by Mary Gentle
"Lords, I came here because of a prophecy! It was foretold to me: ‘Your sister will travel on the Boat.’ I didn’t want her to die and so I came to give what help I could. But I see she will travel on the Boat, and living!"
"Act thwiftly; your time ith almotht patht."
The Katayan woman’s eyes glowed. She laughed; a gamine-grin very like her younger sister’s. "Don’t fear. I can guide the Boat back to the world above. Zar’!"
Zar-bettu-zekigal padded down the slope to the edge of the sea. She slipped her boots off and slung them around her neck by the laces, wading out into black water icy about her ankles, her calves. She refused to look at what floated near her.
"The Boat?"
She reached out tentative fingers, laying them against the tarred wood of the hull. Elish braced a foot on the far side and reached down, grabbing her, pulling her up. She staggered and sat on the rocking deck, and felt her shoulders taken in a tight grip; Elish’s blue eyes fixed on her face.
"You must jump ship the instant we get back. Once we’re in the world above, none but the . . . dead . . . sail this Boat . . ."
"The dead." Zar-bettu-zekigal gripped her sister’s wrist. "See you, what you told me: Lady Luka, people’s souls–what’s happening to what she’s doing if the Boat isn’t there!"
Elish-hakku-zekigal looked down, blue eyes suddenly vague.
"Who is Luka?"
Nightmares knocked softly against the hull. Zar-bettu- zekigal felt the tarred planks rock under her. The Boat drifted. Fog shut out the skull beach now, the vanished thrones of the Serpent-headed; fog hid the islands of splintered rock and flesh.
Droplets of mist dampened her face, clung to her lashes. She shook her head sharply. "Elish!"
The black-haired Katayan woman swayed as she stood on the deck of the Boat. Water pearled on her blue silk coat, her lace ruffle. Her left hand, up-raised in a shaman’s gesture of power, hovered forgotten. She stared at Zar-bettu-zekigal.
"Who are you?"
"I’d be obliged if you’d stop scaring the first-year students," Reverend Master Pharamond said. "We set the exam up to keep them out of harm’s way while all this is going on."
Lucas gulped air, injected authority into his voice. "A message for the university. Urgent."
A Proctor swung the heavy wooden door of the hall to, cutting off Lucas’s view of the students at their desks; Rafi of Adocentyn half on his feet. The door muffled their rising voices.
"You’d better come with me, Prince," Pharamond said.
Lucas let the small man steer him away from the hall door and down the sun-darkened corridor. The smell of wax polish and paper strong in his nostrils, he was abruptly aware of his clattering scabbard, torn breeches and shirtless state.
He reached up slowly, tugging the red kerchief from his head and undoing its knot. It smelt of sweat, of fear, of air made electric by the advent of the Night Sun.
"A message for the students and Board of Governors, from an Archemaster."
Pharamond scratched his clipped beard with long strong fingers. A short sturdy man, he looked up at Lucas as he walked a half-pace ahead.
"Mmm. Thought as much. We’re in emergency session; I can take you straight along with me. Assuming that there’s some substance to this message, Prince?"
Lucas smiled crookedly. "I’m the errand-boy, Reverend Master. But I can tell you what’s going on out in the city now."
"Oh, we know all about that. We’ve been subjecting it to some intensive research over the last month. I believe events are occurring much in the order that we predicted."
Pharamond turned on his heel, boot squeaking on the polished boards, and threw open one of the carved wooden doors. He said over his shoulder, entering the large staff-room: "But we can always use your help, boy. We need every hand here."
An array of candles shivered in the door’s draught. Dozens of them: jammed in pots and on bookshelves, on perpendicular-window ledges, wax-glued on the edges of tables and the backs of carved chairs. Fierce amber illumination banished the light shadows and the darkness of the sun. Two dozen faces glanced up as Pharamond entered.
"What’s the news?" a freckled woman called from the table.
"All as predicted. We don’t have much time." Pharamond bustled across to where four long polished tables had been set together and whole geological strata of city maps unrolled across them. Gold-headed map-pins impaled the papers at intervals.
