by Rod Rees
‘But what about the WFA? They’ve been offered sanctuary by the Coven.’
‘I don’t think you need worry too much about them: by the look of things there’s been some hard fighting in the Ghetto.’ He pointed to the smudge of flames that lit up the night in the direction of the Boundary. ‘No, I don’t think too many of the WFA are going to get out of that Hel-hole.’
Vanka was right: even from a height of – Ella guessed – two thousand feet and a distance of two or three miles, the sound of the armies fighting it out in the Ghetto was plainly audible.
Despite Vanka’s confidence that the east wind would drive them towards ExterSteine, progress was agonisingly slow. The balloon seemed caught in a vortex of wind, spinning indecisively over the Rhine where the Reinhard Heydrich Railway Bridge crossed the river, giving the three passengers a marvellous view of the frantic efforts of the railway engineers who were trying to clear the carcass of the train derailed by Baron Dashwood’s men.
At first their sedate progress didn’t trouble Ella, but as time slipped by and the balloon refused to move at anything more than the aeronautical equivalent of a snail’s pace she became increasingly anxious. Vanka was obviously as worried as she was: he began to drum his fingers on the side of the wicker basket.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
‘There’s so much snow on the top of the balloon that it’s slowing us down. I’m worried that if we aren’t on the ground by dawn the wind will shift to the south and that will take us towards the centre of the Demi-Monde.’ He passed Ella his telescope. ‘If you look to your right, you can just see Mare Incognitum.’
Ella peered through the snow-drenched night, and sure enough, glinting in the moonlight was a large lake – at least two miles across, by her estimation – set slap bang in the middle of the Demi-Monde. She checked PINC, but all the information it had was that the centre of the Hub was an undeveloped area off-limits to Demi-Mondians and allocated to ABBA for future cyber-development. Rather disturbingly PINC named this area Terror Incognita.
‘Is that a problem?’
‘I don’t know how long this balloon is going to stay airborne: I think we’ve got a leak. And the last thing I want to do is come down in Terror Incognita.’
‘Why’s it called Terror Incognita? What’s there to be terrified of?’
‘The Terror’s full ov monsters an’ lots ov ovver horrible fings—’ began Rivets.
‘No one knows,’ Vanka interrupted. ‘Explorers have crossed the Wheel River but none of them has ever come back. And this Winter the ForthRight sent in a regiment of SS to have a look around and they were lost too. All we really know about the place comes from the drawings Speke made during his balloon ascent last year.’
‘And that is?’
‘Not much. We know that it’s heavily forested and that it’s home for one of the Wonders of the Ancient Demi-Monde. You can just see the Great Pyramid now, it’s almost directly south.’
Ella swung the telescope around and examined the horizon. PINC had made no mention of any pyramid but there, nevertheless, illuminated by the moonlight was a structure that looked for all the world like Khufu’s Great Pyramid. But it wasn’t the eroded and corroded monument Ella remembered from her history books; this one was white, sharp-sided and pristine. She didn’t remember Khufu’s pyramid having a hexagonal platform at its very summit either.
How odd.
‘It’s glowing!’
‘Everything made out of Mantle-ite glows in the dark. In the dark it emits green stuff scientists called LunarAtion. It’s the same effect you saw in the sewers.’
As she moved the telescope around the central area of the Demi-Monde, she saw several huge pictures drawn on the ground around Mare Incognitum. From what she could make out there was a spider, a snake, a shark and what looked like a man, and each of them was a good two or three miles in length and, just like the pyramid, they glowed under the moonlight. ‘Wow! Those pictures are like the Nazca geoglyphs.’
‘Oh, you mean the Speke Etchings. Yeah, we didn’t even know they existed until a year ago. As they’re invisible from ground level they were undiscovered until Speke went up in his balloon.’
‘Who made them?’ She had to ask because according to PINC they didn’t exist.
‘No one knows.’
‘They’re amazing. I’d really love to see them up close.’
