gloomy-looking man appeared, his gaze cast to the ground, shoulders hunched. He appeared to have no idea Fer and Catherine were there. He walked right past them, a cloud of smoke from his cigarette filling the air with its acrid smell and nearly making Fer cough.

  The driver climbed into the next lorry. In a few moments its engine roared into life and the vehicle rumbled away in a cloud of greasy smoke.

  A few minutes more working away at the lock, and Fer felt something give within the little mechanism, some shard of metal fracturing. There would be no way of fixing it afterward; they just had to hope people would think the lock had simply worn out.

  Grasping hold of the lever Fer yanked it with all her strength. The mechanism held, but gave a little more than it had. Catherine lent her strength to the effort. With a clunk, the sound loud enough to echo off the surrounding lorries, the lock gave way. The steel shaft securing the doors slid out of its brackets.

  The hinges of the container squealed as Fer pulled open the door. Perhaps she imagined it, but a sighing sound seemed to breathe from the lorry into the night air. She lit a faint werelight to illuminate the interior. They had chosen well; the container was definitely destined for the refinery. Inside, piled up to the roof, held in place by a fine rope mesh, the lorry was full of jumbled bones.

  “So many of them,” said Fer. She wondered who they were, what had happened to them.

  “No time for that now,” said Catherine. “Let's add ours to the pile.”

  Fer undid the little bundle of remains she carried. She wanted to place each carefully, reverentially, into the lorry, but a knocking from the Lizard King warned them someone else was approaching. The car engine started up. With trembling fingers, Fer tipped the bones through the mesh to join the others. Hopefully no one would notice a few sepia-coloured fragments amid all that gleaming white.

  When they had the door shut and secured, everything looked just as it had. Fer hoped no one tried the handle and found the lock broken. Or that it didn't work loose on the road.

  They climbed back into the warm, soft interior of the waiting car, and the Lizard King moved slowly away, trying not to look as if they were in any kind of hurry. Twenty yards away, a laughing group of three men were approaching, each of them jangling bunches of keys as they returned to their lorries. The Lizard King stopped the car a short distance away so they could watch. One of the men climbed into the lorry they'd opened, after only the briefest glance around and beneath the vehicle. Fortunately he didn't test the handles on the doors. In a few moments, the lorry was edging its way onto the motorway.

  Keeping a safe distance, the Lizard King followed. Another police car, blue lights spinning, sped down the opposite carriageway but didn't slow.

  Half an hour later, the dazzling constellation of lights from Leviathan Refinery lit up the windscreen of the car. In the darkness she couldn't see how brutal, how ugly the place was. In the daylight it resembled some vast metal beast stripped of its skin, its bones and veins exposed for everyone to see. The Lizard King parked as near to the gates as he dared so they could watch their lorry. It had joined a queue of five or six, waiting in turn to be admitted through the gates. The high fences were just as Fer remembered them, but there looked to be more guards on patrol inside, many holding large dogs on short, straining leashes. Somehow, as well as the bones, she had to get inside. It would be harder this time. Perhaps it would be impossible.

  Their lorry rumbled forward to the front of the line, a guard holding up a hand to stop it. The driver handed down papers while other guards examined the vehicle, looking beneath it with angled mirrors on sticks. Fer held her breath as one of them walked behind the lorry. If he tried the doors he would surely see they'd been opened, and then the lorry might not be admitted.

  Urgently, she reached into the guard's mind. Fortunately he was human, not one of the undain. Checking an endless line of lorries had to be a tedious job, and the guard's boredom made the intrusion easier. As subtly as she could manage she gave him the idea that he had already checked the doors, that the locks were secure.

  The guard gripped the handle, paused … then took his hand away. Turning, he ambled to the front of the lorry and waved it through the gates.

  Fer let out a breath of relief. The bones of the dead of Manchester were inside the refinery.

  They waited for an hour, and then two, for something to happen. Fer tried to peer inside with her mind's eye, find out if anything was happening, but it proved impossible. Walls of fog blocked her. On their last visit they'd managed to puncture them, she and Catherine and Fiona working together, but now the defences were stronger. Once, watching from the car with her window lowered, she thought she heard a rushing, whispering sound in the air, blowing from the east, the direction of the city they'd left. Perhaps it was just the wind. Perhaps she'd imagined it. She sat there blind, powerless, waiting, while the flaring flames and sparkling lights of the vast building stretched out before her, and the deep roar of its unceasing machinery rumbled through the ground.

