Incarceron

by Catherine Fisher

  "There's just one thing."

  One hand on the door, Sia turned. "Yes?"

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  "Jared Sapiens. My tutor. I ..."

  "You won't need a tutor. I can teach you everything now."

  "I want him to stay." She said it firmly.

  The Queen stared straight back. "He's young for a Sapient. I don't know what your father was thinking of..."

  "He will stay." She made sure it was a statement, not a question.

  The Queen's red lips twitched. Her smile was pleasant. "Whatever you say, my sweet. Whatever you want."

  ***

  JARED PLACED the scanner on the door frame, opened the tiny casement, and sat on the bed. The room was sparse, as perhaps the Court thought a Sapient's cell should be, with wooden floorboards and dark paneling topped with trefoils and crude roses.

  It smelled of rushes and damp, and seemed bare enough, but he had already removed two small listening devices and there might be others. Still, he had to take the chance.

  He took out the Key and held it, activating the speechlink.

  Nothing but darkness.

  He touched it again, concerned: The darkness grew to a wide circle but remained dark. Then, very faintly, he saw the edge of a crouching figure in it. "We can't talk," it whispered. "Not now."

  "Then listen." Jared kept his voice low. "This may help. A combination of two, four, three, one on the touch panel produces a dampening field. Any surveillance system will lose

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  track of you, completely. You'll disappear from its scanners. Do you understand, that?"

  "I'm not stupid." Keiro's scornful whisper barely came through.

  "Have you found Finn?"

  Nothing. They'd switched off.

  Jared linked his fingers and swore softly in the Sapient tongue. Outside the window, the voices of people rose up, some fiddlers in the distant gardens scraping a jig.

  There would be dancing tonight to welcome the bride of the Heir.

  And yet if the old man Bartlett had been right, the real Heir was still alive, and Claudia was convinced it was this boy Finn. Jared shook his head, unfastening the collar of his coat with long fingers. She wanted it so much. His doubts would have to stay silent, because without this hope, she would have nothing. And after all, it was possible, just possible, that her instinct was right.

  "wearily, he leaned back against the stiff bolster, took the medication pouch from his pocket, and prepared the dose. It was three grains stronger now, and had been for the last week, but the pain that lived deep in his body seemed still to grow slowly, like a living thing; he sometimes thought that it devoured the drug, that he was feeding its appetite.

  He applied the syringe, frowning. These were morbid and foolish ideas.

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  But when he lay back and slept, he dreamed for a moment that an eye, scarlet as galaxies, had opened in the wall and looked at him.

  ***

  FINN WAS desperate; he held the ring high. "Take it and let us

  The Eye zoomed in, examined it closely. "Do you believe this object is of some value? "

  "It contains a life. Trapped inside."

  "How apposite. As all your lives are trapped inside me."

  He was shivering. Surely if Keiro was listening, he would act now. If he was here.

  Gildas understood. He must have, because he snapped loudly,

  "Take it! let us go."

  "As I took Tribute from Sapphique? As I took this?" In the clotted hide of the Beast a glimmer of light opened; they saw a tiny frail bone, embedded deep.

  Gildas murmured a prayer of awe.

  "How small it is!" The Beast considered it. "And yet how much pain it cost Let me see this trapped life."

  It slid the tendril closer. Finn gripped the ring in his fist, his sweat making it slippery. Then he opened his hand.

  At once, the Eye blinked. It widened, contracted, stared around. From the Beast's throat a whisper slid like oil, a puzzled, fascinated demand.

  "How did you do that? Where are you?"

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  A hand clamped over Finn's mouth; as he convulsed around he saw Attia, one finger on her lips in warning. Behind her Keiro stood, the Key held tight in one hand, a flamethrower in the other.

  "You are invisible!" The Beast sounded appalled. "This isn't possible!"

  A mass of tentacles streamed out from it, groping formations of tiny spiders sticky with thread. Finn stumbled back.

  Keiro shouldered the flamethrower. "If you want us," he said calmly, "here we are."

  A burst of flame roared across Finn; the Beast howled with rage. In an instant the cavern was an explosion of panicking, screeching birds and bees and bats released from shape and order; they arced and flapped and spiraled high into the cavern roof, beating themselves senselessly against rock.

