“That's robbery, sir.” Mr. D's wooden enclosure rumbled forward in a threatening manner. A strange glutinous slopping sound came from within. “Do you know who I am?”
Anchor thrust the bottles towards Harper. “Use your mesmerist devices. Find him.”
She sobbed and shook her head weakly. Her gaze moved back and forth between Anchor and the proprietor.
“Do it,” Anchor said.
Harper fumbled in her tool belt. She took out one of those odd silver contraptions, a slender device packed with crystals and covered in etched glyphs. It made a sharp, tinny noise, and then started to whine. The engineer shook her head. “Not those,” she said. “But he's here in this place somewhere.”
“Your husband?”
“Tom. His name's Tom.”
Anchor uncorked one of the bottles and brought it to his lips. A tiny amount of liquid dribbled down his throat…
… and then the memories of the soul contained in that liquid rushed into him.
A stage … Gaslights and applause … Sitting on the edge of a bed watching a dying woman… The smell of sweat, the weight of a man lying on her back… Wheeling downhill on a heavy wooden bicycle …
Mr. D laughed. “Now you've gone and done it. You've just consumed another person's soul.” His box squeaked forward on its wheels. “Your own mind, such as it was, is about to disappear.”
Anchor grunted, and then upended two more bottles. He felt strength pouring into him, even as fresh memories assailed him.
… Alone in a desert watching a campfire … A wailing woman, her face bleeding from his blows… Maggots squirming in the body of a dead dog…
The tethered man threw the empty bottles aside, and grabbed more from the shelves. “What about these?”
Harper scanned them, shook her head.
“He's not changing, Mr. D,” Isla said.
… shooting gulls with arrows… a rowdy tavern… a brother's hug… watching a small boat set out across misty waters…
“I can see that, Isla. Please unlock the Icarate cages.”
“But Mr. D…”
“Do it, child.”
Empty bottles rolled across the floor. Anchor kicked them aside and wrenched open another cabinet. Mr. D's box retreated down the aisle, its little wheels squawking. Isla scampered ahead of it, disappearing through a curtained doorway at the rear of the emporium.
Harper was staring at her device. “He's here, John.”
Anchor was drunk with power and memories that did not belong to him. His thoughts spun.… a pier ablaze … an old man crying … gutting a rabbit… He wheeled around, then staggered over to the cabinet beside Harper and ripped its door clean off its hinges. The Rotsward's rope followed after him, snagged on the doorjamb, and then wrenched it clear off the wall.
Harper withdrew one of the bottles from the cabinet.
Anchor blinked and shook his head. The emporium was spinning around him.… kissing a girl dressed in a steel suit… sex in a moss-green gazebo … a knife clutched in bloody fingers… He grabbed the bottle from Harper, uncorked it, and lifted it to his mouth.
“John!” she cried.
He stopped, with the bottle resting against his lower lip. He could almost taste the first drop of cool liquid.
“Sorry.” He lowered the bottle, and handed it to her.
Harper replaced the cork.
Behind you! Cospinol had remained silent for so long that the god's sudden outburst in Anchor's head startled him. For an instant he thought that the warning had come from one of the souls he'd just consumed, before he recognized Cospinol's deep tone. The madman's loosed his Icarates.
Two of Menoa's hellish priests were shuffling through the curtained doorway at the rear of D's Emporium. They wore queer armour composed of bulbous ceramic plates like pale fungi spattered with darker rot. Green sparks dripped from these protrusions, bursting against the floor around their white boots. Uncertain buzzing sounds issued from their copper mouth grilles. Their black eye lenses were broken, but nevertheless fixed on Anchor.
“He can't be controlling them,” Harper said. “Icarates answer to no one but Menoa.” She backed away, sweeping her scanner across the approaching enemies, and then added, “John, their minds have been replaced. He's implanted new souls within them.”
Anchor stepped in front of her and folded his arms. “Go back,” he said to the Icarates. “I am in no mood to fight more cripples.”
