We’re going to die. We’re going to die. You think you can do this and we’re all going to die. “…Yes.”
THE NEXT DAY, after a gigantic breakfast of oatmeal and freeze-dried fruit, we had only driven for a few hours into increasingly high peaks and heavy fog when we simply ran out of road.
“Turn right,” Johnny said.
“There is no right.” Hayes gestured irritably at the GPS as if that would help.
“That’s why we got a Humvee, so we can go off-road,” Columba blurted. “Vaminos! Schnell!”
“Nope. Out.”
We trailed Johnny, balancing her laptop on her forearm like a waiter with a tray of drinks and barely watching where she was going as we walked up the slope. I stopped to catch my breath and looked around: no more buildings, no more mines, no roads except the narrow gravel path we’d left the Hummer on. No signs, no telephone poles, no electrical wires. A breeze ruffled the long fine maroon-and-green grass, blew bits of pebbles and sand down from the peaks that surrounded us. Fog hung at ankle-level, eddying like water as we walked and replacing itself right where it had been. Everything seemed lightly rusted, as if the constant damp had oxidized things over a period of not hundreds or thousands but maybe millions of years. Nothing seemed to have turned.
Unspoken, I had been wondering who would feel it first: this thing that Johnny said we might feel before we saw. But we all felt it at the same time, Sofia leaping back so dramatically from the edge of the unseen thing that I had to grab her before she rolled down the hill.
We had reached a plateau, the long shallow slope behind us and a virtually sheer face of rock ahead, smoothly striated stone in various shades of browns and grays; not even the obviously tough mountain grasses and mosses ad been able to hang on long enough to grow. But there was something at the place where the stone wall met the ground, something that pushed me six inches back, or even lightly picked me up and shoved me—or just my bones, or just my nerves, or something.
Columba, Hayes, and Davis had formed a bloc, their faces rigid with surprise and fear. For a second I nearly pitied them: it hadn’t occurred to me that even the people who studied magic and magical history their whole lives, became Investigators, traveled the world looking for artifacts and books, had never seen anything like this till now. Never seen one of Them, or Their minions or thralls, never had the Lesser Angels approach them in their dreams; never seen, let alone passed through, a gate, a boundary, a veil, or whatever this was. I supposed it would be like studying mythology your whole life and coming home to discover that a minotaur had bedded down in your living room. No amount of academia would prepare you for it, no matter what side you were on in the coming war.
“This could be it,” Johnny said, putting her laptop away. “I can’t refine it any more. It’s somewhere at the edge of the satellite bounceback range. Ten meters on a side. Move slowly.”
Though we were keeping our voices down, speaking still seemed indecent out here, in a silence that felt like the soundproofed phone room back at our Prague hotel. We split up, shuffling our feet through the bare dirt between the thick tufts of grass. Water condensed on Davis’ glasses, trickled down with the occasional startlingly loud ‘plip!’ onto her bright blue plastic jacket.
Columba vanished first, almost but not quite without sound: a faint droning cut off so suddenly that its disappearance rather than its appearance alerted us to the spot. Johnny, fairly sensibly for once, picked up a rock and tossed it underhand, where it vanished into thin air. Davis made a small noise in her throat.
“There we go,” Johnny said, satisfied. “I love to say I told you so. Anyway, we’d better leave one person on this side in case something goes sideways.”
“I’ll stay,” said Hayes—not without a certain amount of relief, I thought. “I have the car keys.”
“See you when we get back,” Johnny said cheerily, and stepped into the place where Columba had gone.
I took a deep breath, held it while Davis went, then Sofia, looking back questioningly at me, then Rutger, whose entire body looked as if it were trying to move backwards as his head moved forwards. I knew how he felt. Then I exhaled, and I too stepped into the place.
A MOMENT’S DISLOCATION, the sense of an electric shock massive and almost too brief to sense, waking every nerve and vanishing before they could do something about it. My jaw ached when sensation returned, and my molars were coated in blood where I had bitten the inside of my cheek.
