by Mark Hodder
The Aristocracy fared a little better. They became weak and suffered spells of dizziness and amnesia, but were at least able to function.
Meanwhile, Colonel Spearjab made no progress with his investigation. The two surviving assailants hadn’t been treated by any of the Magicians, or, it appeared, seen by anyone else.
Whatever had motivated the attempt on Clarissa’s life remained a mystery.
“There’ve been no further moves made against you,” I noted, “and none against Yissil Froon or anyone else. I wonder what our mysterious enemy is up to?”
We were walking home. Clarissa had taken a break from her ongoing research to join me for lunch at our local restaurant—a meal marred by bad service and which ended prematurely due to the establishment’s front window suddenly falling in, scattering shards of glass across the entire dining area.
Rather than responding to my musing, my friend, who’d been somewhat preoccupied throughout the meal, suddenly looked around as if only just realising where she was.
“The sky is red!” she murmured. “It’s late! I didn’t realise.”
“The suns are setting,” I said. “You’ve been holed away in that laboratory of yours for ages!”
A strong gust of wind whistled through the eaves of the buildings to either side of us. We’d opted to walk in the middle of the street in order to avoid falling roof tiles. There was little traffic—the city was becoming ever quieter and less active.
“Ages? Really? It doesn’t feel like it.”
“You’ve been busy, that’s why. I, on the other hand, have had very little to do and the time has dragged awfully.”
She didn’t answer.
I looked at her. “Clarissa?”
“Hmm?”
“Did you hear me? What’s wrong? You hardly said a word during lunch.”
She sighed and frowned. “I’m sorry, Aiden. I’m finding it almost impossible to think straight. I appear to have affixed on a memory and it’s replaying over and over, like an annoying tune that lodges itself in one’s head.”
“What memory?”
“Of the blueprints that Sir Philip Hufferton and I drew up when I was a youngster. I find myself dwelling on their every detail, their every line, and I can’t stop myself. I have no idea why.”
“Blueprints for what?”
“Extravagant war machines. Impractical, childish things. Why in Heaven’s name are they playing on my mind so?”
I shrugged. “I remember you mentioning them once. What caused you to recall them in the first place?”
“That’s the thing of it—nothing! They simply popped into my thoughts out of nowhere, and now they won’t go away!”
We stepped over the rubble of a fallen chimney.
“You’ve been working too hard,” I suggested.
“I’ll keep going until I drop, if necessary. Kichyomachyoma may not be fatal to the Yatsill but it’s debilitating enough to bring the city to a standstill.” She put a hand to her head. “I just wish my brain would cooperate with me.”
We arrived home and Clarissa resumed work in her laboratory with Mademoiselle Crockery Clattersmash, Father Spreadflower Meadows, and Father Tendency Clutterfuss. These three had been a constant presence in the house for no small amount of time now and I was beginning to feel a sense of camaraderie with them—even with Clattersmash, who’d so abruptly denied me my priesthood after the Ritual of Immersion. It was an affection I knew Clarissa felt more intensely—even to the point of real friendship—which, I suppose, was to be expected, as she was more or less constantly in their presence, working to the same end.
A little while after our return, there came knocking at our front door. I put aside the New Yatsillat Trumpet, left the lounge, and went to answer the summons. The wind had died and now yet another of the rainstorms was battering the city. The Koluwaian woman standing on our doorstep was drenched, with water streaming from her lank hair.
“I have a message from Father Mordant Reverie,” she said. “He would like you and Miss Stark to attend him at the Temple of Magicians immediately. The matter is urgent.”
Before I could invite her in to dry off, the Servant turned and disappeared into the monsoon-like downpour.
I closed the door and went to the laboratory. Clarissa and her three colleagues were bent over the paraphernalia of chemical research, each engrossed. I cleared my throat to attract her attention.
“What is it, Aiden?” she asked in an abstracted tone.
“Father Reverie wants to see us.”