Lucas followed, automatically nodding respectful greetings, caught between being a first-year student and Lucas of Candover; all the while staring at the paneled walls, whose painted crests had diagrams pinned up over them; at scattered paints and quills, and bookshelves in complete disarray.
"Has Candia showed up?" a dark-skinned man asked, as Pharamond arrived at the table around which the group sat.
Pharamond stepped back, avoiding an elderly woman who pounced on the bookshelves and seized a scroll. "I don’t foresee that happening, Shamar."
The scent of hot candlewax drenched the room. Two dozen men and women, their ages between thirty and sixty, crowded the map table. University gowns abandoned, flung down in disorder over the room’s chairs and sofas, they worked mostly in shirt-sleeves and light cotton dresses.
Lucas stepped back as another woman left the table to grab a volume from the shelves and riffle through it rapidly. The dark man, Reverend Master Shamar, leaned across to stick a pin in a particular house or street.
"Nor Heurodis?" an old woman asked.
Lucas saw Pharamond smile, rubbing his long fingers together. "I suspect she’s out playing dice somewhere."
"Dice?" His question came out involuntarily.
"Or cards." Pharamond folded his hands behind his back, leaning over the map-table. "Prince Lucas, I suggest you read the message to us here. We have a full session. It can be debated."
Lucas felt in his breeches pocket for the folded paper. The gold pin pricked his thumb. Movement flickered beyond the distorting glass of the Gothic windows. In the dark sky whirled a multitude of specks. Birds? The Fane’s acolytes? Both? He turned his back on the windows, unfolding the paper and holding it up to the light of a candle.
" ‘Beneath Ninth Bank House, Moon Lane. Also beneath: The Clock & Candle at Brown Park. High Skidhill. North-aust side of Avenue Berenger. The Chapel of the Order of Fleurimond. Tannery Row. The Campanile at Saffron Dock. These being respectively in the 9th, 18th, 1st, 31st, 5th, 12th and 27th Districts. ’ "
Lucas paused for breath, glanced up to see heads bent over the map-table, the men and women of the university muttering in suppressed excitement.
"Go on," Pharamond said. "Is there more?"
"Yes." Lucas raised the paper again to the light, following the florid hasty script. "He says: ‘From Baltazar Casaubon, Archemaster, Scholar-Soldier of the Invisible College.’ "
Pharamond grunted, black brows rising. "A respectable Archemaster mixed up with those vagabonds?"
"My dear Pharamond, that was discredited years ago. A completely fictitious organization. You’ll recall Dollimore’s excellent article in Mage and Magia. However . . ." The elderly woman who had asked about Heurodis rested her chins on her hand, staring down at the map-table. She pointed with a plump finger. "This person has named all seven locations of the necromantic magia, and in two cases more accurately than we could. I believe we should listen to what else he has to tell us."
"You know about the necromancy?" Lucas blurted.
Shamar glanced up, remarked, "Discovered and monitored this past two weeks," and went back to rustling the maps, dragging out a second set from under the first.
"It’s come at just the wrong time. First term’s always a bitch." The freckled Reverend Mistress at the far end of the table looked up, her dark eyes meeting Lucas’s. "Your own attendance-record’s pretty bad, Prince Candover."
"Regis, this isn’t the time for that!" Pharamond tugged at his black beard, made to lean down the length of the table, and had to move around to
the side to stretch across and grab a chart. He reached back without looking, snapped his fingers, and took the golden pin that the elderly woman handed him.
"Archeius-arcanum-elementum-hal-hadid-aurum-neboch!"
His beard jutted as he raised his chin, gabbling through the incantation. Lucas saw him pass the pin through the nearest candle-flame and stab it into the map-paper.
A tall man on the far side of the table hitched himself up, looked, frowned, then nodded. "That should hold it for now."
"If we’d known the university was investigating . . ." Lucas scratched through the hair of his bare chest, gazing at the room from under dark meeting brows. His loosely buckled belt and stolen sword jingled as he shifted position, shoulders straightening. "We might need what you know!"
"Candover couldn’t afford us." The dark man, Shamar, made a small gesture at the paper in Lucas’s hand. "Well? Read the rest of the message, lad."
