by D. P. Prior
“How the shog should I—?”
There was a crackle from beyond the iris valve, a burst of light, and a scream.
“Rugbeard!” Nameless cried as he ran through the aperture.
Albert rolled his eyes at Shadrak, and then they were off after the dwarf.
Shadrak was met with the impression of a vast space and the stench of roasting meat. Something silver flashed above him. Nameless roared and flung his axe. Metal struck metal, and sparks flew. The axe clanged to the floor, and the silver sphere it had struck whirred and gyred away in a spray of sparks. It flew in a wide arc, steadied itself, and then dived toward the dwarf. Shadrak’s hand came up with scarcely a thought, and the pistol bucked in his grip. There was a blinding flash, and silver rained down in a thousand pieces that clattered to the floor.
Shadrak threw himself into a roll and came up beside a pile of black ore. Pistol held in both hands, he scanned for any more of the things.
The others were grouped together around the charred and smoldering body of Rugbeard. Nameless dropped to one knee and let out a long, keening, moan. Albert glowered at the corpse, and Shadrak knew him well enough to realize it weren’t because the dwarf had been struck down; it was because the poisoner had been thwarted in some way. Had Rugbeard done something to offend him, something to draw his ire? Albert had a long memory, that’s for sure. He weren’t someone to get on the wrong side of. Shader just stood there, dumb, as if he’d barely even noticed.
Nothing. No movement. Shadrak made his way around the ore stack, trusting the cloak would keep him more-or-less invisible. They were in a chamber so massive he could barely see the far wall, and the entire floor space was littered with piles of black and green ore as tall as houses. A metallic rasp turned his head, and he swore as the iris valve snapped shut. High above, red lights blinked like evil stars, and smoke began to rise through grills set into the floor.
“What’s happening?” Albert said.
Shadrak looked to the others for an answer, but Shader was staring at the smoke coiling about his boots like a man consigned to the Abyss and despairing that anything could be done about it. Nameless was cradling Rugbeard and rocking back and forth. Smoke engulfed his great helm, as though a fire burned within. Sweat was streaming down Albert’s face.
“We have to get out,” Shadrak said, sprinting for the iris valve. There was a panel on the inside, but when he tried to move the symbols, they remained frozen. He stepped back and fired the pistol. Sparks flew, black smoke plumed from the panel, and the symbols died. The iris valve remained stubbornly shut.
“Now what?” Albert said.
It was hot. Too hot, and the soles of Shadrak’s feet were blistering through his boots. He shuffled from foot to foot and then started to run in a wide circle, just to break the contact with the floor. Albert followed suit, hopping and squawking like a deranged folk dancer.
“To the scarolite!” Nameless bellowed, setting Rugbeard down and barreling for an ore stack. He jumped onto its base and beckoned for the others to join him.
Albert made a beeline for the stack, but Shadrak veered toward Shader, grabbed his coat sleeve, and dragged him over to Nameless. The knight offered no resistance, but neither did he seem to appreciate the danger he was in. Shogging useless scut, far as Shadrak were concerned, but if keeping him alive would get the Archon off his back, get this whole farce over and done with, then he didn’t see he had much choice.
The instant he set foot on the scarolite, Shadrak breathed a sigh of relief.
“Best insulator there is,” Nameless said, by way of explanation.
It was a brief respite. The heat continued to rise, and the air grew thinner. High above, another silver sphere swooped into view and began to circle the ore stack. Shadrak fired, but the pistol only clicked in response. That can’t have been right. No way he could’ve been out. Unless… When he’d fled the creature in New Jerusalem, he’d switched cartridges so’s he wouldn’t run out of bullets. When he’d reloaded again in the back of the wagon, he must have put the near-empty one back by mistake. Cursing, he fumbled in his belt pouch for another. A nozzle emerged from the sphere, and fire crackled from it. With blinding speed, Nameless swept up his axe and deflected the beam, then yelped and dropped the weapon. The axe head was glowing red.
The sphere circled them and then soared toward Albert.
Shadrak snapped a fresh cartridge in place and let rip with three shots. The first two ricocheted from the outer casing, but the third sent the sphere whirling and shrieking to the far side of the stack.