She straightened and clicked her tongue impatiently. “I need to finish this analysis. I’m finding it difficult enough to concentrate as it is—I really don’t need to be interrupted. Confound it! Why is my mind obsessing so?” She thudded the base of her hand against her forehead. “It’s getting worse!”
“He wants us at the temple right now, Clarissa. Perhaps the distraction will do you good.”
She gave another inarticulate expression of exasperation and turned to Clattersmash. “Do you feel strong enough to continue for a little while, Mademoiselle? I notice you’re trembling.”
The Yatsill nodded. “I feel weak but I’ll carry on, my dear. Do you mind if I sleep in one of your rooms should I require respite?”
“Not at all. I’ll return as soon as I can.”
We took our leave of the Magicians and exited the house. While I held an umbrella over Clarissa, she unfurled and clipped down our autocarriage’s protective leather hood. We boarded the vehicle and set off with the torrent thundering so noisily on the skin roof we could barely converse. When we reached the main avenue, we found that it was practically a waterfall, so we abandoned the machine and jumped onto one of the new trams instead. It took us up to the third terrace with water sloshing noisily past its wheels. When the conveyance stopped we disembarked, and almost the instant we stepped into the flood, the rain ceased.
To our left—looking out over the rooftops—the choppy sea sparkled under the flushed, inexplicably cloud-free sky. The suns were already, for the most part, below the horizon, with just the molten smears of their apexes showing. Around us, the shadows were dense and purplish.
A short walk brought us to the temple. We mounted the steps and entered. My companion informed a Magician of our appointment. The Yatsill went away and returned a few moments later with Father Mordant Reverie, who said, “I must take you both to one of New Yatsillat’s highest towers that the Saviour’s Eyes may look upon you before they close.”
He turned us around and steered us back out, guiding us to an autocarriage parked nearby. We boarded it, he took the tiller, and moments later we were chugging back toward the avenue.
“Oh!” Clarissa suddenly cried out. She massaged her temples. “It’s stopped!”
“The blueprints?” I asked.
“At last!” she breathed. “I thought I was going insane! But—” She put her fingers to the bump above her right eyebrow.
Father Reverie turned his mask to her. “You feel your thoughts are being muffled, perhaps, Miss Stark?”
“Yes! As if my mind is being wrapped by a blanket.”
I looked at her, shocked. “Please! You’re not coming down with kichyomachyoma?”
“No, Aiden. This isn’t the sickness. It’s something else—a sort of suppression—and I sense it descending upon the whole city.”
Reverie clicked the fingers of his free hand together and said, “The Magicians are sequestered in the temples and are now extending the Saviour’s protection over the city. That is what you feel.”
There was less water cascading down the avenue now, and the autocarriage navigated the slope with minimal difficulty. The Magician drove us to the top level and stopped at a watchtower next to a paper mill.
“Come,” he said, and led us inside and up a long spiralling ramp. It eventually ended in a circular room with round widows set closely together in its walls. A huge lens stood before one of them, mounted on an ornate wheeled brass frame.
&n
bsp; From this height, a tremendous vista was open to us: the flame-coloured ocean with the blazing smudges at its horizon; the monumental cliffs at the outer edges of the bay; the broad terraces encrusted with buildings; the mountain range to the north; and a vast expanse of hills and plains beneath a sky that, landward, had now turned the deepest of crimsons and in which two of the moons were set close together.
Reverie pulled the lens to one of the seaward-facing windows. We moved to stand beside him and watched in silent contemplation as the two yellow suns slowly slipped out of sight, leaving a band of orange light over the sea.
The long day had finally ended.
He adjusted the glass and said, “Look.”
Peering through it, we saw that he’d focused the apparatus on the large crowd of kichyomachyoma-infected Working Class who stood at the seashore. One by one, they were slipping into the water, swimming out, and disappearing under the surface.
“Phenadoor embraces them,” he said. “They go to a better world.” He sighed. “As one of the Aristocrats, such rapture will never be mine. My fate lies elsewhere. I, and all the other Aristocrats, will eventually be taken.”