It took a while for my eyes to adjust; and when they did I found myself stunned not by the new but by the familiar. I had seen photos of crystal caves in National Geographic, no different from this.
Wait. No.
Yes? No. The scale was all wrong, and nearly knocked me on my ass. Not stalactites and stalagmites but skyscrapers, and the darkness beyond them not a night sky but the unseen ceiling of a cave roof higher than any plane could fly. An entire city of transparent monoliths, some with the lightest tinge of blue or green, many—in Columba’s trembling flashlight—surprisingly reflective, showing us just how tiny we were.
Out of habit, I turned to see where we had ‘come in’: nothing but more of the crystals, of course. But this place would be gone when Johnny drained the magic out of it for her spell, and we would find ourselves back on the plateau, I was pretty sure. I didn’t want to ask in case I was wrong.
The air stank of magic, and was heavy and damp. Between the monoliths the gaps were as wide as freeways, the smallest easily still alleyways; we clumped together all the same, murmuring apologies as we hit each other with elbows and shoulders. Past the blood and the rotten taste of magic in my mouth I tasted adrenaline, sour and abundant.
“We were always taught crystal powers were bullshit,” Davis said, and laughed faintly. “These are just stones, right?”
“Of course they are,” Columba said, lifting his flashlight.
Johnny nodded. “There’s no such thing as a magic crystal. Of course, you can still banish practically any creature with a crystal, provided it’s large or pointy enough. Well-known fact.”
“Let us do what needs to be done,” Rutger said. “I don’t care whether there is… magic. Caves are unsafe.”
“We just need to find the exact spot of accumulation,” Johnny said. “That’ll be the best place to set up my stuff.”
I wasn’t sure how long we had been walking, but it was long enough that our conversation had wound down except for the occasional whispered “Here?” when Rutger noticed the first runes in the crystals, and called Johnny over. Sofia and I followed, looking over Johnny’s shoulder.
The writing was small, no language I knew or thought I had even seen before, interspersed with tiny drawings, each less than an inch high. My stomach churned. But it was just writing, it had no power, like any other words, until someone manifested them. No matter what it said, no matter what language it was in. They’d taught me that. First lesson, practically.
I stared at my own face in the mirrored stone, watching as it dissolved, transformed into shapes seemingly no more than a pane of glass away from us: legs, wings, flopping limbs, crawling and staggering, pressing their faces to the scribbled surfaces so that teeth and claws showed behind the writing. Johnny slowly moved off and held her light on an unoccupied spot, then put her t-shirt over the lens so a fuzzy, pinkish glow illuminated the text, which seemed to have been engraved just below the surface.
The glowing letters rose up in response to the light as if through deep water, flickering at first then steady, a no-colour, not quite blue or purple or black, but clearly visible in the gloom. It hurt the eyes to look at.
“Holy shit,” Johnny whispered. “Holy, holy, holy shit.”
“It repeats and repeats.” Sofia looked up, trying to see the top of the monolith, the one next to it, the one behind it. “It’s the same thing on all of them. I think.”
“What are these pictures? I’ve never seen that in a Carvyd inscription.” She edged back to the mirrored surface, breathing
faster. “Come here, can you see? Okay, that’s... this isn’t good. No, hang on, this is a modifier.”
“Distance or time?” Sofia said.
“Um, time. Something inanimate, negative. Not a warning.”
“There shouldn’t be a warning,” Sofia said, frowning. “Not if it’s just a gathering place... but it is negative. Yes.”
“Maybe it’s archaic. Not new at all. Hang on. ‘Death is...’”
“...At all times... uh, what’s this word?”
“Sufficient or adequate, inanimate. And this one is another modifier, ‘common knowledge to intelligent races.’ You don’t see that one very often, it’s usually implied.”