  Keiro whooped with delight. He fired again, a burst of yellow flame, and the Beast was a clattering cascade of fragments, of scorched skin and tumbling rock, its red Eye nothing but a tiny explosion of gnats that split in frenzied fear.

  The flames sizzled, hit walls, and rebounded in sudden heat. "Leave it!" Finn yelled. "Let's get out!"

  But the roof and floor were tilting, the crack closing around them.

  "I may not be able to see you, "the Prison remarked acidly through the uproar, "but you re in here, and I will hold you tight, my son."

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  Back to back it forced them together, spiraling in, the cave walls falling, slabs of the roof crashing down. Finn grabbed for Attia's hand in the chaos. "Stay together!"

  "Finn." Gildas's voice was choked. "In the wall. Up there."

  For a moment Finn had no idea what he meant; then he saw it. A fissure sloping up.

  Instantly Attia pulled herself free. She ran and leaped; catching at the jutting facets, she dragged herself above the whipping tentacles, climbing the very scales of the Beast itself.

  He shoved Gildas after her; the old man clambered awkwardly but with desperate vigor, lumps of stone and gems rolling and sliding under his hands.

  Finn turned.

  Keiro had the weapon ready. "Go on! It's searching for us!"

  Incarceron was blinded. He saw how parts of the Beast reformed, a claw, a tail, how it groped and lashed in the darkness. It felt them on its skin, sensed the vibrations of their movement. He wanted to ask Keiro how he had done this, but there was no time, so he turned and scrambled after Gildas,

  Minute by minute the wall was changing, re-forming and rippling, tilting itself straighter as if the Beast reared up, twisting itself around to tear them from its back. High into the cavernous spaces it took them, hanging on, and as Finn stared up he saw cracks of light up there, pinpricks of brilliance, and for a giddy moment he was among the stars, and then one swiveled over him and it was a searchlight,

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  silvering his hands and face as he gasped, helplessly exposed.

  Attia turned, her face a blur. "Slow down! We have to stay near the Key!"

  Keiro was climbing far below, the flamethrower cast aside. As the ridged hide rippled he slipped, one foot scraping into space, and maybe the Beast felt that, because it hissed, and the air steamed with sudden fumes.

  "Keiro!" Finn turned. "I'll have to go back for him."

  Attia squirmed down. "No. He can manage."

  Keiro clung right. He pulled himself back; the Beast quivered. Then it laughed, that sinister chuckle Finn remembered so well. "So you have some device to mask yourselves with. I congratulate you. But I certainly intend to discover what it is."

  Dust fell; a shaft of light. "Wait!" Finn yelled at Gildas; breathlessly the old man shook his head.

  "I can't hang on anymore."

  "You can!"

  He gave Attia a desperate look; she hauled Gildas's arm over her shoulders and said', "I'll stay with him."

  He almost fell down to where Keiro hung, grabbed him with one hand and clung to him. "It's useless! There's no way out."

  "There
has to be," Keiro gasped. "Don't we have a Key?"

  He wriggled it out and Finn's hand caught it; for a moment they were both holding it. Then Finn snatched it and held it away. He pressed every button, jabbed at the eagle, its sphere, its crown. Nothing. As the Beast lashed under them he shook

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  the Key, swore at it, and felt the warmth of it grow suddenly in his hands, overheating with an ominous whine. With a yelp he juggled it; it burned him.

  "Use it!" Keiro yelled. "Melt the rock!"

  Finn clamped the Key to the cave side. Instantly it hummed and clicked.

  Incarceron screamed. A howl of anguish. Rocks clattered down, Atria shouted from above. As Finn stared, a great white slit unzipped in the wall like a rip in the fabric of the world.

  ***

  THE WARDEN stood with Claudia at the window and looked down on the torchlit revelry. "You did well," he said gravely. "The Queen is pleased."

  "Good." Claudia was so tired, she could barely think.

  "Tomorrow, perhaps we ... He stopped.

  A shrill, urgent bleep. Insistent and loud. Startled, Claudia stared around. "What's that?"

