Circus of Marvels

by Justin Fisher

  “Wow,” said Lucy eventually. “This is so …”

  “Weird?” offered Ned.

  “No, it’s beautiful.”

  Finally at the bottom, they came to the entrance of the main chamber. As they walked through the doorway, they stared around in awe. The sheer size of the space was breathtaking. The vast cavern’s ceiling, that had been carved to a perfectly smooth cone, rose miles up into the mountain, ending what must be somewhere near its peak. Towards the top, Ned saw actual clouds hanging in the air.

  “The whole mountain, it’s … hollow,” he said.

  Calling it a cavern did not even begin to express its size. It seemed the First Ones had somehow managed to excavate an entire subterranean city within Annapurna itself. It was so large that it had its own ecosystem. Stepped plateaus to the old city’s edges showed signs of once-healthy fields and a complex irrigation system supplied by waterfalls trickled down from the world above. From the extraordinary number of stone-carved temples converging at its centre and the ordered streets of houses that weaved beyond and between them, it looked as though the chamber had been both a place of worship and a home. Ned looked down streets and saw bridges and city squares. There were even walkways that spiralled up to the chamber’s clouded heights. Ned had never seen architecture even remotely like it. It was grand and perfectly ordered, like the circuit patterns they’d seen decorating the walls on their approach.

  But they didn’t have time to waste – any moment there might be another explosion and it could be the Source’s last. The butcher was up ahead and they needed to stop him.

  “Now what?” asked Ned, looking at the Ringmaster.

  But it was Lucy that answered. “The patterns in the stone. They’ve all been travelling in the same direction … to the centre.”

  There was another tremor, followed by a slab of rock falling from the chamber’s roof. The scream of shattering stone was an angry reminder that the Source was running out of time.

  “Let’s go,” the Ringmaster yelled.

  They raced along the carved street that ran from the entrance past giant rectangular monoliths and rivers that poured through perfectly straight gorges. It was order carved from nature’s jarring proportions, and it was breathtaking, even as they pounded through its streets at speed. There was another roar of falling rock and Benissimo urged them on, scanning wildly about for any sign of his brother. Exhausted, they finally approached a large, central square that seemed to lie in the middle of the cavern’s abandoned city. There was no evidence of the butcher or his explosives, but Ned’s ring suddenly started to hum. Loudly.

  “Lucy, my …”

  “I can feel it too,” said Lucy.

  The air was thick with energy, making the hairs on Ned’s arms prickle. What had started as a familiar hum at his finger, now flowed all over his body.

  “Look at the light,” said Lucy.

  In the centre of the square was a circle of towering stone pillars, where the carvings and plants of the great cavern were at their thickest, converging in a twisted knot of patterns.

  Ned watched the glow in the stone circuitry pulse repeatedly around a circle. It was only then that he realised the light was pulsing in time to his frantic heartbeats. Judging by Lucy’s face, he guessed she had realised the same of her own.

  They moved through the pillars into the clearing at the centre, where they saw a giant, round metal structure, as reflective as chrome. It must have been twenty feet high and at least ten across its middle. It too was covered in curling arteries of metal, each feeding from the next and burrowing in and out of the metal shell, and like the walls, trails of light pulsed across its surface. The complexity of the tickers Ned had faced outside looked almost childish in comparison. There were no cogs in view, or pistons or joints, and yet it rippled one way then the next, constantly changing its shape as if the metal it was made of were actually breathing. Ned found it both wondrous and frightening, but there was also something about it that felt almost familiar.

  As they got closer, a loud hum emanated from its surface before changing in pitch, as though it were altering its frequency to match theirs.

  It was only when Ned got close enough that he could see the detail in its rippling surface – it was covered in writhing strands of living metal.

  “It’s like our rings. When I looked at mine under the Tinker’s lenses … its surface moved just like that.”

  But something was wrong. Large sections of the metal were dull and still, blackened with the same sickness that they had seen on the plants. Intermittently the whole structure juddered, almost to a complete halt, before stuttering back to life. There could be no doubt now that the Source was in its final moments.