" ‘We . . .’ " The image in his head not Candover, the White Mountain, Gerima or any other, but red hair streaked with silver, and narrow shoulders in a white cotton shirt. He squinted at the Lord-Architect’s scrawling hand:
" ‘From B. Casaubon, Etc., to the Reverend tutors:
" ‘What I do now with the Archemaster’s Art is against immediate danger. Time leaves me time for nothing else, until that’s done. You are not above this battle, masters. Therefore this appeal to you. ’ "
Pharamond snorted. The freckled Reverend Mistress held a map of Nineteenth District up to the darkness of the windows, impaling a point with a silver pin.
" ‘You will realize, or I am mistaken in your Arts, how one single cause brings about epidemic in the city, powerlessness in the Fane, and the demonium meridanium, the Night Sun. Therefore this appeal. . .’ "
Lucas read with difficulty, hearing his own voice falling flat into the air.
" ‘Masters, you are students of knowledge and wisdom. I put this to you plainly therefore.
" ‘It hath oft been writ, nothing can be done in magia without knowledge of that branch of Mathematics which is mystical and spiritual, that is, Mathesis.’ "
Lucas held the paper up, letting his gaze sneak past it. Heads around the table lifted, paying attention.
" ‘To wit, Pico della Mirandola his eleventh conclusion: "By numbers, a way is had, to the searching out, and understanding of everything able to be known. " ’ "
"A mathematical analysis is the basis of a sound understanding, very true." The dark Reverend Master Shamar nodded thoughtfully, resting his chin on his hand, his gaze still on the piled maps. "A man of learning, your Archemaster."
"Not to say craft." Lucas lowered his gaze and hastily read on:
" ‘And to our immediate crisis this:
" ‘Doctor Johannes Dee his Book, writes how the gods, through their divine Numbering, produce orderly and distinct all things. For Their Numbering, then, was their Creating of all things. And Their continual numbering, of all things, is the conservation of them in being. And, where and when They shall lack an unit, there and then, that particular thing shall be Discreated. ’ "
"We’re already facing a consensus reality breakdown." Pharamond stroked his beard. "What would he have us do–pray to the gods to keep numbering the formulae of our existence?"
‘It hath oft been writ, nothing can be done in magia without knowledge of that branch of Mathematics which is mystical and spiritual, that is, Mathesis.’ Title page of Monas Hieroglyphica, John Dee, Antwerp, 1564
"Don’t be ingenuous." Regis snapped her fingers impatiently. "What does your Archemaster say? What does he want us to do?"
Lucas cleared his throat and read into the attentive silence:
" ‘You have amongst you natural philosophers, professors of Mathesis, physicists. You must set about numbering the formulae of the world; add your support to Those Who number All, in this hour when They begin to fail us.
" ‘Do this. Hold fast to the measurements and proportion of macrocosm and microcosm, as they become discreated–as it is the law that spatial, temporal, diurnal things be discreated when They cease to hold them in existence.
" ‘Break that law, masters.
" ‘Not merely the criminal law, but the laws of nature. Cheat physics, matter, energy, and form. Break the laws of Mathesis. No hope to counteract the equal and opposite reaction to the use of true necromancy now, no hope– but this.’ "
All through the vast network under the heart of the world, lanterns and candles bob circles of light on brickwork. Rats and humans crowd the platforms and the train-tunnels where niter spiders across curved walls.
Here and there, they fight.
Refugees: some sleep in an exhausted daze; some stare into nothing; some calm their children; some cry themselves into hysteria.
Even in the train-tunnels it is possible to hear the crashing collapse of buildings in the city above.
Refugees.
A female Rat in a torn scarlet jacket, the priest Fleury, crouches with her hand to the cinder-floor of a tunnel. Far, far below the heart of the world. Below (although she has lost all direction) Ninth Bank House, Moon Lane. Through long dark fingers resting on the earth, she senses something.
Silver gleams.
A substanceless petal brushes her snout, and she springs up, hand going to the ankh at her throat. Black petals drift down from the tunnel ceiling. Voices behind her shriek.