“Bugger,” Albert said, pointing at the far wall.
Brownish-yellow gas was cascading down from vents and rolling out across the floor.
“If that’s what I think it is—”
“What, Albert?” Shadrak demanded. “What is it?”
“If you get a whiff of horseradish, ask me again. Although, if the concentration’s high enough, you might not get the chance.”
Shadrak cast his eyes around frantically. There weren’t no way out he could see; no exit save for the iris valve, and that was a dead end.
A whining, droning sound reached his ears, and the silver sphere spun into view. It dropped a few feet, righted itself, and then started to rise in fits and starts.
A carpet of dirty gas was inching its way across the chamber, and more of the stuff was flooding out from the far wall.
Albert was scurrying up the ore stack toward its summit some twenty feet above the floor. “Once there’s enough volume, it’ll start to rise,” he said.
Shader curled his fingers around the hilt of his gladius. He winced and gritted his teeth. He tried to draw the sword but finally let go, nursing his blistered palm.
Nameless climbed up after Albert, sure-footed as a mountain goat. Shadrak saw no choice but to follow him. Far as he was concerned, Shader could do what the shog he liked. Situations like this, it was every man for himself.
At the top, he leaned back to look up. The ceiling was maybe fifty feet above, crisscrossed with girders, and there was a circular opening just shy of the ore stack, toward which the silver sphere was heading. On instinct, Shadrak holstered his gun and leapt from the summit. He caught hold of the sphere, and it spat fire at him, singeing the hood of his cloak. Grabbing the nozzle, he ripped it from its socket amid a spray of sparks. The sphere emitted a shrill cry and shot upward. Shadrak clung on by the tips of his fingers.
As it cleared the opening, Shadrak glimpsed a dark shape crouched by the edge, looking down, a gun clutched in one slender hand. Its featureless black head lifted, but it seemed confused, unsure of where to focus. In that instant, Shadrak let go of the sphere. As he fell, he reached for his holster. The pistol came up and kicked in his hand. At the same moment, a hammer blow struck him in the shoulder. He missed his tumble and smacked face first into the floor, the gun scooting away from him.
Blood pounded in his ears, and he struggled to breathe. Hot wetness soaked through his shirt, drenching the concealer cloak. He rolled over, drawing a dagger as he scrabbled into a sitting position.
The creature lay on its back, its chest rising and falling to the accompaniment of gurgling, sloshing breaths. Its gun was a couple of feet from its twitching fingers.
“Laddie?” Nameless called from below.
“Shadrak!” Albert cried. “The gas is rising!”
Pain tore through Shadrak’s shoulder as he crawled toward the creature. There was a hole punched clean through its chest, but even as he watched, the wound was starting to close up. With a desperate lunge, he fell on the thing and stabbed it in the head over and over and over and over. Then, taking no chances, he hacked repeatedly at its neck until the head came away, and he tossed it to the chamber below.
“Lovely!’ Albert called up. “Now get us out of here!”
Numbness seeped from Shadrak’s shoulder into his arm. Gasping for every breath, he crawled over to his pistol and holstered it, but when he went to pick up the creature’s weapon,
it burst into flame and was instantly reduced to a pile of dust.
“Shadrak!” Albert’s voice was shrill.
“Laddie?”
“Hang on,” Shadrak muttered under his breath. He didn’t have the strength to call back.
He turned a slow circle on his knees until he located a glowing panel on a plinth beside the lip of the opening. A red light blinked above the main display. He used the plinth to pull himself upright with his good arm. His fingers flicked over the symbols of their own accord, turning them green, and there was a droning sound from above. Looking up, he saw another opening in the ceiling, through which a metal disk descended. As it passed down to the chamber below, his jaw dropped. There was nothing attached to the disk—no cable, no rope; the thing was just floating on air.
“Get on!” he yelled, voice hoarse and grating.
“It’s below the level of the gas,” Albert called back. “What do we—”
Shadrak wanted to shout, “Shog off and die,” but instead he clung to the plinth as his knees buckled. His breaths came in ragged gasps. If the bleeding could be stopped, he’d recover; he knew that. He’d had worse before and lived to tell the tale.