  Her father stood very still. Then he reached into his waistcoat pocket and took out his watch, and with a click of his thumb, sprang the gold case open. She saw the handsome dial, the time. Quarter to eleven.

  But this was no chime. It was an alarm.

  The Warden stared. When he looked up, his eyes were cold and gray. "I have to go. Good night, Claudia. Sleep well."

  Astonished, she watched him stride to the door. "Is it ... is it the Prison?" she said.

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  He turned, his gaze sharp. "What makes you say that?"

  "The alarm .. , I've never heard it before ..."

  He was watching her. She cursed herself. Then he said, "Yes. There seems to be an incident. Don't worry. I'll see to it personally."

  The doors closed after him.

  For a moment she stayed there, frozen. She stared at the wooden panels; then, as if the stillness galvanized her into action, she grabbed a dark shawl, wrapped it around herself, and flung herself at the door, opening it quickly.

  He was well down the gilt corridor, walking fast. As soon as he rounded the corner, she ran after him, breathless, silent on the soft carpets. Her image flickered in dim mirrors.

  At the side of a great china vase a curtain swirled; slipping behind it she found herself at the top of a dim flight of spiral stairs. She waited, her heart hammering, watching his dark figure descend below, and she saw he was running, a quick, agitated step. Hurriedly she edged down after him, around and around, one hand on the damp rail, until the gilt walls became brick and then stone, the steps hollowed with use, slimed with green lichen.

  It was cold down here, and very dark. Her breath clouded. She shivered and wrapped the shawl tight.

  He was going to the Prison.

  He was going to Incarceron!

  Faint, very far ahead, the alarm was bleeping, loud and urgent, a relentless panic.

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  These were the wine cellars. They were huge chambers, vaulted, piled with barrels and casks, wiring snaking down their walls, hung with white salts that had oozed from the brickwork. If it was Protocol, it was very convincing.

  Peering around a stack of casks, she made herself keep still.

  He had come to a gate.

  It was green bronze, set deep in the wall, glistening with snail trails, corroded with age. Great rivets studded it. Rusted chains hung across it. With a silent leap of her heart she saw the Havaarna eagle, its outspread wings almost lost under layers of verdigris.

  Her father glanced around and she ducked back, breathless. Then he tapped a swift combination into the globe the eagle held; she heard a click.

  Chains slid and swung, crashing down.

  In a shower of spiderwebs and snails and dust y the gate juddered open.

  She leaned out, desperate to see what lay behind, to see Inside, but there was only darkness and a smell, a sour, metallic stink, and she had to dive back hastily as he turned.

  When she looked again he was gone, and the gate was closed.

  Claudia leaned back on the wet bricks and breathed out a soundless whistle of damp breath.

  At last. Finally.

  She had found it.

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  ***

  THE ALARM screamed in their teeth, in their nerves, in their bones. Finn thought it would bring on a fit; terrified, he scrambled for the slit, against the icy wind that howled through it.

  The Beast was gone. Even as Keiro climbed over Finn and grabbed Gildas, k dissolved; suddenly they were all tumbling in a cascade of fragments, and then they slammed against the wall, a chain of bodies held only by Finn's grip.

  He yelled with the agony. "I can't hold you!"

  "You bloody will!" Keiro gasped.

  Terror stretched him. Keiro's hand slid, an agonizing jerk. He couldn't do it. His hand scorched.

  A shadow fell on him. He thought it was the Beast's head, or a great eagle, but as he twisted in despair and stared up, he saw k swoop in through the slit, humming with contained power, a silver ship, an ancient sailing ship, its sails a patchwork of cobweb, its ropes tangled and dangling over the side.

  It loomed above them, and very slowly, a hatch opened in its base. A basket was lowered, swaying on four immense cables, and above it a face looked over the side of the ship, a hideous, gargoyle face, deformed by goggles and a bizarre breathing apparatus,

  "Get in," it rasped. "Before I change my mind."

  How they did it he had no idea, but in seconds Keiro had tumbled into the wildly rocking basket; Gildas hauled after him. Attia leaped, pausing only for a moment, and then Finn

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  let himself drop, his mind so black with relief that he fell without fear, and didn't feel himself land, until a welcome silence exploded into Keiro's yell in his ear. "Get off me, Finn!"