There was a ripping sound from above Ella’s head. She looked up to see that part of the balloon’s canvas had torn away.
‘It looks, Ella, as though you’re going to get your wish.’
That the Baron and his men got as far as they did without any trouble was down to the Poles: the Baron had never realised just how much cheek, how much chutzpah Poles had. They were the ones who shouted the ribald replies to the SS guards when they were challenged and the ones who laughed and joked as they marched along, deluding the SS into believing they were just reinforcements on their way to the front. By dint of the Poles’ impertinence and by not firing at anyone the Baron’s regiment made it safely through the Ghetto, out through Southgate, along Odessa’s Deribasovskaya Street, and across the new railway track. And that’s when things had gone wrong. Obviously the ForthRight military had been shaken by Cassidy’s train attack and their reaction had been to dramatically increase the number of soldiers guarding the railway line.
Unfortunately the sentry whom Cassidy tripped over was young, overeager and one of the few men in his company who wasn’t drunk. The boy had been cowering away from the blizzard in the lee of a water tower when Cassidy, frozen and not in a very accommodating mood, fell over him. The conversation that ensued was brief and noisy.
‘Who goes there?’ said the boy through chattering teeth.
‘Someone who’s not as stupid as you are, that’s for sure,’ snarled Cassidy as he hauled himself out of the snowdrift he’d been tumbled into. ‘Spirits damn it, boy, what are you doing hiding away like that?’
The boy, with a terrified look on his face, did his best to face Cassidy down. ‘I-I-I s-s-said who goes there?’
‘Why-why-why,’ Cassidy mimicked a little unkindly, ‘should I tell a f-f-fucking idiot like you anything?’
‘Be-be-because I’m guarding this water tower.’
‘Well, P-P-Private, I’m Sergeant B-B-Bob Cassidy of the First Anglo Rangers and me and my f-f-friends have been ordered to get our a-a-asses over to Hub Bridge Number Two to help with the attack there.’
Cassidy was betrayed by the want of a button. If his ragged greatcoat still had had some of its buttons it wouldn’t have flapped open in the wind to display his blue jacket, the one he had worn when he had been fighting on the Royalist side during the Troubles. The boy saw the jacket, his eyes boggled and then he made what would prove to be a fatal mistake.
‘Royalists!’ he screamed. ‘We’re under attack by Royalists!’ And then to compound his mistake, he fired his rifle. By the time Cassidy had smashed his rifle butt into the boy’s head the damage had been done. The alert rippled around the ForthRight troops stationed along the railway line.
‘Royalists to me,’ screamed the Baron. ‘Captain Crockett, we’re to advance at the double, due south.’
The look he got from Crockett was very articulate. He knew as well as the Baron what lay to the south.
‘That’s the direction where there are the fewest enemy,’ the Baron shouted by way of explanation. ‘We’ll get to the Wheel River and then …’
It was lucky for the Baron that the shooting began when it did, otherwise he would have been forced to explain to Crockett just what he did plan to do. And if he had explained he doubted that Crockett or indeed any of his regiment would have followed him. But by his estimation a probable death was preferable to a certain one and, after all, someone, sometime had to survive Terror Incognita. He just hoped it would be him.
Fortunately for the balloonists, the blizzard eased and the wind shifted back, driving them to the east and blowing them – unnoticed in
the snow-filled darkness – a hundred feet over the campfires that marked the SS cordon around ExterSteine. When the wounded balloon finally expired, they came to rest, by Vanka’s estimation, about a half-mile to the west of ExterSteine. The landing was what Ella described as a ‘soft crash’: the basket hit the ground with a considerable bump but as the ground was covered with a thick layer of snow the impact was cushioned. The three of them emerged from the tangle of ropes and wreckage and pronounced themselves grateful that none had any broken limbs. Barely pausing for breath, they set off towards the five stone columns that made up ExterSteine and which could be seen glinting ahead of them in the dawn’s half-light.