  “Have you found a way for us to get inside yet?” she asked the bookwyrm for the second or third time. The Lizard King's phone was cradled on the car's dashboard. The creature didn't deign to reply for several moments before the screen lit up and the brightly-coloured image of the dragon appeared. It lay apparently slumbering on the ground but managed to summon the strength to open one bored eye.

  “It is impossible, even for me. They have everything locked down.”

  “I thought you said you had copies of yourself in there, within their machines?”

  “I did say that, yes. And possibly I still do have, but a
s I also explained I am unable to communicate with them. Either they're cut off or they've been deleted. If you get inside you might find there are versions of me that could help you, but I simply don't know.”

  “Can you tell us anything about what's going on in there? Have the spirits arrived? Are they attacking?”

  “I have no idea, little witch. As I also told you, Genera have cut themselves off completely from the public network.”

  “Are they getting any closer to finding us yet?”

  “All is quiet on that front at least. I've stopped sending them any images, fake or real. Hopefully they're in the dark as to your real location.”

  “Perhaps we should have climbed into the back of that lorry ourselves,” said the Lizard King. “Then we'd have got inside.”

  “Except we'd be trapped,” said Catherine. “Most likely we'd have been shipped through to the White City without being able to do anything.”

  “We have to do something,” said Fer. “Whether or not the spirits have attacked, we have to do what we can to sever the flow of Spirit. How does it even get into the refinery?”

  “Pipelines buried deep beneath the ground,” said the Lizard King. “I catch glimpses of the spirits trapped within from time to time. There's no way to get to them I can see.”

  Another lorry trundled up to join the back of the queue. There were perhaps twenty of them waiting now, smoke billowing from each into the freezing night air.

  “If we bewitch one of the drivers, put them to sleep, we could take their place,” said Fer.

  “The guards check the ID of the drivers,” said the Lizard King. “They'd see I didn't match.”

  “So we get into the guard's heads, make them see what we want.”

  “It's a risk.”

  “Yes,” said Fer, “but we're taking a risk sitting here in the open. We're taking a risk doing nothing. Cait needs us. Andar needs us.”

  Catherine sighed. “You're right. It's probably not going to work but there's no other way. The lost spirits from Manchester never came, or they've been contained or destroyed. I think we're on our own.”

  After a moment, the Lizard King turned the key to make the car shiver into life. “I'll park the car so we can approach on foot.”

  “You don't have to come with us,” said Fer. “You can just drive away.”

  The Lizard King smiled, although he looked sad at the same time. “I really don't think I can.”

  “You won't be able to do much in there.”

  “Perhaps not. Do you think you will?”

  He had a fair point. “No, possibly not,” said Fer.

  “We'll all try and get inside,” said Catherine. “Perhaps one of us will be able to do something to the pipeline.”

  But as they stepped from the car into the cold night air, a siren began to wail from the refinery. Another and then a third followed it, the sounds angry and mournful at the same time. Fer felt a great thump in the ground as if something had exploded. The flames that burned constantly from the chimneys cut out for a moment, then burst into life, angrier and more intense. Red lights flashed on and off inside the buildings, and bells rang.

  Cries came from the gatehouse as someone shouted urgent instructions. The lorry entering was being waved backward as the guards tried to close the barriers, seal off the refinery, but the vehicle was half-way through and the one behind had already pulled forward. Guards and drivers shouted and gesticulated angrily as they attempted to move the logjam. One guard ran down the line of lorries, his gun emphasising his point as he waved the vehicles back. For a moment, all was shouting and confusion.

  The spirits had attacked.

  “Come on,” said Fer. “Let's run inside now. We can dodge between the lorries. They might not notice us.”

  Catherine looked doubtful, but after a moment's thought she nodded. The three of them clung to the shadows, ducking behind each of the lorries in line. One driver shouted at them from her cab, banging on the window and hurling angry words that Fer couldn't understand. Fer, with no time to think, terrified one of the guards would come running, threw an incantation at the driver, stunning her into an open-eyed slumber. It was a spell she'd worked many times to help take away the pain of someone's suffering.

  The lorries at the front of the queue were angling backward and forward, attempting to manoeuvre out of the way as the guards, wielding guns, waved and pointed. The high mesh gates were half-closed, but the front lorry was still in the way.

  For a moment it was wedged in place, unable to move in either direction. Fer threw herself to the ground. She'd be seen if she tried to creep alongside the container, but if she crawled underneath she had a chance. If the lorry started moving the wheels could crush her. She just had to hope she could get through before that happened.