A maniacal laugh came from the other side of the curtain. “No mood to fight? Do you think these souls will parley with you? These creatures have the minds of murderers and rapists, you big dolt—the very worst I've found during all my time in Hell.”
The tethered man grinned. “Now I am in the mood to fight.” He strode forward and grabbed the first Icarate by its neck and groin, hoisted the bulky armoured figure over his head, then turned and threw it out of the emporium window. The glass panes exploded outwards, as did a substantial part of the surrounding brick wall. The Icarate flew far across the cul-de-sac, spraying sparks, and came to a rest in a crumpled heap two hundred yards away.
The second Icarate hesitated.
Anchor seized it by the neck and picked it up with one hand. Its pale gauntlets crackled and fizzed and groped wildly at his arm, but he paid the thing no heed. Still hoisting the Icarate up before him, he ducked through the curtained doorway and stepped into the room beyond.
It was completely dark for a heartbeat, and then a flash of green light illuminated the room.
Mr. D's box stood before a semicircle of at least twenty cages stacked overlapping one another like two rows of bricks. Two of these enclosures had already been opened, and were now empty, but the remainder of them held hunched, bulky forms. Motes of green light burst from extrusions in their warped armour, intermittently dispelling the darkness within this windowless chamber. By this flickering light Anchor saw their copper mouth grilles, crusted with verdigris and red rust, and those dark circles of glass that served them as eyes.
Isla was wrestling with a key, trying to turn it to unlock one of the cage doors.
“Leave that be, lass,” Anchor said.
She glanced uncertainly at the tall box in the center of the room.
“He won't hurt you.”
Isla released the key. Mr. D's box remained completely motionless, its thin mouth slit facing Anchor.
Anchor realized he was still holding the struggling Icarate. He pitched it away, and heard it thump against the rear wall of the room. The priest's armour blossomed with a sudden cascade of green scintillations, before the whole suit dropped from sight behind the cages and went dark.
“What are you?” said Mr. D.
“John Anchor,” the tethered man replied. “I will make you a deal, yes? You give us Miss Harper's husband, and the little girl.” He paused for a moment and then nodded to himself. “So, do you agree?”
“Agree? Agree to what? What do I get out of the deal?”
Anchor frowned. He made a show of examining the room, and then the floorboards. “Ah,” he said at last. He slammed his heel down into one of the boards, shattering it, then picked up a fragment of wood. “You get this piece of wood.”
“Is that supposed to be funny?”
Anchor grinned. “It is my best offer.”
Mr. D snorted. “I don't know what sort of demon you are, but you can't threaten me. The body within this box cannot be harmed. Nor can you make me suffer more than I already do. If you leave, I will pursue you. I will bring Menoa's Iolite spies down upon you. I will—”
Anchor took hold of the box, turned it upside down, and set it back on the floor so that its wheels pointed at the ceiling.
“What?” Mr. D cried. “Turn me the right way up or—”
“John.” Harper was standing over the hole Anchor had just kicked in the floor, scanning it with her Mesmerist device. Her other hand still clutched the bottle to her chest. “I'm picking up the same signal we received in the portal, but it's much stronger
here. We're right above the River of the Failed.”
“The ants' nest?” He peered down through the gap in the floor, but couldn't see anything except darkness. A faint meaty odour filled his nostrils. “Good,” he said. “We can smash our way down. Will you take the girl to her ship, Miss Harper?”
“Can't I come with you?” Isla said.
Harper crouched and hugged her. “It's too dangerous, sweetheart. Come on—” She stood up and took the girl's hand. “Why don't we speak to the other ships? I think there are better places in Hell for you all than this one.”
Isla glanced back at Anchor, who beamed at her. Reluctantly, she stepped over the Rotsward's rope and followed the woman out of the room.
As soon as they'd gone, Anchor said, “That little girl is powerful, eh?”
The great rope trembled at his back. Powerful! Nine Hells, John, that girl had more collected matériel in her vessel than any human ought to. It actually resisted you. I suspect that even Hasp's castle pales in comparison.