“By what?” Clarissa asked.
I expected her question to be answered with the infuriating evasiveness we’d become accustomed to. Instead, Reverie wheeled the lens to the other side of the room and gestured for us to join him there.
Puzzled, we did so and looked out over the rolling landscape. Three of the mammoth Yarkeen creatures were floating in the far distance. For what I guessed to be five minutes, nothing happened and the magician remained silent. Then he said, “That is what will dictate my future,” and pointed.
On the horizon, the tip of a burning orb suddenly rose into view.
I watched, dumbfounded.
It was a third sun, and it was gigantic—at least ten times larger than Earth’s.
It was blood red.
° °
7. Red
There was no night on Ptallaya!
The top edge of the gargantuan sun, a hellish inferno, erupted over the edge of the world. Inside the room, everything turned a vermillion hue. Outside, the landscape transformed.
I drew an unsteady breath. “What’s happening?”
Father Mordant Reverie gestured toward the mounted lens and said, “Use that.”
I reached for it and pulled the frame to the window. Magnified through the glass, I could see in better detail that the land beyond the city was undergoing a startling metamorphosis. The leaves of the various trees were turning black; thorny weed-like growths—also black—were coiling up from under the ground; and clawed, armoured, dangerous-looking creatures, some like spiny lobsters, others incomprehensible jumbles of jagged-edged limbs, were digging themselves out of burrows. The three Yarkeen changed in a matter of seconds from transparent to jet, and their long tentacles sprouted nasty-looking barbs.
“That which may not be spoken of in the sight of the Saviour is now upon us,” Reverie said. His mask suddenly bulged outward. Reaching up, he removed it. The lumps over his eyes were lengthening and thickening. I watched as they rapidly grew into horns, curling upward until their pointed tips were almost directed backward. At the same time, his body colour divided into stripes, some deepening to black, the others brightening to yellow, until his carapace had taken on the appearance of a tiger.
I glanced at Clarissa and was thankful to see that her forehead bumps were unaltered, her skin the same.
Reverie jerked his head toward the curved band of red fire and continued, “The Heart of Blood is rising, and soon its gods will come to Ptallaya.”
“Gods? Do they threaten us?” I asked, thinking of the City Guard and the defensive wall.
“They do. Now I am free to tell you the truth of this world. Once, long ago, Ptallaya was as you see it now and had been that way for all its existence: a place of savagery and conflict ruled over by the wicked creatures we call Blood Gods. Then the Saviour’s Eyes opened and looked upon it and found there was nothing pleasing to see, until, eventually, the Yatsill wandered into sight and were judged to be good. So the Saviour cast the Blood Gods out and made the Yatsill the new rulers of Ptallaya. However, the Heart of Blood itself could not be supplanted, so a balance was established. When the Saviour’s Eyes are open, the world is ours. We journey to the Forest of Indistinct Murmurings to recover the Servants who are delivered here from your world and to milk Dar’sayn from the fruit of the Ptoollan trees that our Magicians might be strong; and we take our children to the Cavern of Immersion to be made Aristocrats or Working Class. But when the Saviour’s Eyes close, the jealous Blood Gods return to Ptallaya. They possess the Aristocrats and attack Phenadoor—for they want to destroy it.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because Phenadoor is good and the Blood Gods are evil.” Reverie sighed and his eyes glittered. “Father Yissil Froon is fearful. He says there are now too many Workers and too few Aristocrats. The Magicians will take Dar’sayn to strengthen their protective powers but our supply isn’t sufficient for the challenge we face. Besides which, many Magicians are stricken with illness.”
“Father Reverie,” I interrupted, “Miss Stark and I were with Colonel Momentous Spearjab’s party during the journey to the Shrouded Mountains. He collected a great deal of Dar’sayn from the Forest of Indistinct Murmurings—surely it hasn’t been used up already?”
“It has been mislaid.”
“Mislaid? How?”
“I do not know.”
“Might it have been stolen?”
