by Ian Whates
A cunning look entered the boy's eyes. "So this is important to you, is it?" His fingers again reached for the catches. "Stand back, then, or I'll open the canister and pour whatever's in here onto the ground."
"No, you won't," Kat assured him, still walking forward, her twin swords held at her side, pointing towards the ground, her hips swaying in a slow, slinky, almost seductive sashay. "You won't live long enough to do that."
There was an air of desperation in Miles' voice as he said, "Well what will you give me, to hand it back to you?"
What's in it for me, again. Was Tom the only person in the world who didn't put his own interests first and ask that question at every turn, even when the stakes were so high? He was beginning to wonder if there was something wrong with him.
"Your life," Kat replied softly, her gaze never wavering from the boy's eyes. The cunning there had gone entirely now, replaced by something that might almost have been panic.
Miles moved suddenly. "Well you can have it, then!" He flung the canister to one side. Tom watched in horror as it tumbled through the air, one catch flapping free. If the second burst open on impact…
Kat was moving almost before Miles. She ran a couple of steps, dropping both swords as she went, and leapt with arms extended, all in the blink of an eye. Tom saw her hands close on the core canister, watched her land and roll, coming up hard against the wall, back to the ground, one leg crooked against the wall, but with the canister cradled safely to her body. Miles had used the distraction to make a run for it, bolting not for the door but into one of the other rooms.
"Thank Thaiss!" Tom let out a held breath on seeing the canister safe.
Kat was on her feet in an instant and came over to cut him free. His hands tingled with returning circulation and felt clumsy as he resealed the dangling clasp and stashed the canister back into his rucksack. As he did so, his gaze fell on the three dead boys.
"Did you have to kill them?"
"Yes," she replied calmly, with no hint of regret. "To save the others, to save some of them at least… and to save you."
He wanted to believe that, wanted to believe that something dark hadn't reared up from within her and taken possession just for a moment; but then he looked into Ryan's sightless eyes and wasn't sure.
The room Miles had fled into proved to be a bedroom. A gaping hole in the back wall led into another dwelling, through which he had doubtless made good his escape.
"Pity," Kat said.
Tom made no comment.
"Come on!" a voice called urgently from outside. "It's coming."
They hurried out into the corridor, glancing to their left, in the same direction that the guardsman was anxiously staring. Tom sensed that this was where the Demons and the Blade had so recently fought, but silence reigned there now. Unfortunately, the corridor wasn't empty. Striding towards them came a winged, golden figure. Kat and Tom ran to join the guardsman, who was already at the foot of the mound of rubble where the corridor had collapsed. They scrambled up, pulling and crawling and forcing their way through, regaining their feet in the corridor beyond, where they started to run. None of them had much faith in a pile of rubble stopping a Demon.
Tom led them down a branching corridor to the right, if only to put the wall of rubble and the Demon beyond out of their direct line of sight.
Tom knew that his fitness levels had risen dramatically during the long journey to the Thair's source, but presumably the days of inactivity that came after had undone much of the good. His legs were feeling leaden and the warm air seemed increasingly difficult to breathe. Finally he had to stop, to lean against the wall, panting. He looked at his two companions guiltily, but was relieved to find them in no better shape than he was. Kat was covered in sweat, and she bent forward as he watched, hands on knees. She stood up again and smiled briefly, presumably not yet willing to spare the breath to speak. The guardsman was red-faced and panting worse than Tom. In truth he had no idea how the man had managed to keep up, weighed down by armour as he was. Tom knew that the armour was some sort of toughened polymer rather than solid iron, but it still weighed a fair bit.
After a moment they had recovered to the point where they could manage a brisk walk, Tom again taking them right almost immediately, so that they were now headed in roughly the same direction they had been before the Demons appeared.
"We don't even know your name," Tom said to the guardsman as they walked. It seemed to him that if they were all about to die, he might as well at least know who was sharing the experience with.
"Jayce," the guardsman said after the briefest of hesitations.
Tom nodded. "Good to have you with us, Jayce."
Kat was looking at him oddly. "What?" he asked, irritated by her unfathomable expression.
"Nothing," she replied. "I was just wondering when you grew up."
Her words surprised him, though his answer was quick enough. "Must have been somewhere on the road between here and the goddess's citadel," he said.
"Must have been," she agreed. "Did you actually meet her? Thaiss, I mean."
"Yes."
"Breck me! Got to admit, that's not bad going for a streetnick who couldn't even find his way across town when we first met. You'll have to tell me about it sometime."
He nodded. "Maybe I will. When this is all over."
She gave him a look which didn't need words.
"We will make it," he said quietly, as much for his own benefit as hers.
Tom's internal compass still had a fix on the city's core, and it told him that they were now heading towards it again. Hopefully the two right turns he'd led them through would take them past the Demon.
"Nice idea," Kat said, evidently recognising his intent, "but…" She nodded ahead, to where a glowing figure could be seen at the far end of the corridor.
