Down to the Bone: Quantum Gravity Book Five

by Justina Robson

  Then she pushed the statues out to the edges of the space. The largest weighed several tonnes and almost stuck fast on the uneven floor so that she had to grow spikes down from the soles of her boots into the stone to get any leverage on the damn thing. After the work she listened until she was satisfied that there were no curious or accidental tourists in the labyrinth – it had openings up into the city and down into various underwater lairs that were probably known to some criminal groups even now – but only the drip and trickle of water and the distant burr of engines up on the lagoon permeated through to her. She was alone.

  Lila put her back to the mirror’s position. The reason nobody with aetheric power wanted to give their names away was because they could be commanded by them. But she knew this one because its bearer had lived close to her heart once.

  ‘Ilyatath Voynassi Taliesetra, come to me.’

  She repeated it the standard three times, feeling that her voice was surely not enough. It barely carried beyond the confines of the room. At least it wasn’t hesitant. After she’d finished, the deep quiet of the labyrinth returned and for the first time she became aware of its penetrating cold and damp qualities. Then air moved against her face and hands. It was cold too but something about its steady push told her it was breath.

  ‘Tath?’ she said into the total, utter darkness and felt the sound of her voice immediately reflect back at her off something not more than six or seven inches from her face. An image of it did not resolve into anything resembling an elf. It didn’t resemble anything. Inside her skin the demon runes grew agitated. She tried resolving the data on higher detail. It made no difference. The feedback was inconsistent, as if the sound were coming off moving mist.

  ‘Tath,’ she said, with a confidence that was difficult to muster. ‘It’s me, Lila. I need to talk to you.’

  She thought she heard something. It was so faint she wasn’t sure. A kind of sigh or drawn breath. She retuned her hearing again, blotting out the ambient noise and amplifying. ‘Please say it again.’ Her own voice nearly blew out her ears before she remembered to nullify that as well.

  A fine line of cool, damp air crossed her face and a much deeper and more penetrating cold wound around her. It had the sinuous grace of a boa constrictor but it didn’t grip. A feeling of dread permeated her, from the skin inwards. It was such a strange, unmistakable sensation, a different kind of cold sinking inward towards her bones, her flesh wanting to recoil. The hum of the runescript became a buzz and abruptly the cold spirals around her withdrew.

  This time she heard the voice. It was so fragile, as if the lips and throat that spoke it were constructed from vapour. ‘So long,’ it said. ‘I . . .’ and then it faded away, still speaking, the words lost.

  All the time she was tuning and retuning, searching every wavelength, every frequency, every piece of information for something definite that she could detect and build on. Her mind’s AI built her the image of the room and its forlorn objects and tried to place what it found within it so that she could see. Brief flickers of something like fine cloud came and went around her. She saw it manifesting almost randomly, but this was only because where it appeared it caused a sharp local temperature drop, which made the water in the air condense out for a moment. She was reminded of Zal and the way he threatened to fade out. She wondered if there was something that would enable Tath to manifest a body in the same way. ‘I must talk to you.’

  There was a slow, general shift of the motes of cold. They began to gather and clump, winking in and out like fireflies. She was completely taken by surprise when they snapped together in front of her, their cloudlike clusters bursting into white shocks of vapour that quickly froze into tiny ice crystals. These were attracted magnetically towards an invisible surface tension that began vibrating at a high frequency – in a few seconds they outlined the shape of a tall figure. The head and shoulders were clear, but the rest was vague and ragged as if it was drawn by someone who could only block in the most basic shape. It had arms and a robed body. There were no features in the face, only two empty spots in the place of eyes. Darkness cloaked it. The empty air acted as shadows making it look like it wore a hood. At its back, as though at a distance, the shape of curved crescent blades was sketched in the air. These moved lightly, vanes on an unfelt and restless wind. A faint keening sound came from their direction – the impersonal whine of resonating metal.