“Yes, that is possible, though I do not understand who would do such a thing, or why.”
My eyes met Clarissa’s and I saw she was thinking the same as me—our enemy had made another move.
“It is a calamity,” Father Reverie said. “When the Blood Gods come, it will be more difficult to resist them.” He raised his hands and examined them. They were shaking. “I feel that even I will be taken this time.”
Clarissa made to speak but Reverie stopped her with a curt gesture. “Yissil Froon is my most valued counsellor but he has already secluded himself in order to meditate. Even if I knew where he was, he’d be in too deep a contemplation to respond to my presence. I have no recourse, then, but to trust my own instincts. I’m of the opinion that your research into the affliction that has befallen us is of crucial importance. If you do not find a cure, the Aristocracy, stricken with the disease, will have little resistance to that—” He pointed again at the red sun. “Mademoiselle Clattersmash and her colleagues will continue to assist you. Work fast, please. The situation is dire.” Reverie turned to me. “Aiden Fleischer, you are a Servant yet you have been placed with the City Guard. Be alert. Your life is in danger. Now leave me. I have many things to consider, not least being whether your dissonance, Miss Stark, is advantageous to us or a danger. If New Yatsillat survives the current cycle, it might still be better if you are banished to the Whimpering Ruins on the Shelf Lands.”
“Better is hardly the word I’d choose,” I murmured.
Having been summarily dismissed, my companion and I left the room. As we stepped onto the ramp, we heard the Magician murmur to himself, “What does the Saviour intend? If only I knew this, then I might bear these losses.”
We descended through the corkscrew passage, now weirdly illuminated by the crimson radiance, and I was reminded of my terrible nightmares on Koluwai—those horrific visions in which I moved through my own arteries.
“I’m baffled,” I said. “We’ve been here all this time, I’ve asked repeatedly why there’s a City Guard and a defensive wall, but received nothing but prevarication—and now Reverie just outs and tells us that we’re to be invaded!”
“As we discovered,” Clarissa responded, “there are things that cannot be mentioned in the sight of the Saviour. Lips have been sealed by the power of religion—or, at the very least, by superstition.”
“What manner of creatures are these Blood Gods, I wonder, and why am I in pa
rticular danger?”
“It appears that we shall soon find out.”
We came to the door, passed through it, and went down the steps to the street. With the hellish light shining from the landward horizon, the whole of New Yatsillat had sunk into shadow and become a well of darkness beneath the ruby sky.
Clarissa stopped and peered around.
“Something else?” I asked.
She made a small noise and raised her hands to her eyewear. She hesitated for a beat, then suddenly took hold of her goggles, pulled them from her face, and left them dangling around her neck.
Her eyes were wide open.
“I can see, Aiden! This light—something about it allows me to see without protection! Without pain!”
“Your eyes,” I gasped, stepping back in shock. “They’re bright yellow!”
“Yellow?”
She looked at the sky, then across the city toward the sea. “It’s visible to me—the Magicians’ shield. It looks like an aurora borealis. I can see it radiating from various points around the third terrace. Except—” She furrowed her brow. “Except there’s a particularly strong source down there—” She pointed to the northern edge of the bottom terrace.
“From the fishing village?”
She nodded and murmured, “It’s different. Powerful. Pure.”
“But I thought it was a purely telepathic phenomenon.”
“It is—but I don’t know how to describe it to you except in visual terms. Hum! What would a Magician be doing down there? Reverie said they’d confined themselves to their temples—but there are no temples on the ninth level.”
“Perhaps it’s Yissil Froon. Shall we go there?”
“We haven’t time. The cure has to be the priority—I must get back to my laboratory.”
We crossed to a Kaljoor-drawn hansom cab parked at the side of the road. Its driver, Working Class, was unchanged—we soon learned that only the Aristocrats had become “horned tigers” like Father Reverie. Clarissa called up to him to ask if he could drive us to the third terrace. He turned his mask to us and said, in the dullest of voices, “What was that?”