Dawn.
As Ella looked to the east, she could see the unmistakable smudge of red light on the horizon signalling that dawn was imminent.
‘How long before sunup, Vanka?’ she whispered – sound travelled easily in the Hub – as she slid and slipped over the pristine snow of the Hubland.
‘Half an hour at the most.’
‘Not enough time.’
‘Maybe not to rescue Norma but maybe enough to stop the Rite of Transference.’
‘How do you figure that?’
‘I remember an article in The Stormer that described the rites Crowley performed to welcome the beginning of Spring. It said something about there being a window cut in the roof of the cavern set at the top of the tallest ExterSteine column and that it was through this window that the first light of the first day of Spring was directed. According to Crowley, this first light of Spring had great occult significance. Maybe if we can block the window we can stop the rite.’
They ran as hard as they could through the swirling snow and the faltering darkness, guided by the shimmering Mantle-ite columns, and as they came closer the other-worldliness of the structure became more apparent. ExterSteine was made up of five gigantic columns that stabbed like rigid fingers out from the middle of the flat, snow-dressed grassland that was the Hub, the Mantle-ite columns luminous in the darkness. Ella guessed the tallest column of the five – Lilith’s Column – stood over two hundred foot tall and was about a hundred foot in girth. Lights flickered at the summit.
A strange, eerie feeling washed over her.
She’d been here before. ‘
That’s where the Rite of Transference must be taking place,’ she called out. ‘That must be where Crowley conducts his rituals.’
Vanka pointed to a staircase that wound around the column. ‘And that’s the way up.’
Ella could only think that the rite being performed by Crowley was so secret that he wanted as few people to witness it as possible and that was why there were no SS StormTroopers guarding the staircase. Indeed, all the Hubland stretching out around ExterSteine seemed deserted, the snow untarnished by footprints or steamer tracks.
Climbing the column was tough: the stairs were steep, the steps slippery with ice and snow, and the savage wind buffeted them every step of the way, but there was no time to pause for breath. As she climbed she couldn’t resist the temptation to drift her fingers over the runic inscriptions etched over the surface of the Mantle-ite column. And though the runes were written in the untranslatable Pre-Folk A and though even PINC couldn’t provide her with an interpretation of what the inscriptions said, she knew what was written there … knew that once she had spoken this strange language.
In Lilith | I, Loki, was reborn.
And reborn | Lilith scorned
ABBA’s harmony. | Through Lilith’s
sorcery | the harmony
was destroyed.
Harmony she said | is the iced touch
of the ideal. | The dead hand
the frozen soul | the unvoiced idea
the unfurling | of the flower
never blossoming.
To build | anew
Lilith | in her quiet fury
razed. | This is the first truth.
To build | you must first destroy.
The ruined perfection of the Vanir erased.
She had no time to ponder on what was written: the dawn light that with every passing minute advanced over the eastern horizon urged her on. Time was short. Desperately she pushed her protesting body up the stairs until she arrived, breathless, panting and dizzy from her exertions, at the flat, circular top of the column that tilted towards the rising sun. She found herself standing on the summit of the world.
Ella hated heights and she had never been anywhere where her feeling of vertigo was so intense. The Demi-Monde stretching out below her seemed a very long way down and she was made to feel even more vulnerable by the way the wind whistled around her as she struggled to keep her footing on the slick Mantle-ite.
‘Over there,’ Vanka shouted over the howling gusts. ‘To the east. The shutters must be over there.’
Leaning into the wind, they pushed their way to the eastern side of the column. Vanka was right: a pair of great wooden shutters covered that side, facing towards the rapidly rising sun. There was a huge wooden lever next to them that presumably operated the shutters.
Why aren’t they guarded?
Vanka whipped his belt from around his waist. ‘If we tie this around the handles of the shutters that’ll stop them being opened!’