A long silence. I pictured them both writing frantically in their heads, knowing that nothing could be sounded aloud in case they turned out to be words of power. Behind the transparent material, something stopped, watched us: small, indistinct, its face like a broken mirror, filled with the small glowing letters reversed upon it. Sofia backed away instinctively, tripped over a crystal, caught herself, rose again.
“Death is,” Johnny finally said, and hesitated. “Hang on, it’s all broken up. Like this:
Death is always imminent
Enough; you cannot draw it closer, even
When you believe it is you who draws it.
Dying takes a moment only, which is well known; but
Living is as hard a thing as the grave.”
Another long pause. “They die,” Johnny said, almost to herself. “They know They can die. Their slaves, Their servants can die. But when They sleep... to sleep and wake and...” Her hair flipped up in a sudden breeze, like a golden flag, something stirring the still air between the crystal buildings.
Carefully, trembling, Sofia took my hand. I squeezed it, still staring at the creature that stared back at us, then raised its limbs, pressed them to the surface between us.
Something I needed to remember. Something to know. And the wind gaining strength, calling between the facets, chiming, and the letters gaining in strength till they became painful in their brightness, incisions into a space backed not with daylight but the hot breath of stars. Johnny’s face in the wild new light was stark white, as white as the teeth in her half-open mouth.
“Where did the other two go?” she said, and the resignation in her voice was all I could think of as something opened nearly on top of us, the crystal splitting along invisible fault-lines, opening, the wind screaming, lifting us off our feet, that first moment of weightlessness so startling that for a second I didn’t even think to scream, only marvelled at it, at the gargantuan soft terrible breath that inhaled and pulled us from light into darkness
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THERE WAS JUST long enough to register it all—water, trees, stones, speed—before we hit.
No way of telling how fast we were moving. Just the impact scrape I saw as I spun, like Tunguska. Screaming in from outer space, shearing off the tops of trees, the detonation like a nuclear bomb.
I lay stunned, listening to my fast shallow breath, for a long time, as if I were someone else: the breath of someone else, the pain of someone else. On every breath the smell of rotting things, mouldy meat. Stagnant water, a cold taste of things that grew without air.
Someone pulled me to my feet. Rutger, using one hand. There was just enough light from two small moons, both half-full, to register his stunned but impassive face. My whole body hummed like I was standing in front of a speaker, feeling the bass. It took me a moment to realize it was my heart, thrumming instead of beating.
Two moons.
Johnny and Sofia had landed closer to the water; we dragged them out, checked pulses, murmured names. Johnny shook us off and looked around, her wet hair dull with what looked like oil or mud rather than water. Clocked the two moons, grimaced, showing her teeth like a frightened dog.
The dark surface of the lake, as matte as a piece of slate, shivered, boiled. Ruptured, thick sluggish bubbles of stench, white worms rising to the surface, writhing, sinking again, desperately twisting in the thick fluid. And then, unmistakeably, something larger: an arm, a head. A membranous uneven fin on its back, torn and bitten, gleaming for a second in the moonlight.
We bolted instinctively uphill, scrabbling on muddy rocks, grabbing and pulling at each other, and fled some unknown distance to a line of high dark stones, diving behind them and huddling close. Familiar. Where from? A movie. Dark riders.
When the noises from the lake subsided, Rutger edged out from behind the stone, then returned. “I see nothing.”
My head was swimming; I rose, looked down at Sofia and Johnny. Red dots sparkled in my vision. Terrible to be right. Terrible to know for sure. Just as I had thought everything would be okay, that I could maybe forget if not forgive, that I wouldn’t have to spend the rest of my life angry and powerless. And now this.
“They fucking set us up,” I said slowly. “The... whatever their real fucking names are. They sent us here. Didn’t they?”
“What are you talking about?” Sofia got to her feet, clinging to the rock, her silver nails gleaming. “And why are you asking me?”
“You? How would you know? Oh, I don’t know. Is it because your fucking father sent us into that cave? Huh? He picked those three out. He didn’t want you to go. He gave us all the data. What does that tell you?”
“But he did let me go! He had nothing to do with this!”
