by Jay Lake
Setting aside his holy sight, Hethor knelt beside Arellya. She still clutched her spear. Her eyes were filmed over and she was whimpering. Blood matted the fur of her neck and shoulders and chest.
“Can you hear me?” Hethor asked.
Arellya nodded.
“Will you live?”
She just stared.
He reached for her then, trying to find the mainspring that drove her body without disturbing her essence. There were patterns of chaos, or worse, silence, in the tumbling assemblage that was Arellya. She had taken a sharp blow to the head. He caressed her there, his fingers feeling matted fur over shifting bone even as his eyes saw more of God’s favored brass.
Though Hethor could not make her whole all at once, he could smooth out the chaos and set gears spinning within the silent places of her head. As he bent to do that an unexpected blow struck his back as an ax strikes a sapling.
There had been another attacker.
He collapsed on the stairs, still seeing the underlying world as he slid past Arellya. Hethor’s hand reached for her spear even while he rolled away from a further blow that set the stairs ringing. The spear was close, but not close enough as it brushed against his fingers, so he made his own, willing it from the fabric of the air. There was a rushing howl of winds and the sharp smell of a storm as he thrust his clockwork spear forward.
His holy sight was gone, stripped from him by exhaustion. The last of the wooden automata tumbled slowly away from him. Its flat face melted into the screaming visage of a dark-skinned man, much as William of Ghent’s servants had done when his great jungle fortress took flame.
He stood to shake off his vision, soul-sick from the magic. His feet ached dreadfully. Blood streamed from a hundred splinters. Arellya clung to the rail two steps above him now. Her spear stood wedged into a stair riser. She smiled. “We live.”
“We live.” He shuddered. Hethor had never known he could absorb, or deliver, such punishment. He only prayed to God he would not have to do more, though he suspected such a prayer to be no better than vanity. “Onward.”
“Messenger …” She sounded uncertain. Heartbreakingly so.
Hethor paused in the act of turning around, one hand on the rail. “What?”
“I am afraid that I cannot stand.”
“Ah.” He looked at his beloved for a moment. “Then I must carry you on my back.”
THEY PRESSED onward. The diffuse light came to seem a despairing gloom. The endless echo of the brass stairs was a bell tolling out the last strokes of Hethor’s life. Each footfall was multiplied in weight, and pain. He had come so far. Hethor would not stop now.
He could do little to command his own slowing, however.
The crystal caves were gone. There was only an endless, echoing space with the shaft always to their left. The wind of its rotation plucked at them. The hum of it nagged at their ears. Arellya’s weight on his back grew and grew, until Hethor felt as if he carried a draft horse into the nether regions of the Earth. Only her warm, shallow breath on his neck, the sweetgrass scent of her tingling his nose, reminded him of his true self, his true purpose.
After a while he became aware of a creaking noise in the shadows around him. Something large moved there. It made him think of Bassett under way, or perhaps how the chest muscles of the winged savages popped as they flew.
Then Gabriel alit upon the stair rail. The angel crouched to grasp it with its fingers, each hand set just outside the feet pressed together. The pose was odd, balanced by the wings, making the angel seem like a great turkey or rooster.
“Greetings, Hethor,” said Gabriel. “You have come so far.”
Hethor wanted to kneel on the steps, babble out his relief and pray for aid in this terrible place. Only Arellya’s weight upon his back kept him standing. “I have done all that you asked and more,” he said, “though it cost me dearly.”
Gabriel nodded over Hethor’s shoulder. “It gained you dearly, too. But you have not done everything. You have neglected the Key Perilous.”
Hanging his head, Hethor said quietly, “I never came near it. Though I sought it far and wide.”
“You turned your face south too soon.” The archangel smiled, pity and love mixed together like a balm for Hethor’s wounds. “Your errand is moot now. Another way must be found, though time before the end is very short.”
“I go forward,” said Hethor. “There is no turning back.”
“No,” agreed the angel, “but you can rest. You have earned it. Sit here a while. I will find some food and blankets for you.”
Where would it find such things? Hethor wondered. On his back, Arellya stirred. Gabriel was right. He should just sit down and rest. He must set his load aside first.
“No,” she whispered.
No, he thought. She was right. This made no sense, though it was hard to find the logic amid his fatigue. “Why would you have me abandon my quest?” Hethor asked. “Turn back perhaps, but why stop here?”
“You deserve your rest.”
“No,” whispered Arellya. “He plays you false.”
Hethor considered. The wooden men must have been a sending from William of Ghent, still seeking an end to the world’s turning. Allowing the Mainspring to wind down was freedom, perhaps, but Hethor could only imagine it as the freedom of death.
And now this. Gabriel had not spoken to him so, back in New Haven. Gabriel would not urge him to lie down and rest.
“The token you gave me,” Hethor said, “the horofix that was taken from me in New Haven. What became of it?”
“It is in God’s hand.” Gabriel smiled.
“It was a feather” Hethor shouted. “Not a horofix.” He gathered his holy sight, made a fist of the power, and shoved the false archangel from the rail. Gabriel exploded in a cloud of clockwork, much of it tiny as the splinters of the wooden man had been, so that Hethor’s clothes and skin were slashed anew.