His explanation was interrupted by the unmistakable sound of a revolver being cocked. They looked up to see Burlesque Bandstand – a much thinner-faced Burlesque Bandstand, it had to be said – wrapped in a dublonka, sitting with his legs dangling carelessly over the side of the column, and brandishing a purposeful-looking Webley pistol in their direction. By the light of the rising sun Ella could see there was a body of a dead SS StormTrooper beside him.
He raised the pistol and took careful aim at Vanka’s forehead.
‘‘Appy First ov Spring, Wanker, you bastard.’
Empress Wu was holding court in the Shwedagon Palace which dominated East Rangoon. After the cramped hustle and bustle of the Rookeries the huge gardens that surrounded the Palace came as a surprise to Trixie: she found it difficult to believe there could be anywhere in the Demi-Monde so profligate with space. It was as though she were walking through a place that was in the Demi-Monde but not of the Demi-Monde.
Once inside the Palace she was ushered briskly along the brilliantly decorated corridors until she was brought to a halt before two vast and richly embossed doors. First Deputy Borgia turned to her. ‘This is the Hall of the Great Dragon. Beyond these doors is seated the Sacred Presence of the Great Empress Wu. You will address the Great Empress as “Your Imperial Majesty”. You will approach the Great Empress Wu with your eyes averted: under no circumstances are you to gaze on her Divine Form directly. When you reach the black line inscribed across the floor of the hall you are to genuflect …’
‘Kneel? Colonels in the WFA don’t kneel to anyone.’
‘Please, Colonel, try to understand. This is Coven protocol, it cannot be changed.’
Oh yes it can, decided Trixie as she gave the First Deputy a nod of acceptance.
‘Under no circumstances are your knees, your hands or any other parts of your body to cross that line. You may answer the questions posed to you by Her Imperial Majesty but whilst you may answer her questions …’
‘Under no circumstances am I to address her directly,’ suggested Trixie peevishly. She was too tired for this nonsense.
‘Indeed. You may use your inferior Anglo tongue when making your replies: the Empress Wu is familiar and fluent in all of the primitive languages of the Demi-Monde.’ The First Deputy glanced disdainfully at Wysochi. ‘Your Preferred Male is not permitted to enter the Hall of the Great Dragon. Only Femmes and NoNs may gaze upon the Divine Form of the Empress.’
Instructions completed, the First Deputy made a sign to the two sentries guarding the entrance to the hall – both the guards were women, and both, Trixie noticed, were armed with brand new M4s – who hauled the doors open to reveal the vast hall beyond.
M4s …
Why would Heydrich have provided the Cov
en with M4s if he was about to make war on it?
Still pondering this, Trixie strode off across the beautifully inlaid teak floor towards the small woman she could see seated on a throne at the far side of the room.
By repute the Empress Wu was the most beautiful woman in the Demi-Monde, but as she was protected from any indiscreet peeking by drapes of sheer silk wafting in front of her Trixie was unable to confirm or deny the rumour.
She came to the black line the First Deputy had warned her about, and with just a moment’s hesitation dropped to her knees and bowed to the shadowed form of the Empress.
‘You are very young,’ observed a lilting, almost sing-song voice.
Trixie remained silent. In truth she didn’t quite know how to reply: she was young.
‘And very dirty.’
This too was correct. Looking down at her knees, Trixie could see that her filthy, matted trousers were leaving streaks of dirt on the immaculately polished floor.
‘But this, I suppose, is to be expected when one is confronted by a Femme so given to martial pursuits. I understand that you are a remarkably able soldier, Colonel Dashwood: is this true?’
There seemed to be little point in being modest. ‘Yes, Your Imperial Majesty, I have enjoyed some success in fighting the Anglos.’
‘But you are an Anglo yourself, are you not?’
‘I am, Your Majesty, but I have sworn to fight with the people of Warsaw against the tyranny of Reinhard Heydrich and UnFunDaMentalism.’
‘You have decidedly unForthRight views for one so young.’