He could hear Albert’s protests from below, and then Nameless barked, “Get the shog on! All right, laddie, bring us up!”
How? How could he… But already his fingers were working the symbols, as if he’d done this all his life. He heard the whine of the disk coming back up, then he made a few more swipes. The blinking red light went out, and Shadrak slid down the plinth to lie limply on the floor. Coldness spread through his limbs, and he retreated into the warmth behind his eyelids. Kadee’s smiling face was there waiting for him.
“No, Shadrak,” she said. “Not now, little fellah. Not now.”
Something rocked him.
“Shadrak?” It was Albert.
“Laddie? Laddie, are you all right?”
Someone knelt beside his head. He opened an eye a crack—all he could manage. Shader, opening a book, starting to read from it.
“Oh, no,” Shadrak rasped. “No you shogging don’t.”
He tried to move, but Albert leaned in close and restrained him. “I can stem the flow of blood. Just keep still.”
Albert unclasped Shadrak’s concealer cloak and took a knife from his baldric to cut up the fabric. Shadrak didn’t even have the energy to complain, and there weren’t no point asking why Albert hadn’t cut a swath from his own fancy suit.
“That the thing that attacked you in the city?” Nameless asked.
Shadrak grunted that it was and tried to focus his eyes on the headless body. He half-expected it to sprout a new head, but thankfully it looked as dead as a decapitated shogger should look.
“Best leave me here when you’re done,” he said.
“Oh no,” Albert said. “You’re coming with us. No one else knows how to use these panels.”
“Too weak, Albert. You need to find Gandaw, stop the Unweaving.”
Nameless walked over to the opening and peered down. “Gas has cleared,” he said. Then he was on his belly for a better look. “And the iris valve’s open. Was that you?”
Shadrak nodded. “Just don’t ask me how.”
Shader stood and put his book away. “Can you send this disk down again?”
“If someone holds me up long enough to work the panel. Why?”
“Albert,” Shader said. “Think you can drive that mine cart?”
Albert scoffed. “If a drunken sot like…” He glanced at Nameless, who was climbing back to his feet, thought better of it, and concluded, “I think so.”
“Take Shadrak back to city. There’s nothing more he can do here.”
“And I’m a useless waste of space?” Albert said, finishing packing Shadrak’s wound and starting to wrap strips of concealer cloak about it. “Is that what you’re implying?”
Nameless stepped up close to him. “It’s for the best, laddie. You’ll see. Saving the world is dwarf’s work.”
“And what about Shader?” Albert said. “What about the sword he can no longer use?”
“We’ll cross that bridge, when we come to it,” Nameless said.
Once Albert had finished tying off the improvised bandages, Nameless helped Shadrak to stand over the panel.
“When we’re on the disk,” Shadrak said to Shader, “slide these two symbols together; they should turn green, which means you’re good to go, then swipe them toward the bottom of the glass like this.” He demonstrated without actually moving the symbols.
Shader nodded that he understood, and then Albert helped Shadrak onto the disk.
It was a shogging embarrassment, limping from the fray and dependent upon a homicidal chef for your survival, but at the end of the day, when you’re done, you’re done. Still, despite the world being about to end and Shadrak not being able to do a thing about it, he felt a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as the disk started to descend. Least he’d taken down that shogger. It had been fast. Faster than he could have imagined, but when push came to shove, he’d been better, and that’s the way he liked it.
ROOTS OF THE MOUNTAIN
Shader knew he had to focus, had to find the fire to go on, but at his core there was a mire sucking him in on himself.
He was dimly aware of Nameless stomping ahead, and the clangor of their footfalls on the cold steel floor. They passed through shimmering halls that loomed at the edges of his perception, and along passageways straight from nightmare that seemed to lead nowhere.
The roots of Gandaw’s mountain were a warren, though it was a warren with design. The halls were the hubs, with the corridors the spokes, uniformly gray and flanked by an endless succession of sliding doors like those in Shadrak’s plane ship. Soft light bled from glowing panels, and strips of crystal glared starkly overhead. Ribbed tubing of some sleek material ran the length of the ceilings, and at every intersection, a silver globe hung down from a sinuous stalk, each with a winking red light that reminded Shader of the coal-fire eyes of Callixus and the knights of the Lost. It set him on a train of thought that he, too, was lost, and in his case, the gravity of guilt was that much greater. The Lost, after all, had been compelled.