"Shit!"
Another Demon, or perhaps the same one, seeking to intercept them. And this time there were no Blade to protect them.
"You two run for it," Jayce said. "I'll hold him off."
"Really?" Kat said. "Very noble of you, but the last time we saw these things they were whipping the Blade's collective ass. No offence, but you wouldn't even slow it down."
"Kat's right," Tom said. "No point in throwing your life away needlessly. Come on." He gripped the guardsman's arm and propelled him towards a somewhat plain looking door, but one that was wider than the residential door they'd passed and looked to be something else entirely. Afterwards, Tom would wonder whether he'd subconsciously recognised the deep bass vibration that must surely have been detectable had they not been distracted by the approaching Demon.
All he knew for sure was that when he pushed that door open he was immediately struck by a wall of heat and a familiar rhythmic sound that seemed to reverberate right through him, like the beating of a gigantic heart.
• • • •
The goddess stood before him, her clear calm voice delivering information as precisely as it had in the citadel. This world is a nexus, accessible from many others. As such it has become a melting pot for various races. Many – humans, kayjele, and skimmers among them – were already in residence when the founders arrived, and without detailed genetic analysis it's impossible to say which are truly native and which were themselves earlier settlers. The Jeradine, however, arrived with the founders. An ancient people, the Jeradine have called many worlds home, but this will be their last. Those resident in the under-City are likely all that remain of this venerable race. Their knowledge helped open the way to this world and helped to make the construction of Thaiburley possible. Their reward was a permanent home within the City of a Hundred Rows, sited in the City Below by their own choice.
Tom blinked, banishing the image and trying to blank out the voice. He was delighted that so much of the knowledge he'd absorbed at the citadel was falling into place. He just wished there was some sort of filter, a means of consciously regulating the flow of information and even to turn it off at times. When he was fleeing f
or his life, for example.
If they'd found the corridors warm, this place was a furnace. It was also jarringly familiar. So much so that Tom might almost have stumbled back into his own past.
"Where the breck are we?" Kat wanted to know.
"In a pumping room," Tom told her.
The oppressive heat, the reddish light, and the deep rhythmic thrum of sound that reverberated through the air and the floor alike, were all just as he remembered. As was the great engine or perhaps gigantic organ that dominated the centre of the chamber. He was seeing it from a different perspective this time, from ground level rather than a viewing balcony part way up a wall, but the memories from that mad flight down from the Heights, when he'd stumbled into a room just like this, remained vivid.
They were much closer to the great engine than he'd been on that previous occasion, and from here its size was even more impressive. It was like a great sack – one that surely would have been large enough to hold scores of people – formed from an unknown material that might almost have been organic. The impression of something living was only enhanced by the network of wires and metal bands that encased it, which looked like veins, and the constant movement. As they entered, the pump was contracting, sliding across the floor and apparently climbing the great metal pipe that rose from its centre to pierce the ceiling. With a mournful sigh it began to relax once more, sliding back down the silver grey pipe as if the effort had all been too much and flowing out across the chamber's floor towards them.
"Breck," Kat muttered, shying away. "I don't want that thing smothering me."
Tom knew what she meant. There was a sense that this was in fact a living thing, or part of one, harnessed to unnatural purpose. Thankfully, the flowing mass stopped its advance well short of them and began the process of contracting once more. Tom wondered briefly where the kayjele attendant might be, but guessed it must have fled this sector along with everyone else.
"There's no other exit," Jayce said, emerging from the far side of the pumping mechanism. He hadn't stopped to ogle the thing as they had. "The only door's the one we came in by."
"Great," Kat said. She then stared at Tom. "Tom…?"
He nodded. "Yeah, I know, the Demon Hounds."
"They have hounds?" Jayce asked, looking around anxiously.
"No, a long story – another time, another place," Tom said. "Look, you're going to have to trust me, Jayce. Huddle together. Closer," he gestured towards the guardsman. "We've all got to be touching. Okay, now don't move a muscle and keep completely quiet. I mean completely."
"What…?"
"Shhh…" Kat hissed at the Guardsman.
Tom's talent, which he had believed was his only talent for much of his life, the ability to hide in plain sight, was their only hope now.
He began his litany as soon as all of them were settled. We're not here; you can't see us, you can't smell us or hear us, we're invisible. We're not here, you can't see us… As the repeated phrase cycled through his thoughts he felt his talent well up, far more conscious of the process than he ever had been before, as it unfurled to cover them all in its protective mantle.
No sooner had Tom felt his talent rise around them than the door burst open and the Demon strode in. Tom focussed on his litany, making sure it didn't falter and that there was no chink in the protection it was affording them. At the same time, he observed this creature from the Upper Heights, the highest level of all Thaiburley, noting that Demons weren't in fact unnaturally tall – certainly not toweringly so like the Blade. It was just that their physical presence made them seem so much bigger and imposing.