  Bensissimo remained silent. The Ringmaster’s entire existence had revolved around protecting the Veil and the people on either side. Here right in front of him was the future of his fragile world and now it was no longer in his hands, but in the hands of two children.

  Ned opened his Manual.

  “I don’t understand. If our rings were built by the same people, wouldn’t the First Ones have told our ancestors exactly what they’d have to do? Why bother with a Manual, then leave out the most important part?”

  “It’s not biological, but it’s not pure machine either. It’s a … heart … it’s the actual heart of the Source,” said Lucy.

  “Fascinating, isn’t it?” said a deep voice from behind them. “I believe bio-mechanical is the term, both nature and science combined. Very clever, like those wee rings you wear at your fingers. Such a shame I have to break it.”

  The Final Curtain

  “Your timing could not be more irritating. Had the Daedalus had less distance to cover and the yetis been less stubborn, I would have already placed the charges by now, and … BOOM, there’d be nothing left to mend,” said Barbarossa. “Still, given how late I’ve had to leave things, I decided a few more minutes wouldn’t hurt – and I couldn’t resist the opportunity to see your face, dear brother, when I destroyed the thing you care for most!”

  His tone was enough to make the blood in Ned’s body freeze. There was no spirit-knot in play, no potion-laden delicacies, and yet for just a second, Ned felt the butcher’s words wrap around his mind. How could a voice, a single voice, drain his courage so quickly and so completely?

  Benissimo’s brother stood facing them, a case of dynamite at his side and his trusty cleaver, Bessy, in hand. His snow-suit looked as though it had been skinned from a dozen furred beasts and his already heavy figure looked positively mountainous, like some great woolly mammoth risen from an icy tomb.

  “Put it down, Barba, we both know how this will end if it comes to blows,” warned Benissimo.

  “Really, fratello? You mean our little curse? I don’t need to fight you, brother, I only need to finish what I started. Explosives are so much more … final.”

  “What you started?”

  “Yes, my dear sibling, what I started. How do you think I knew where to come? An amazing race, the Ifrits, their knowledge and interpretation of the world so different to ours, yet so easily shared with the right kind of offer. They know things that you couldn’t begin to understand. You see, it was the Ifrits that brought me here, long before your little friends were even born. I spent months on this damnable mountain waiting for the chance to get inside … months. Those yetis are almost impervious to magic and I was very nearly found out. But once inside, the Ifrits’ spell worked just as they said it would. Slow and steady enough to build my cabal of allies while the Veil crumbled. I wanted to let the world think that it had died of natural causes. But when you found the Engineer and the Medic I was forced to show my hand ahead of schedule. You see, the Veil’s falling is just the beginning. But fall it must – even if I have to blow this mountain off the face of the earth and let everyone know I did it.”

  “What in the name of Jupiter would make you do such a thing?”

  “Why, our curse, of course, and the Demon who bestowed it. We
were made ageless to help set them free, brother. Your shame forces you to fight it, when you should welcome them with open arms.”

  Ned watched Benissimo’s face – it was a torn mixture of pain and rage. No wonder he hid his past – curse or not, he’d been made special by the very things he was trying to keep at bay.

  “After hundreds of years of small evils, I finally understand my purpose,” continued Barbarossa. “You choose to waste what you have – I choose to live as a God. The Demons have agreed to fight for me, brother, to give me the world.”

  “You’re insane. They can’t be controlled, by you or anyone.”

  “You’re quite wrong. They will do exactly as they’re told. You see, I have something they want, or will once this infernal machine curls up and dies. I’m going to bring back their Master. The Darkness is coming, brother, because I am going to bring it, and when it does, all of the world’s creatures both light and dark will tremble at my feet.”

  A look of pure revulsion came over Benissimo. He spun to face Ned and Lucy.

  “Whatever it is you need to do … DO IT!” he seethed, before leaping towards his brother.