  Meanwhile Lila was experiencing the most acute sensation of mortal dread. It was so strong that it blotted out almost everything else she ever remembered feeling at any time. There was nothing concrete to cause it. She was in no danger; all systems reported good conditions. The thing in front of her was barely an illusion – a few crystals, nothing more.

  It was all she could do not to fall on her knees. She had the clear feeling that there was a rod of something fine and heated that ran directly through the vertical centre of her body from pelvis to the crown of her head. It reached through her legs and anchored her upright, on the ground. It stretched through her arms and automatically closed her hands into fists. Immediately the dread lost some of its grip. ‘Ilya,’ she said in a warning tone. ‘Don’t fuck around.’

  The voice sighed – it sounded as if the room were sighing because it came from all sides at once, as though she were surrounded by open mouths. ‘I have dreamed . . .’ These words came from directly in front but they were continued by a lesser whisper slightly to her left. ‘. . . of the golden meadows of the sun, the silver lakes of the moon.’ After that words came singly, from random directions. ‘I have been in the dark and I am dark. I know your name. But I do not remember you. There have been so many.’

  ‘So many what?’ Around her the air was moving now in more normal fashion as denser regions massed and pushed through lesser ones in a restless prowling. She tingled with the anticipation of something awful and her fingers clenched tighter on one another until she felt her nails begin to cut her palms.

  Phrases came again from all sides. ‘Longing. Waiting. I see them turning. Falling.’

  She wanted to keep the conversation going. She was afraid of what would happen if this dissociation got itself organised. The rime-crusted face in front of her was deteriorating, its eye pits growing larger, more skull-like. ‘Who are turning? Where are they falling to?’

  ‘Lost,’ said the face thing, forming a mouth like a puncture wound. ‘I followed them so far. I felt . . .’

  The sudden snap of cold caught her off guard again. It was direct this time, more sure of itself. Ice motes flew past her, tearing her skin on the way to the looming ghostly figure. Its sabred wings rattled. They looked feeble, powdery, but the noise was harsh and absolutely clear, ringing as though they were standing in a grand cathedral and not a rough hole in the ground.

  ‘I . . .’ said the voice, this time from two places at once. Elsewhere its whispers had sunk to babblings of emotional words, must and ought, must and have to, need . . . it rambled. The whispers lowered until they were a faint, indecipherable bubbling of sound all around her. She got the impression that although they sounded the same, they were not. They rose from a mass and subsided into it and she couldn’t know if that mass was even able to differentiate itself again.

  ‘Ilya,’ she said firmly. ‘Listen to me. You must find a way through.’

  ‘Ilya,’ repeated the ghost face as though the syllables were new. ‘Ilya,’ it said again, more cannily this time and the bubbling subsided and vanished.

  She felt a presence growing in the room. It wasn’t just in front of her. It was everywhere. Weightlessly it weighed on her. Breathlessly it breathed. It coated everything in a purplish, sticky nothing that did not exist and reminded her of tar, feathers, burning flesh and dust. Her nostrils and eyes became so thick with it she couldn’t see, or breathe. She convinced herself this was an illusion. Her body and AI still thought everything was fine, just a few minor temperature fluctuations, nothing more. Nothing stopped her breathing, but she couldn’t. Nothing blocked her
senses, but they were failing. At a subconscious level she had been commanded to stop, and she was hypnotised and obeying. Fortunately, she did not need to breathe, or to sense, in order to survive.

  The demon runes skittered, dancing, popping. She knew that death was moments away but she didn’t know how it would come. She felt unutterably stupid for not believing Malachi and taking his advice. But this paled in the face of the last moments. She wasn’t afraid because it was too certain for that. Instead a sharp awareness came to her, so acute that time seemed to stretch itself thin, longer and longer, and it occurred to her that if she were going to do anything it must be now, no matter how pointless or idiotic it seemed.

  ‘Remember the dog!’ she shouted, waiting for the immaterial blades to cut her off from the world for ever. ‘Remember you were running with your dog in the forests! Ilya!’