He was so weakened by this use of his power that he slipped some distance down the spiral on his buttocks, dragging Arellya with him. They finally came to rest in a groaning tangle with Hethor’s left leg jammed against one of the metal stair posts.
“Perhaps we should take our rest now,” he said quietly.
“Up,” she said. “I think I can stand.”
She could not, so he took her on his back again and stumbled onward.
MORE WALKING. The minutes stretched like days while the hours passed in seconds. Hethor finally lost the sense of time that had stayed with him as long as he could remember. He surrendered it to fatigue, despair, and the endless brass coil of this journey, always an armspan away from the whirling face that marked the axis of the world. Even amid the loss and surrender, his feet kept moving.
The walls closed in again. Honest stone pressed tight. The space robbed the diffuse light of its power, so his descent became a winding tunnel that constantly seemed likely to pinch Hethor and Arellya within its rounded grasp. He considered throwing himself over the rail, wondering whether the quick, sharp fall would be better than the endless walk, but he was not yet so desperate.
So he walked.
Step by echoing step.
Downward.
His feet hurt.
His back hurt.
His head hurt.
His body stung from a hundred cuts.
Arellya was a millstone upon him.
Hethor made the inscription from the tablet his marching rhythm, stepping on every beat, saying the words with his breath. It was as if he could conjure strength and endurance by main force.
“The heart of God …” Step.
“Is the heart of the world.” Step.
“As man lives …” Step.
“So lives God.” Step.
“As God lives …” Step.
“So lives the world.” Step.
It made of his entire body a prayer, and carried Hethor through his dark hours while Arellya quietly shuddered her pain on his shoulder.
HETHOR CAME round a turn
in the stairs to see a whole new cavern extending below him. The light was brighter here. The walls seemed lined with fungus, an infinite folding vista of glistening color and sickly sheen. Ribbons of spores moved through the air like eels in tropical water. He stopped to look, arresting his pace for the first time in hours. Was there a city down there? Did people live here, even in the depths of the Earth?
There was no end to the wonder and manner of men to be found in God’s Creation.
After an indefinite time, he met the third guardian of their descent.
William of Ghent.
The sorcerer had survived Hethor’s push into the spinning brass fields of the underworld, but he had not survived them well. The old arrogance was gone—lost with the classic beauty of his face. The red-brown hair was now a dirty yellowed white that grew in patches. One ice blue eye was puckered shut. A livid scar seamed William’s face below the missing orb. The other seemed clouded though a spark glowed within. He stood as though his body were a curse rather than a blessing.
But when he spoke, it was with the same honeyed tones of sweet reason and contempt that Hethor had first heard condemn him to death in the little room beneath the viceroy’s court in Boston. “I see your persistence has outweighed the combination of your other virtues, young Hethor.”
“William,” Hethor said. He eased to a sitting position on the stairs. This was not a fight he could win at blows, or even with the magic of Creation. William of Ghent was taller, stronger, older, more experienced, and more powerful than he. Hethor was certain that was still true, even now when William was far from the height of his social position and physical grace.
Hethor concentrated on sliding a sleeping Arellya off his back and twisting so that he could hold her in his lap. As she was no bigger than a child, this was easily done. If he was going to die at William’s hand here deep beneath the Earth, he preferred to see her face.
“A gentleman to the last,” said William. “If only your reasoning had kept pace with your deeds.”
“There is nothing wrong with my thoughts.”
“Hethor …” William sounded sorrowful, just as Master Bodean might have done. “If you had listened, and considered the evidence to hand, we might now be standing in a very different place.”
“I did what I could.” Hethor felt his breath rattling in his chest. Was the infinite walk taking its ultimate toll on his body?
“But you did not do what you should.” With a visible effort, William knelt to bring himself to Hethor’s level. They were eye-to-eye now, William two steps down. “You were taken in by a tale told by an idiot, one of Heaven’s castaways. Your precious Gabriel was no more than a winged savage gifted with speech. A genius of his kind. Still, he is nothing but a debased angel.”
“No.” Hethor refused to believe that, refused to countenance such an idea. He had come too far, seen too much, to believe an error. “The world does run down. It will be the death of us. The tremors of the Earth have already slain far too many.”
“Of course the Earth is running down,” said William. “God abandoned His Creation from the first, if ever it was His. The Clockmakers are with us, Hethor. They will see our distress and return to reset the clockwork of the world. Thus will man be free of the chains of Heaven and set into a state of nature so that we can find our own way.”
“You have argued this before. You are no more sensible now.” Hethor flapped his hands at William. “Begone.”
“I am right. You are wrong. I have evidence, which you lack.”
“The heart of God is the heart of the world,” said Hethor. “As man lives, so lives God. As God lives, so lives the world. He has not abandoned us. He is everywhere among us.”
“Everywhere and nowhere,” William whispered. “Which is to say, He is absent. We must chart our own path free of the tyranny of Creation and invariant fate. You and I could have freed the world together, set it on a new path.” William rose to his feet, his voice pitching higher. “Instead you seek a rewinding of the Mainspring, to do again what that fool Brass Christ did two thousand years past. Let it run down, man! Let the world run down so that the Clockmakers will return.”