  Ned whipped his head back to the Source and pored over its tarnished metal in panic. Where should they start – he didn’t have a blueprint for this, it was so … complex. What if Benissimo was right all along? All the trouble, the violence, the searching and running, and for what? So that he could let them all down? Never see his parents again? Let the world perish at the hands of a madman?

  The surface of the metallic heart hummed like a tuning fork beneath his hands and the ceiling of the cavern tremored in reply. Lucy jumped as a small rock crashed at her feet.

  “What do we do, Ned?” asked Lucy, her face a mirror of his own concern. She stroked one of the blackened vines hopefully, but nothing happened. “It’s as if the sickness is too strong for me – I can feel it suffocating everything … but I can’t shift it.”

  Behind them the two brothers fought, Benissimo wielding his whip and sword, Barbarossa his enormous blood-stained meat-cleaver. The Ringmaster’s whip curled around fallen rocks and debris, hurling the pieces at his brother. But each time the butcher merely grimaced, before raising his cleaver to meet the rock and smashing it into dust. As Benissimo sought a bigger missile, Barba flung his cleaver through the air. It screamed like an angry bird, and the hilt connected, knocking the Ringmaster to the floor. Barbarossa charged. Benissimo calmly waited, and as his brother drew near he grabbed his arm and used his momentum to flip him on to his back, before righting himself and pinning him down with his knees. He grabbed at the butcher’s fallen cleaver and raised it up ready to strike.

  “Enough, brother!” the Ringmaster yelled.

  Barbarossa spat the blood from his mouth and grinned.

  “Enough or what? You’ll kill me?”

  “If I have to, yes, I’ll end us both!”

  “You don’t have the stomach. You’re too in love with your precious flock to say goodbye.”

  Benissimo cried out with rage, swinging the cleaver down towards his brother’s throat; and then, just before it struck, he stopped.

  “I knew it. You could have ended it all here and now. Just another inch or so and our curse would have come to an end.”

  In that moment, Barbarossa twisted an arm free, grabbed at a piece of fallen rock and, in a swift arc, he brought it up to Benissimo’s head, knocking him to the floor with a cold crack.

  “In my new world, brother, there’ll be no room for love, fraternal or otherwise.”

  As indestructible as Benissimo was, a concussion to the head would take time to heal, time that his brother was only too happy to have. Barbarossa smirked at his unconscious sibling before turning his attentions to Lucy.

  Both Medic and Engineer were oblivious to the approaching butcher. Ned was frantically flicking through his Manual, while Lucy was concentrating on the surrounding vines, eyes closed, arms outstretched, trying to banish their blackness, though still to no effect.

  They were so lost in their efforts and the noise of falling stone from the crumbling mountain was so loud that they did not see or hear the butcher coming, nor the piece of rock – the one that had brought down his brother – still clutched in his hand. Until suddenly, to Ned’s left, there was a hard crunch, and Lucy folded to the floor without so much as a whimper.

  “NO!” Ned screamed, dropping to his knees.

  While fearing to fail Ned had still dared to hope, even to the last, that they would somehow save the Source. But as he stared at Lucy’s lifeless body, Ned realised that they had lost. Ned had failed them, every last one.

  Huge slabs of stone now rained down all around them and the cavern was filled with the sound of screaming rock.

  “I need you alive,” Barbarossa yelled. “Once the heart dies, this whole place will come down. Quickly now!”

  But even in this moment of utter defeat Ned would do anything other than obey the evil before him. A furious desperation filled Ned’s heart and something inside of him took over – and this time he let it. What did it matter now if he lost control and destroyed everything around him? He had already failed. Better to take out Barbarossa too. With a pained roar Ned jumped to his feet, dropping the Manual. An idea was forming in his mind, his OWN idea. He was an Engineer by blood, maybe not the best one, but the only one here and now, and he would not give up. He Saw rock hewn into thin strands, weaving together, and a throng of snake-like chains exploded up from the stone around him, his ring thrumming at his finger. Hold him, he Told the chains, and in the blink of an eye they snaked through the air to wrap themselves tightly round Barbarossa. And as Ned Felt his anger, so did the chains, and they swallowed their own tails and tightened further, before their jaws snapped shut, into unbreakable stone locks. He’d done it. Perfectly.