It's working! Tom thought, daring to hope that they might actually get away with this. The Demon strode into the room, his great white wings flexing as if the drafts of warm air were tempting it to take flight. For long seconds the creature stood just inside the door, head turning from side to side, clearly searching. You cannot see us… Tom stepped up the intensity, waiting for the Demon's gaze to fall on them and stay, but it didn't. Then the creature strode forward, passing close to where the three of them pressed against each other. Still it stared ahead and not at them.
Just a little bit further. The pump was about to relax again, which meant the vast mass of cables, pipes and tissue would flow outward to fill much of the floor. If the Demon followed the curve of the room around only a short distance further, the expanding mass of the engine would soon put him out of eyeshot, giving them a clear pathway to the door.
Just as he was about to step past the motionless trio, the Demon paused, cocked his head, and then turned slowly to face them. He looked directly at Tom, and smiled. "You didn't honestly expect your little trick would fool a Demon, did you?" His voice was light, high, with the hint of a sneer, like Lyle when he was showing off to the impressionable younger members of the Blue Claw. One thing was clear: the Demon had been playing with them, pretending not to see them and drawing closer in the process. "I am the core personified; you seek to use talent against me, when I am living, walking, breathing talent? You are an insect, and the meagre gifts you think to command are little more than conjuring tricks."
Tom felt his determination waiver. The Demon was right; he could feel the fundamental truth of its words. Who had they been trying to kid? They never stood a chance. The Prime Master, the Council Guards, the Tattooed Men, even the Blade, they were all powerless compared to just one single Demon. The being before them was glowing, golden, magnificent. How had Tom ever thought to defy such a one?
He slumped to his knees, knowing it was over. His life, his dreams, his future, they all ended here. He deserved no better.
From beside him came a strangled, tortured shriek that sounded more animal than human. A small figure leapt at the Demon, a dark wildcat starkly outlined by golden light. Tom watched aghast as two slender arms rose and fell, and twin blades flashed silver against the gold. Kat.
"Don't listen to it, Tom," she yelled, "it's sapping our will."
The silver became blurs as Kat attacked, her blades puncturing the golden nimbus and slicing into the body within. She danced and twisted and sliced and cut and thrust, while the Demon bellowed his rage and pain.
"Talent!" it shrieked. "You have talent."
Kat had talent? Of course she did. Tom had never really thought about it before this but how else could a small girl ever rise to prominence in the ranks of the city's toughest warriors? The lethargy and sense of hopelessness which the Demon had induced started to lift. Tom's limbs were his own again. He rose from his knees, as did the guard beside him. Two facts were suddenly crystal clear: Kat had talent, and despite the Demon's sneering dismissal, that talent was hurting it.
Tom gathered himself, drawing on the well of power which he still didn't understand but was beginning to accept as a part of him. This was no Rust Warrior. He knew that to best a Demon he'd have to muster more force than he'd ever called on before.
He was almost there, almost ready to unleash his fury, when disaster struck. Presumably tiring of fending off Kat's blows, the Demon fought back. Kat's scream sent a chill down Tom's spine. A blast of energy shot from the Demon's nimbus, catching her full on and sending her hurtling through the air. Kat struck the unyielding wall with an audible smack and then slid down to lie motionless on the floor.
"No!" Tom seemed to see it all happen in acute detail, as if Kat's limp form had moved in slow motion. In horror, he released the shackles restraining his talent and let loose with everything he had, feeling the energy surge through him but knowing he was too late, that he should have struck a split second earlier, when he still had a chance to save Kat.
Perhaps the Demon was distracted by having to deal with Kat's unexpected assault, perhaps he hadn't expected Tom to attack with such ferocity. Either way, Tom felt his power take a hold of his enemy, overwhelming defences and inflicting damage. But the Demon wasn't finished yet. He rallied, stalling Tom's attack before he could fully press home his advantage.
As Tom had expected, this
was completely different from fighting a Rust Warrior or a human. The first time Tom had used his power in such a destructive fashion, when he had taken down the Warrior that killed Kohn, it had been a simple outpouring of hate focussed on the monster that had just murdered a friend. What he directed at the Demon was more intense, more sustained, more draining. This time the target didn't simply tremble and fall apart as the Rust Warrior had, it fought back; and Tom sensed that if he didn't prevail in this contest and do so soon, he would be the one doing the falling apart. The snag being that he wasn't at all sure he could prevail. The Demon was pure core, a construct fashioned from the stuff at Thaiburley's heart, whereas Tom had never been more than a conduit for that same force. His initial success had been due to the element of surprise, and he'd failed to make that really count. The Demon had recovered, and Tom could feel his own efforts faltering, his grasp on his enemy's inner being slipping away. Attack slipped inexorably towards defence, as it became increasingly difficult to hold off the Demon's strengthening assault, let alone press on with his own.