Mr. D snorted. “She's powerful because of her proximity to the River of the Failed. Why do you think we're down here? If you want to discuss this properly, please turn me the right way up.”
It makes sense, Cospinol said. Millions of lost souls, all heading for the sewers of Hell, converge here. That sort of power could be trapped and utilized by a strong will. Indeed, desperate souls might find such a will attractive, might latch on to it. That demonic little girl must act like a magnet for them.
“Are you listening to me?” Mr. D sighed, and then made an attempt to sound reasonable. “Listen, I promise not to pursue you if you turn me the right way up.”
What are you going to do about him?
“Nothing,” Anchor replied. “He can rot here.”
“Who are you talking to?” said Mr. D.
“My master,” Anchor said.
“Your master? Where is he? I want to speak to him.”
Anchor grunted. He crouched over the hole in the floor and began to widen it by ripping up more boards. After it was wide enough for him, he stopped and peered down into the darkness. A chill breeze blew up from below. He could not guess how deep the chasm went.
“Anchor?” Mr. D said. “I demand an audience with your master.”
The tethered man sighed and lowered himself into the gaping hole. It was utterly dark down there. He felt a lattice of iron beams around him, jutting from brick facades, but there was enough space to climb down between it all. “An audience?” he called back, flexing his shoulders as he took up the strain of the Rotsward's rope. “It is no problem. Cospinol will be along in a moment.” Then he gripped an iron strut and began to drag himself down into the abyss.
Eventually John Anchor ran out of Maze. The girders and facades he had been using to drag himself down terminated suddenly. He broke through a floor and found nothing below but air. So he pulled in a mile or so of slack rope, and then jumped.
He fell for a long moment and landed in at least four feet of thick, cloying liquid. His head went under and then he came up again, spitting and gagging. He wiped his eyes, but could see nothing but a red blur. The stink of fouled meat filled his mouth and nostrils, and he spat repeatedly to try to remove it. The floor underneath the waters felt as smooth as skin. He heard echoes of his own coughs and gasps, the slosh and gurgle of fluid.
When he stood up again, the liquid flowed sluggishly around his belly and seemed to tug him in several directions at once. He rubbed sticky fluid away from his eyes, and then blinked them open.
He was in a space without walls, an immense gap underneath the twisted iron and redbrick roots of Hell. The base of the Maze formed an impossible ceiling overhead. Without any obvious means of support, the leagues of cluttered stonework and metal filled the heavens like a massive bank of thunderclouds. Rays of light fell from countless windows in the dwellings overhead, dappling the surrounding landscape.
The ground beneath was uneven and treacherous. Narrow channels of crimson water looped and spiraled and twisted back on themselves in an endless scrawl. Ribs of raised fleshy material separated the waterways, and in the patchy gloom, the swamp seemed to stretch to eternity. From all around came the constant sound of dripping, as the blood trickling down through Hell reached this open space and fell like rain.
A beam of harsher light flashed across the waters just to the left, revealing their dark, bloody colour, before vanishing once more. An instant later the same light reappeared overhead as Harper climbed down the Rotsward's rope. She was lowering herself down through a rift in the ceiling, and a wandlike crystal device gripped between her teeth proved to be the source of illumination. She stopped, dangling a few feet below the ceiling, and then shone the wand around her.
The Icarate cages had fallen nearby, and most of the twenty enclosures had toppled over and now lay on their sides, partially submerged, while four still stood upright on the raised banks. Long shadows reached out from the bars as Harper swung the light across them.
Every one of the cages was empty.
Anchor looked around for Mr. D. The proprietor had probably fallen somewhere nearby. After all, most of his collapsed emporium lay scattered around here. Cabinets and bottles bobbed in the red waters. A moment later, a smile came to his lips as he spotted Mr. D's strange wheeled box rolling across one of the raised banks, heading away into the darkness.
The metaphysical engineer swept her beam beyond the cages. The circle of light caught flashes like sparkling rubies, illuminated pockets of rippling water, and veins throbbing within a low, muscular bank. Falling droplets flashed in the gloom. And then the beam settled somewhere behind Anchor.