  She crawled. The vehicle's engine roared above her head, a long shaft of metal connecting the engine to the wheels spinning rapidly. She coughed on the fumes, but it didn't matter now. She turned to see if the others were following.

  The Lizard King was crouching, getting ready to follow her. Fer didn't see where the shot came from. The wise man was hurled backward, blood blossoming on his shoulder where he'd been hit. His agonized cries were one more note added to the cacophony of sirens and shouts and thundering engines.

  Fer began to crawl back to help him, but then Catherine's face was there, peering beneath the lorry. She shouted. “No. You go on, I'll see to him.”

  Fer hesitated for a moment, caught, then relented. She would only get herself captured. Turning from Catherine, she wormed her way to the front of the lorry as it juddered into life. Glancing back, she saw that Catherine was kneeling beside the prone Lizard King. Surrounding them stood a copse of legs, the guards' guns pointing down.

  Fer took her chance. Not looking, not attempting to conceal herself, she scrambled up from the front of the lorry and, alone, raced for the interior of the refinery.

  17. Unquiet Spirits

  Fer raced for the cover of the nearest building. Cries and the clatter of running footsteps filled the air, but no one came for her and, so far as she could tell, no one shot at her. That was good.

  She paused in the shadows of the nearest building. She could feel the humming buzz of the walls against her back as her gaze darted around. Now that she was inside the perimeter of the refinery her senses were returning. The aether raged with the anger of the dead spirits that had been anchored to those few, broken bones. And it wasn't just them; other spirits were answering the call. Many must have died in the construction of the refinery, crushed beneath falling walls or mangled in the machinery. Lost spirits left to wander alone and confused. These, too, joined in to strike back at their hated masters.

  And there were others – those contained within the pipes that Genera used to suck Spirit from across the world to send through the portal to Angere. Some clever devilry stopped the spirits from escaping, but they felt some echo of what was occurring, and they screamed and raged to be set free from their confinement.

  That was what Fer had to try and do. There was already fighting taking place within the buildings; screams filled the air as well as the more distant calls in the aether. Cait had described the spirits attacking the living, and it seemed they could affect more solid things when they were roused: machinery and walls. But so far the pipeway appeared to be intact.

  A door opened nearby and two armed Genera soldiers raced out, guns held forward as they sprinted for the perimeter. Fer took her chance. She slipped inside, erecting a hurried glamour about her face and body so that she appeared something like those armed guards to the briefest of glances. It might help a little.

  She found herself in a brightly-lit corridor, the white lights complimented by spinning red bulbs along the ceiling. Growing up, she'd preferred shadows and half-light to the glare of the sun. She was one for cobwebby corners and the shade of the deep woods, preferred to wander in the dusk or the hush of a moonlit night. There was too much light in this world; it sometimes s
eemed like they wanted to banish the night completely. It was a sickness. Now, caught in the unremitting glare of the refinery, lost and alone, she longed more than ever to be wandering in the dappled woods of Andar, to dip her hand into the cool waters of some unnamed brook.

  She hurried on. This was no time for feeling sorry for herself.

  She rounded a corner and ran straight into another of the guards. With their bulky armour and the shaded mask of the helmet over their eyes, it was impossible to tell if they were human or some twisted undain monster. Could they even see her through their tinted screen, or were they seeing some machine-generated version of reality? Fer stepped backward, knowing this could be the end. When the alarm was raised she would have no chance of fighting them all.

  The guard grabbed Fer by the arm and shouted something. A woman's voice, muffled. The guard gesticulated down the corridor. Fer, not understanding, said nothing, tried to pull away. Another soldier brushed past, paying them no attention. The guard holding Fer repeated her words and Fer nodded, as if agreeing to the instructions. Incredibly, the guard let go of her and raced off, too preoccupied with the attack to see through Fer's illusion.

  Fer raced down the corridor in the direction she'd been told to go. There had to be a reason she'd been ordered in that direction. She passed a doorway through which she could see a room full of twisting pipes and ducts, some of them feeding into shining machinery the function of which she couldn't begin to guess. There were soldiers in there, besieged by swirling ghosts, more than one of them firing their weaponry uselessly into the air. One of the machines, struck by bullets, began to smoke and flame. Fer ducked under the windows and hurried on.

  At the end of the corridor a tall set of double doors blocked her way, no handle upon them, no obvious way to open them at all. If she couldn't get through she'd have to backtrack round the building and try another entrance. There were words painted onto the door, words she couldn't read, but no doubt they were telling her she couldn't enter, that she wasn't authorized. Could she work some magic, break these locks, batter down the doors by whipping up a gale? Somehow she doubted it.