“We do not need the Clockmakers.” Hethor was tired, so very tired. “We need a world that works. Following God’s path, man can find his own way.”
On his lap, Arellya opened her eyes and stifled a groan.
“You are a hopeless and venal fool,” William said. “I cannot imagine why I ever sought you out. Heaven is a fraud and so are you.”
Hethor hugged Arellya and stared up at the sorcerer. “I do not know what is fraud and what is not. I only know what I must do. Please, let me pass. If you are correct, and God has indeed abandoned His Creation, all I shall do is make a fool of myself. If you are mistaken, then you might be glad to see things set to rights.”
“So pretty a plan. Such wise words.” William shook his ruined head sadly. “The world needs to be set to rights. What if you are wrong, but your interference only makes it worse?”
“Faith,” muttered Hethor, then struggled back to his feet. Arellya clung to his chest, her arms around his neck. “Have faith, sir.”
“Never.” The smile was unmistakable, even in the bloody violence of his face. “I am a Rational Humanist, perhaps the Rational Humanist.”
“Then at least let me pass like the gentleman you are.” Hethor bent to pick up his spear, and Arellya’s grip slipped. She tumbled free from his neck. William reached to grab her, to stop her, and their hands clasped—Hethor’s lover and his enemy, grasping one another’s wrists for a moment before she overbalanced him and they both slipped past the railing into the empty air.
Hethor was halfway to vaulting the railing after them when he caught himself.
What could he do to save her?
He could never even catch them on the way down. Only fall and watch his beloved die in the arms of a mad, mad sorcerer. Who was the Rational Humanist now?
That thought almost sent him over the rail again.
Instead Hethor sat, Arellya’s spear on his lap, to fold his face in his hands and scream his way to tears.
“THE HEART of God …” Step.
“Is the heart of the world.” Step.
“As man lives …” Step.
“So lives God.” Step.
“As God lives …” Step.
“So lives the world.” Step.
The words had become more of a curse than a prayer, but what else could Hethor do? He had to go on.
If he could create flowers on the ice, he could raise his beloved from the dead. All he had to do was find her body at the center of the world and pour his holy magic into her.
Hethor imagined Arellya and William lying in a tangle on some great balcony. They would be surrounded by angels crooning a requiem. Heaven’s light would play on his beloved, while William’s body rotted in shadow. He would approach with the gift of life in his hand and bend to kiss her brow. At his touch Arellya would be restored. He would cheat death and ignore the old fraud that was God, all in one mighty kiss.
She would breathe. She would open her eyes. She would call his name.
Hethor stepped onward, clinging to a dream he knew to be as false as William’s words.
THE DOWNWARD walk continued for what seemed a lifetime or more. Hethor passed through fire that raised blisters on his skin and set his clothes to smoldering. He passed through ice that cracked his lips and caused his hair to freeze and break off. He passed through giant gear trains of brass set so close to the stairs that to extend his hand would have been to lose his fingers.
Then he walked some more.
No further guardians troubled him. It was the distance itself and the tiny, private little hells of the journey, that should have persuaded Hethor to turn back. He needed Arellya, needed to see her face and touch her hair and leave one last gentle kiss on her cool forehead. All the rest of the world was dead to him.
When he came to the end, Hethor was surprised by it. At first he
did not recognize what lay before him.
Stair and shaft emerged from another rock layer into a domed cave much brighter than he had seen since leaving the surface. Far below, miles perhaps, though perspective and distance had tricked him time and time again on this journey, the brass shaft plunged into the center of a wide, textured plain covered with curved scorings. The stairway ended in a catwalk that extended in two directions over the vast surface.
Which had to be the Mainspring of the world, Hethor realized. It was a steel coil spring set upon its side.
He was seeing it for himself. Something that perhaps no one had seen since the Brass Christ—the legendary Mainspring. And he still did not have the Key Perilous, though the scar on his hand throbbed piteously.
“Arellya, I am here,” he shouted, then pounded down the stairs again. As he descended, he saw a small dot on the spring that must be the bodies of William and his beloved.
It is so huge, he thought. How would he ever have been expected to wind it with a key small enough to fit in his hands? The Key Perilous would have to be the size of Boston to even begin to have leverage enough to wind this spring.
On he plunged, racing from step to step. Somehow the spring did not get any closer, though the ceiling receded above him. He kept his eye on the spot that marked Arellya’s passing. That was where he would fall to his knees. That was where he would cry out his heartache. That was where he would lay himself down to die, releasing all the fear and pain and suffering that was in his body.
Eventually Hethor stepped off the stairs onto the catwalk. It was like being born anew, to leave that winding path of struggle for a level place. He looked up. Shaft and stair vanished into a misty darkness. Perhaps he was at the center of the world. If so, God had made it much like any other cavern, save for its size and the vast machinery that drove Creation. No choirs of angels awaited.
Below his feet lay the steel with Arellya’s body upon it. She had fallen straight and true to land near the base of the shaft. There was no sign of William.