  “Unexpected but impressive,” grimaced the butcher. Then his mouth turned to a smile. “Demos-ra-sa,” he spat, and from his sleeves poured dozens of small, dark, slithering creatures. Eyeless and scaled, with rows of black gnashing teeth. Perhaps they had once been familiars, but Barbarossa had turned them, to something new and cruel. They wrapped themselves around Barbarossa’s chains and bit violently. But the chains held.

  “Cortana-sar,” seethed Barbarossa. And his creatures obeyed, their bodies thickening and teeth lengthening. They attacked once more, but again the chains held. The butcher bellowed furiously, “ASCENS-SOR!” and one of his blackened blobs swelled suddenly, its teeth now the size of swords. It clamped down and – crack – the first of the chains broke. Within a few short seconds Barbarossa had set himself free, and Ned’s creation lay broken at his feet in a pile of useless stone.

  Ned would not be beaten. The Veil was dying and his Medic no doubt already dead. He had nothing left to lose.

  “Famil-ra-sa,” he whispered, and the slow figure of Gorrn drew up from the ground.

  Barbarossa’s smile slid into darkness and his eyes filled with hate.

  “Impudent boy!” He raised his hand and his creatures attacked. Gorrn fought valiantly, but there were too many. They circled him like a pack of eels, lashing with their tails and teeth, before chasing the outnumbered familiar into the chamber’s stony shadows and disappearing from sight. All of them. Just as Ned had intended. Now he had Barbarossa alone again, Ned attacked one last time – channelling all his anger, fear and the last remnants of his courage into one final push.

  His ring thrummed as piece after piece of the cavern’s broken masonry bent to his will, flowing towards him in an ever-growing whirlwind of spinning rock. The stone turned to ice before blowing itself to fire. Melting, burning, freezing and warping, the air crackled like bottled lightning and Ned let his Feelings fly.

  Barbarossa stood his ground, lashing at the stony missiles with nothing more than bare fists and Bessy. Ned was aware of nothing now but the atoms around him shifting to his will and roaring through the air, but eventually he began to tire – all Feeling fading, all Seeing blurred. Ned looke
d up, dazed, as the dust settled in silence around him. As it cleared, he saw the battered pirate, chest heaving and skin a mottled pattern of healing wounds. He was still standing.

  Ned stared at him in disbelief. He’d used every ounce of power he had and still the butcher lived.

  “You cannot beat me, boy. It’s over. Come now, before this mountain falls down on both of our heads.”

  Ned knew the monster was right, the mountain would fall at any moment, but still he did not move.

  Barbarossa fumed. “I have seen a thousand cities burn, helped wars engulf whole continents. I’ve made kings and destroyed them. How dare you stand up to me! You are … nothing.”

  “You’re wrong … about that … brother …”

  Benissimo had crawled to where they now stood. He staggered painfully to his feet, his hand clasped around the grip of his blade.

  Barbarossa sneered. “Why, Bene? Why do you fight for him when I’ve already won?”

  “Because he can’t see his own strength the way I do. Because he can’t see how special he is, exactly as he is. Because no matter how hard I’ve pushed him, he’s never let me down. If a josser boy can come into our world and look its madness in the eye, with decency and courage … then I’ll be damned if I won’t do the same.”

  Ned could not believe the words he was hearing. But however much they meant, they had come too late.

  “He’s right, Benissimo … Lucy, she’s … gone. I can’t do it without her …”

  “She’s your Medic, boy, reach out to her. It’s what you were born to do,” the Ringmaster hissed, before throwing himself at his brother and driving his sword into his chest until its hilt touched bone. Barbarossa howled and dropped to the floor. Benissimo fell beside him. And as the butcher’s life ebbed away, his brother gasped with him. The curse that had joined them in life was now dragging them both to their deaths.