Harper let out a startled gasp. “John,” she said quietly, “we've found our ants' nest.”
Anchor turned to look.
They were standing in the water. Wet red figures like rude sculptures of men had risen up from the shallow depths and now stood motionless and glistening under the glare of Harper's wand. Anchor estimated there to be a hundred or more of them. He couldn't detect any eyes in those faces, but he noticed mouths and teeth.
Harper called down, “The waters are sentient. These creatures are not individual souls. They're extensions of the river itself, parts of the god of the Failed.”
Anchor faced the figures. “Hello.”
The figures spoke together in one fluid whisper. “Are you an Icarate?” Echoes hissed through the conduit like a breeze, so that it seemed like the air itself had spoken.
“Do I look like one?” Anchor replied.
They hesitated. “What do you want here?”
The rope at Anchor's back thrummed, and his master's voice sounded in his head:
Don't mention Menoa, Cospinol warned. This is treacherous ground. Ask it to grant us passage under Hell to the Ninth Citadel. We're seeking the source of the Icarate infestation.
Anchor relayed his master's words.
The figures were silent for a while. Finally they said, “You bring me food.”
Anchor frowned. He couldn't be sure if this was a question or a statement—or what it referred to.
“I think it means the gallowsmen,” Harper said. “If it can sense all the souls aboard the Rotsward, it would certainly regard them as sustenance, a veritable feast.” She untangled her legs from around the rope and slid further down. A foot from the surface of the water she hesitated and tightened her grip on the soul bottle clamped to her breast. Then she let go, plunging into the river up to her chest.
She faced the big man, her expression full of awe. “A river of disassociated dead,” she muttered. “John, this is vaster than I ever imagined. It could become anything.”
She cupped a hand in the water, raised it to her lips, and took a sip.
Anchor grimaced at the sight.
Cospinol spoke through the rope: It can have the damned gallowsmen if it lets us pass. Tell it we want an alliance. Tell it we're its friend. It ate those bloody Icarates we brought down with us, for god's sake. We need to spend tim
e with it, and talk to it.
Anchor relayed the message.
The figures waited for another long moment. Finally they said, all together, “Follow me.”
The tethered man watched as, one by one, those glutinous figures slowly sank back into the River of the Failed. “Follow you where?” he inquired, but in that vast darkness only the echo of his own voice answered.
But then the currents eddying around him shifted and strengthened in one mighty surge. The channel in which he stood began to flow purposefully in the opposite direction.
Harper stumbled, but Anchor grabbed her and held her firm. She clutched the bottle and light wand to her chest as the crimson waters bubbled and frothed around her shoulders.
Carried by this new force, the empty Icarate cages slid away into darkness.
Anchor pulled the engineer close to him. “Don't lose your bottle,” he said.
She laughed. “Was that supposed to be a joke?”
He frowned. “The water is very high. Your bottle might go whoosh”—he made a sweeping gesture with his hand—“and then you will lose your husband's soul.”
“Never mind,” she said.
Anchor began to heave the Rotsward's rope down towards the hungry river. “These gallowsmen aren't going to like this,” he said. “Nobody likes to be eaten. I know this from experience.”
But Harper wasn't listening to him. She was hugging her bottle and crying.
They waited in that same cramped crawl space above the boiling room for hours, until the slaves finally finished their shift at Carnival's brazier, only to watch in frustration as four more slaves appeared to take their comrades' places.
Monk crawled away from the hole and then dragged the boy close to him so that he could whisper in his ear. “Gods damned waste of time,” he said. “Why didn't you tell me they never leave her alone?”
“I did,” muttered the boy. He thought it rather unfair that Monk was putting the blame on him. The whole thing was the old man's idea in the first place.
The astronomer stretched out his legs and winced. “You'd think they'd be too busy smashing up Hell to stay at their brazier.” He drew a hand across his stubbled jaw. “What we need,” he decided, “is some sort of diversion.”
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