  He struggled up. Attia was bending over him, concerned. "Are you all right?"

  "... Yes."

  He wasn't, he knew, but he leaned past her to the edge and he looked over, giddy with the swaying, the icy wind.

  They were out of the Cave, above the plain, miles above the City. It lay like a toy on the plain, and from this height they could see the scorch marks and the fumaroles around it, as if the land itself was the skin of the Beast that rumbled beneath, fuming with wrath.

  Clouds wisped across, vapors of metallic yellow, a rainbow.

  Finn felt Gildas grab him, the old man's voice delirious with joy, snatched away by the wind. "Look up, boy! Sec! There are Sapienti still, with power!"

  He twisted his head. And saw, as the silver ship spiraled upward, a tower so narrow and impossibly high that it seemed like a needle balanced upright on a cloud, its top glimmering with light. He felt his breath frost and condense on the rail, crack and splinter, each ice shard polarized by the tower, each crystal aligned as if by a magnet. Gasping in the thin air, he gripped the old man's arm, shaking with cold and fear, not daring to look down again, seeing only the minure landing place at the needle's tip grow bigger, the slowly revolving globe at its apex.

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  And yet, high as they were, above them for miles and miles, the night of Incarceron extended into the freezing sky.

  ***

  THE HAMMERING woke Jared in a cold sweat of fear.

  For a moment he had no idea what it was, and then he heard her whisper, "Jared! Quickly, it's me!"

  He sat up and stumbled over, tugging the scanner off the frame, fumbling for the latch. As soon as he lifted it, the door flew open, almost hitting him in the face; then Claudia was inside, breathless and dust-smeared, a filthy shawl around her silk dress.

  "What is it?" he gasped. "Claudia, has he found out? Does he know we have the Key?"

  "No. No." She had no breath; she plumped down on the bed and bent double, clutching her side.

  "Then what?"

  She raised her hand, makin
g him wait; after a moment, when she could speak and looked up, he saw her face was lit with triumph.

  He stepped back, suddenly wary. "What have you done, Claudia?"

  Her smile was bitter. "What I've longed to do for years. I've found the door to his secret. The entrance to Incarceron."

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  A WORLD THAT HANGS IN SPACE.

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  ***

  "Where are the leaders?" Sapphique asked.

  "In their fortresses," the swan replied.

  "And the poets?"

  "Lost in dreams of other worlds."

  "And the craftsmen?"

  "Forging machines to challenge the darkness."

  "And the Wise, who made the world?"

  The swan lowered its black neck sadly.

  "Dwindled to crones and sorcerers in towers."

  --Sapphique in the Kingdom of Birds

  ***

  Finn carefully touched one of the spheres. It showed him his own face, swollen grotesquely in delicate lilac glass. Behind him he saw Attia come through the archway and stare around.

  ""What is this?" She stood amazed among the bubbles that hung from the ceiling, and he saw how clean she was this morning, her hair scrubbed, the new clothes making her seem younger than ever.

  "His laboratory. Look in here."

  Some of the spheres contained whole landscapes. In one, a colony of small golden-furred creatures slumbered peacefully

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  or dug in sandy hillocks. Atria spread her hands on it, flat on the glass. "It feels warm."

  He nodded. "Did you sleep?"

  "A bit. I kept waking up because it was so quiet. You?"

  He nodded, not wanting to say that his exhaustion had made him fall onto the small white bed and sleep at once, without even undressing. Though when he had woken this morning, he had found that someone had wrapped the blankets around him, and laid clean clothes on the chair in the bare white room. Had it been Keiro?

  "Did you see the man on the ship? Gildas thinks he's a Sapient."

  She shook her head. "Not without the facemask. And all he said last night was 'Take those rooms and we'll talk in the morning.'" She glanced over. "It was brave, going back for Keiro."

  They were silent for a while. He came around and stood next to her, and as they watched the animals scratch and roll, they became aware that beyond this globe was a whole chamber of glass worlds, aqua-green and gold and pale blue, each hanging from a fine chain, some tinier than a fist, others vast as halls, where birds flew, or fish swam, or billions of insects clouded and swarmed.