As a peripheral part of his consciousness monitored their passage, he relived the beating he’d taken at Sarum all those years ago, felt every blow and the even graver injury of failure. He’d wanted to take the punishment in atonement for his sins, wanted so badly to imitate his beloved Nous. Only, it had been a self-willed delusion. He’d had no real faith; just the desire for what he’d seen in others, men like Ludo, the Gray Abbot, even the grandmaster, Ignatius Grymm. His blood boiled as he once more soaked in the icy fire of vengeance that had never been fully extinguished, even after he’d gone back and given far worse than he’d got.
But what he’d done to the wharfies back then paled in comparison with what he’d done to the soldiers outside the jail. Had experience taught him nothing? And what hurt most, more than the humiliation of being helpless beneath the pummeling fists of the guards, was the fact that, for all his theology, all his acts of heroic virtue, he was the same enraged boy who’d wanted nothing more than to bash Brent Carvin’s head to a pulp for killing his dog. Ain’s teeth, he could have foregone all the discipline, all the forced piety, and still ended up just the same. It was in the blood, and nothing was going to change it. He wanted to say he was Jarl’s boy through and through, but that would have been doing his father a disservice.
And Gralia… There was no need to guess what his mother would have thought. He started to picture himself before her, and the shame sent a single tear beading down his cheek.
Ludo’s voice insinuated its way into the turmoil; it was the voice of the gentle confessor, the ever-understanding spirit of Nous. It pointed out the losses, made them an excuse for his anger: Osric, Maldark, the knights of the White Order—lads he’d been responsible for and then abandoned.
“Not your fault,” Ludo would have said, but Shader begged
to differ.
No wonder Rhiannon had rejected him. It didn’t matter that Huntsman and Aristodeus were behind it; give her time, and she’d have done it anyway. You can only fool people for so long, and if anyone could see through his charade of holiness, it was Rhiannon. But that still didn’t explain why she’d pallied up with the philosopher; why she’d agreed to go off with him. The pang of jealousy that twisted up Shader’s guts was just ludicrous. What was more important was what Aristodeus was up to. Had he given up on Shader? Was Rhiannon part of some new and desperate plan? There was no doubt she was the better choice. Shader knew he’d been a disappointment, knew he’d gone from one failure to the next, so that now he couldn’t even wield the sword he’d been nurtured for, right when he needed it the most.
What galled him more than anything, though, was that he knew he was despairing and could do nothing to shake himself out of it. Its numbing strands were almost palpable, wrapping themselves around his limbs like creepers smothering a tree. With a burst of anger, he might have thrown them off, but the only rage he could muster was aimed at himself. Even stronger was the impulse to simply lie down and let whatever was about to happen go ahead without him. He was too tired. Tired of being tasked, whichever way he turned; tired of being Aristodeus’s puppet; tired of the very contradictions that seemed to define him. Nous, he was starting to sound like the dwarves of Arx Gravis, apathetic, afraid to act out of fear of deception.
You’re hardly to blame for that, Ludo’s voice rolled across his thoughts, full of cloying empathy and an even bigger dose of naiveté.
Yes, he was to blame. Shader willed his legs to go on, all the while telling himself he was succumbing to the wiles of the Demiurgos, and at the same time not believing a word of it. The torment had to stop, one way or the other, and right now he didn’t care how.
Nameless held him back with an arm across the chest. Up ahead, a tiny man no bigger than Shadrak came through an open door pushing a metal trolley. He was dressed head-to-foot in gray. A white mask covered his mouth and nose, and his eyes were enclosed in clear goggles. Surgical instruments lay atop the trolley, and on the shelf beneath, Shader caught sight of pink-stained tubing and a glass bell jar smeared with blood. There was something red and misshapen within, but before he could get a good look, the man wheeled the trolley down an adjacent corridor.