“Then he must have thought they’d keep you out of this! It was just supposed to be her, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it supposed to just be her?”
“Stop shouting,” said Rutger.
“You, shut up,” I said. “Just her. Or her and me. Wasn’t it? Because he knew, he knew They wanted her, as a trophy and as a—as a precaution, because the takeover couldn’t happen if—”
“My father had nothing to do with this!” Sofia shouted. “How dare you!”
“How else do you explain what happened?” I said. “Huh? Fucking Louis was in charge of the plan, he wanted us to come to this fucked-up place. Wanted us out of the way, like throwing a ransom over a wall and just running. Hell, who knows, maybe he didn’t even get those fucking three to do it—there, do you feel better? You’re trying to protect them? Maybe it was all him, and he got someone to do it on this side. How about that? Maybe he’s dealing directly with the monsters!”
Sofia’s hand cracked across my face, staggering me. For several beats, no one moved.
“How dare you?” she said again. “He had nothing to do with this. Why aren’t you looking at her instead?”
“What?”
“How do you know she did not cause this?” Sofia pointed at Johnny, who had finally gotten to her feet, half in and half out of the moonlight at the edge of the stone. “The reactor, the attack! What if she put on an act, arranged it for that night, so she could look like a… victim instead of a collaborator? How do we know she isn’t working with Them, for Them? How do we know the reactor isn’t something... something evil?”
We both paused, panting.
“No one knows how it works,” Sofia hissed, “and no one’s been able to make one except her. Have they? Because it’s magic, isn’t it? How? Why would you do this? Whose side are you on?”
Johnny inhaled, blew out. “Mine,” she said. “I destroyed the first one, the test reactor, so that the enemy would never get it. They offered me a covenant. I accepted. And I encoded a sigil in the reactor torus. It works by moving electrons between dimensions. And yes, once, that let magic in. Now it doesn’t. So it’s surrounded by magic, protected by it, but it doesn’t work by magic.”
“So they were right,” Sofia said. “Right enough. They said… and you said they’d never prove anything.”
“Well, I still don’t think you can prove it,” Johnny said.
“And you knew all along,” Sofia said, turning to me.
Something like and not like laughter bubbled up out of me, and I thought of the thick ripples in the lake, the rotting things down there eaten aliv
e, not dead, and when the laughter started I couldn’t stop, not till I began to cough and fell to my knees on the bare, stony ground, the pain startling me back into something like awareness. Was the sky getting lighter? I could see Rutger’s face better, a rictus of disgust, and on either side of him, Sofia and Johnny, expressionless.
“Okay,” I managed, staggering back up; I felt like strings had been attached to my shoulders for a second, weightless, jumping on the moon. “Okay. Okay. Okay. So yeah. You wanna say it or should I? Fine, I’ll go. Everybody’s cards on the table. She did cause the Anomaly. What was it, five hundred and... five hundred and fifty million people? Sixty? What’s ten million people, more or less? Her. Yes. Her friend, the one that offered her the fucking genius deal, came back. Woke up all its people, the big bads. Told Them where and when to come through. We shut it though! We were the ones that shut it! But the reactor, that let Them in! No shit, Sherlock!”
“Well it isn’t this time,” Johnny said, her voice strengthening. “Do you know how They’d get enough magic to do what they’re doing now? You think it’s some people in the Society doing it and not all of them? They’re killing people, maybe dozens, hundreds, thousands of people, who knows. There’s seven billion people left in the world for the fucking Society to offer up to Them.”
“They’re not!” Sofia said, genuinely stunned. “The Ssarati has been protecting humankind for thousands of years! That is all! What proof do you have? It’s never, in the entire history of the—”
“That was then! You don’t think the Anomaly changed everything? Because they sure the fuck did. And they picked a side. Do you really think your father would have told you that they were doing it? Get a clue. Get a fucking... They’re collaborators. Traitors. And they’ll put down any resistance, any, that Earth manages to mount this time.”
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