  A vast agitation made the air thrum with a deadly, rising whine. Unstable to stable it went in a moment. Lila couldn’t see anything but she felt pressure rise. The image in her mind was the blades of a food blender whirring up to maximum speed. The sense of threat peaked and without knowing why she screamed, ‘Dar! What about Dar?’

  In the context of the world Dar was ancient history. Zal’s ally, he had led Lila to find Zal and she had been forced to kill him in repayment of this favour. Ilya’s hand had, metaphorically, been on the knife with hers. It was a raw wound to her still. Perhaps the most raw. Any reminder was quick to flay the skin off it for her. She knew that it had been the same for Ilya. It was their deepest bond, that moment of horror and shame was a blade that could cut through anything. It was her only weapon.

  The whining of the spirit blades became a scream. The pitch of it rose and rose unbearably and without warning reached a febrile height and then stopped. She felt whatever it was – she had no means of accurately describing it – shatter and the pieces, sharp and tiny, go flying everywhere in a storm of hurt confusion.

  In a split second of silence the room was empty once more. She felt that she was alone. As her senses returned to themselves she realised that the silk throw covering the mirror had been ripped to shreds.

  ‘Lila?’

  The voice scared her more than the huge show had done. She leapt a foot in the air, caught herself awkwardly in a panic and felt herself flare hot with shock and fear. It came from behind her.

  She could not turn to face the mirror, so she made herself stay where she was, in a half crouch. Her whole body burned to escape but she did not move. It cost her every bit of willpower that she had. She knew the voice, sort of. It sounded like Ilya, but it was odd, too high, too uncertain and the elvish accent of its Otopian was very strong. It was young, she realised, that was it, and it was speaking to her from the mirror.

  ‘It’s me,’ she said.

  There was a pause. ‘Where am I?’ the voice said.

  ‘Who are you?’ She didn’t mean to be so untrusting but there it was.

  ‘It’s me,’ he said, shy. ‘Ilyatath. Where am I?’ Now he sounded scared.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said truthfully. ‘To me you’re inside a mirror. Mirror of Dreams. Do you know it?’

  ‘It’s so dark,’ said the boyish voice and it hesitated. Then, ‘Yes. One of the seven mirrors. I know it. Are you a dream, then?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I summoned you here. This is Demonia. The mirror is in Demonia.’

  Another pause, as this was digested. ‘Where was I, then?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, honestly. ‘Some place beyond Last Water. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘Last Water,’ he repeated slowly. ‘Oh.’ This was sad, and final. ‘Am I dead?’

  ‘I really don’t know,’ Lila said. ‘You must remember something.’

  ‘Dar,’ the boy said. ‘I am old. But not here. I am dead, but not dead. Oh. Yes. I remember now. It was so long ago. Or yesterday. And it is there still.’ He sniffled and she realised that he was crying and trying not to show it.

  ‘Ilya, something bad is happening to Alfheim, to Otopia and the other planes.’

  ‘They are coming through,’ he said. ‘The walls are breached.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  He coughed a little and cleared his throat. ‘Betrayed. That is who they are. Thirst, that is what they are. I followed them and ran beyond Last Water. I tried to see where they were going. They ran through my domain and I was nothing to them, not king, not shepherd, they did not stop for me. I didn’t know what they were so I followed. They are spirits, like those of the beyond, but they have all that the spirits crave and do not have; will, integrity, focus, mind, power. They knew me, but they did not speak.’

  ‘You met them?’

  ‘We hunted each other.’ He was smiling, then he stopped. ‘They were better than I was, and my hounds. We stood in the forest. They were old, so very old. Angry, so very angry. But there was a moment when we ran together, side by side and they knew themselves to be elves again. I saw their faces. I talked, but they didn’t answer. Their eyes . . .’ He swallowed with effort. ‘Their eyes are terrible, Lila, don’t look at them.’

  ‘Did you?’