Now even an untrained priest can tell that necromantic magia flowers beneath the city. Growing, still. Growing into its full power. Transmuted from its first design and purpose until, now, it is nothing its creator would recognize.
Black and silver, unbearably sweet: the haunting of roses throws out tendril and bramble and runner, choking the tunnel ahead, spreading rapidly towards her.
She has no desire to begin a panic stampede in the crowded tunnel.
Not until she sees the tide of nightmare flooding up in the wake of the haunting does Fleury break, scream and run.
Ribbed wings curdled the sky. Dust puffed out from between the masonry blocks of the wall. Desaguliers shouted a warning and leaped.
The wall of the palace’s aust wing slid out, almost slowly, gathered momentum and collapsed into the courtyard with a roar and a whirlwind of dust. Flying glass and splintered beams battered the side of the commandeered siege-engine.
"Fire!" Desaguliers clawed his way back along the platform to the Cadets loading the ballista. One tripped the lever as he got there. The catapult shot up, slammed against the upper beam and halted, the machine quivering.
A scoop of Greek fire sprayed skyward, lashing the bodies of the swarming acolytes. The burning gelatine clung.
"It’s not affecting them! They don’t even feel it!"
Desaguliers slid into cover beside St. Cyr at the back of the machine. Masonry dust drifted by, shadowing them with light. Screams echoed from Rats trapped in the collapsed building. St. Cyr pointed.
"The Chapel! It’s their next target."
Black wings beat, falling from the sky. One acolyte gripped the roof with claws that sank into the blue tiles, bristle-tail whipping up to curve about a spire. Down, down: ten, fifteen, twenty of the Fane’s acolytes covered the roof and walls, digging in with their fangs and clawed feet and the claws at their ribbed wing-joints.
Desaguliers touched his hand to his lean snout, brought it away bloody. His other hand ached. Dully surprised, he realized it gripped the stump of a sword. He prised his fingers open and let it fall, reaching across the slumped body of a brown Rat to take her rapier. He shoved a fallen pistol through his belt.
"Try to shift them from there?"
"We’ve taken thirty per cent losses, at least." St. Cyr flinched as the siege-engine shook, another bolt of fire catapulted skyward. "We can’t do anything else. Retreat, for gods’ sakes."
Desaguliers stared out across the great courtyard. The Night Sun glinted from shards of glass, from buckles and rings on fallen bodies. At least a dozen Cadets lay in plain view: most de
ad, one moving still, another screeching. The gutted palace cast shadows of light across split-open halls and chambers and kitchens.
Black shadows fell only from the daemons, shrinking as they soared, growing immense as they struck.
Over the crackling of fire and screams of the injured, he heard a roar. The roof of the chapel fell in, rafters jutting up like broken ribs. A scarlet-jacketed priest ran outside, his black fur burning. An acolyte swooped, beak dipping. Across the intervening yards Desaguliers clearly heard the snap of the priest’s spine.
"Down into the lower tunnels?" Tired, he heard a question in his voice that a while ago would have been an order. "St. Cyr?"
"We can defend the train-tunnels. They’d be at a disadvantage if they followed."
He looked at the other black Rat, smiling wearily.
"Give the orders, then. Retreat. Take whoever you can with you, civilian or military. Close the tunnels after you."
Desaguliers knelt up, one hand on the hot metal of the engine-platform.
" ‘You?’ " St. Cyr demanded.
Desaguliers rubbed his eyes, wincing at sandpaper vision. Burned patches charred his fur; a lean black Rat, febrile, running on nervous courage and little else. One shoulder lifted in a shrug, and he winced as his sword- harness chafed a patch of raw flesh.
"I’m taking a squad of the Cadets." He jerked his head towards the last unfallen roofs of the palace, the shattered windows of the cloverleaf-vaulted audience hall. "His Majesty. They can’t be moved, not now. But defended–possibly. "
"No!"
"No, I know," Desaguliers said softly, "but loyalty’s a hard habit to break. In the end."
Before St. Cyr could protest again he leaped from the metal ladder to the ground, running at full tilt across the wreckage-strewn courtyard, yelling hoarsely to the Cadets as he ran.