  A pause. ‘Yes. Don’t you look at them. They do not live and they do not die. They are not of that form but their gaze is death to the living. They consume souls and they possess what cannot be eaten until it weakens and falls apart. They took me beyond Last Water and left me there when I did not satisfy them any more.’

  ‘Ilya,’ she said gently, trying to convey as much kindness in her tone as she was able. ‘The dead seem to be coming back. What is happening?’

  ‘They are the host of the Betrayed,’ he said. ‘When people die their spirits pass quickly through my domain. Once they have gone beyond it they don’t come back. But where I am king there are many spirits of many kinds, including those that fail to pass and those that are yet to move in the other direction and become elements. The Betrayed are massing enough impulse to break through into the material worlds and regain their forms there, otherwise they will have no effect on those planes. The spirits you see returning are riders of their storm. They copy the patterns and memories of those passing who have died in your reality, and remake themselves in their images on the other side.’

  She steeled herself. ‘So it isn’t really . . . it’s not really them?’

  ‘In every aspect except for the spirit, it is probably an exact copy,’ Ilya said. ‘But there is almost no chance at all that it is the same in its numinous or aetheric form. Mind, personality – these are things not of spirit, so they will be identical.’

  She took the news with numb acceptance, moving on through the glum path of the facts. ‘They’re young,’ she said. ‘Not like when they died.’

  ‘The spirit remembers itself in an archetype,’ he said. ‘Most people do not associate their true selves with their physical age. The body, the mind and the personality are one intricate device, a vessel for the spirit, a journey, a love. They feed and are fed by it. Ultimately they part. One passes onward. One ends and is recycled.’

  ‘In Otopia it isn’t fashionable to talk about spirits like that. It’s like chatting about the existence of good and evil. People think you’re nuts,’ Lila said, but she took his word for it.

  ‘Humans are in love with the machine because it is perfect and seems to offer the cure for every ill. They are at an elemental stage of alchemical philosophy,’ Ilya said, and she could hear the dismissive shrug in the slight nuances of his emphasis. He couldn’t care less. ‘I could hunt these stealing spirits down and bring them back to me. But I could not do anything with the Betrayed. They are beyond my reach because they are wavewalkers. Is that why you called me?’ There was a hesitancy now, a tentative appeal that she felt as clearly as if he had reached out to touch her.

  ‘It was one reason,’ she admitted. She was beyond lying to him, even to console him. Still, it was hard to tell the truth and she didn’t know why. ‘But Malachi said you’d been out too long and were changed. I thought may
be you were lost and that I’d like to find you. He made out that you were some kind of monster.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am. You saw it, before I got caught here.’

  She was tempted to deny this, but resisted. ‘What was that?’

  ‘Beyond Last Water are the things of spirit that one would least like to encounter. Hungry, relentless, cold. They will consume anything. They will attach to anything. I resisted them a while. I thought I was their master. They beset me and I fell. I was consumed. If you hadn’t tricked them here, you would be theirs now because I would have killed you.’ He sucked his breath in on the last word and waited.

  She wanted to turn around, but she didn’t dare. ‘Why?’

  ‘In the world of the spirit no memories remain. I was only the walker of the dark valleys. Even that meaning was failing. There was nothing except thirst and hunger and longing and shadow. I would have severed you from mortal things and taken your body for my own. Ironic, wouldn’t it have been?’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘When the mirror appeared we were caught. Only I could stay, because you summoned me. And here I am as I was in my dreams – the dream you named.’

  ‘Can you get out?’

  ‘In death there are no dreams,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I want to. I have been so far, so long. I never thought to get back to this place and these ways. I may never have the chance again.’

  ‘I need you, to track the hunters for me,’ she said.

  ‘They will kill you,’ he said. ‘They have no business with you. Leave them.’

  ‘I have business with them,’ she said. ‘What happens if they manifest in Otopia, and Alfheim, and Demonia? What then?’

  ‘Then you will know what they want,’ he replied. ‘But you will not be able to stop them.’