The Hanging Mountains

by Sean Williams

  If anyone heard him, Goddess or otherwise, no answer came.

  Shilly barely noticed the exchange between Skender and Chu as she tended to Sal. Everything had happened so quickly: the turbulence, which she had learned to endure by staying well out of the way, then Skender's cry that there was more to it than simply crosscurrents. By the time she had emerged, Marmion had frozen the snake and solved the problem—or so it had seemed.

  She had been too slow to help Sal when he'd rushed forward to save Kemp. Frightened, she hadn't been able to show him how to refine the charm he'd used against the snake. What he lacked in subtlety he had made up for with sheer grunt, turning a simple rock-crushing mnemonic into a powerful weapon. As a result, he lay unconscious before her, and there was nothing she could do about it.

  His reservoir of the Change was empty. There was no strength left in him on which she could call to help him return. She would just have to be patient, to let him come back to her in his own time.

  Make it soon, Sayed, my love, she whispered in her mind, using his heart-name. Make it soon.

  The warmth of the afternoon sun was fading. The days became colder the deeper the boneship travelled in the foothills of the Hanging Mountains, but the nights weren't as bitter as they could be in the desert. Shilly liked the crisp, moist air in the mornings. It helped her wake up, when she had to.

  Beside her, Rosevear worked hard to save Kemp's life. He moved quickly, assuredly, binding the less-serious gash in Kemp's massive thigh with thick cloth bandages and concentrating primarily on the stomach wound. His expression was grim.

  “He's going to be okay, isn't he?” she asked.

  “I'm not sure.” Rosevear glanced at her midministration. “I'll need to watch him closely. If the poison spreads, there might be nothing I can do.”

  Poison? she wanted to echo, numbly. The sides of her mouth turned down at the thought that Kemp might die. She had known him since her childhood in Fundelry. Just moments ago he had been strong and lively. That he could be so suddenly lost to them cast everything around her in a new light. She felt as though the bottom had dropped out of the boneship and they were falling free.

  Beneath her, the vessel surged ahead, seeking the shelter Chu had promised. The sun swung in the sky as Marmion ordered the course changed. Highson, Sal's natural father, still recovering from his pursuit of the Homunculus but determined to contribute in any way he could, swung the tiller hard to port. The rudder acted more on the Change contained within the boat than the water surrounding it, glowing a faint pearly white at night and leaving behind a trail of tiny bubbles during the day. She had watched the tiller's attachment to the boneship in Laure, and wondered how so delicate a filigree of threads and filaments could possibly help the ship stay on course. Wardens used an entirely different watercraft than the fishers she had known in Fundelry.

  Voices called. She leaned over the bulwarks to look at the river below. The Divide wall closest to the boneship had subsided under the raging torrent of the flood, spilling boulders into the water. Some had been carried away in the initial rush; enough remained to form a bulky spit that even now, days later, the water continued to shape. The relatively calm space behind its jagged leading edge gathered sediments and debris in growing mounds. Scrapes and bumps on the underside of the boneship made Shilly nervous, thinking that perhaps creatures worse than the snake were trying to get in. Nothing else happened, however, and her fear abated.

  “There.” Marmion pointed with his one remaining hand at a suitable mooring spot, and Highson guided them in. Two wardens leapt the closing gap and tied ropes to secure-looking stones, anchoring the boneship in place. Sheltered from the relentless current the boneship became, for once, mercifully still. While not as sensitive to water-sickness as Skender, Shilly had no love for the endless rolling of the deck underfoot. Sleep usually came with difficulty, even in the dark rounded cavities of the boat's hollow interior which reminded her of the underground workshop she and Sal called home, far away. She would be glad when they returned to dry land.

  “Wh—” Sal stirred on her lap. His eyes fluttered. “What—?”

  “Easy.” She stroked his face to soothe him. “Everything's all right. The snake is gone. You don't have to worry about that any more.”

  “But…” He tried to sit up. She helped him turn and lean into her, so that his head rested heavily on her breast. He took in the boulders and the sundered yellow cliff face looming over them. “Where are we? How long was I out?”

  “An hour or less. We're stopping so Rosevear can work on Kemp.”

  Finally he took in what he hadn't, perhaps, wanted to see. Shilly felt him trying to reach out to take the measure of Kemp's injury through the Change, but he was still too weak. She explained what she knew: that the injury was deep but not fatal, depending on how far the poison from the snake's crystal barbs had travelled. Much would hinge on the coming moments, as Rosevear worked hard to secure what advantage he could over the spreading sickness.

  They had a clear view of Kemp's face and upper chest as the wardens worked on him. His rib cage rose and fell reassuringly with every breath, but the skin of his face, so pale it bordered on transparent, hung loosely from his cheeks. Half-open eyelids showed only white. What little colour he had had was utterly drained away.

  Skender came to check on Kemp's progress, leaning with a worried expression over Rosevear's shoulder.

  “It's my fault,” he said. “If I'd sounded the alarm sooner—”

  “Don't,” said Sal. “If I'd killed the snake sooner, or the wardens had frozen the snake more tightly, or Kemp hadn't tried to take a piece off it, then maybe things would've been different. Or they might have been exactly the same. There's no point blaming anyone, including yourself.”

  Skender nodded, but didn't seem reassured. When Rosevear irritably brushed him away, he swung over the edge of the boneship to explore the rocky spit against which the boat had moored. Several of the wardens were already climbing the uneven slope up to the top of the cliff, there to take the mission's bearings and estimate the distance they had travelled. Shilly wondered what they would see.

  When the Divide and the Hanging Mountains were perfectly in line, she made out a glimpse of green below the ever-present pall of clouds ahead. Chu's talk of fog forests and balloon cities smacked of fable, not fact—yet the hint of verdancy remained, suggestive and alluring. In all Shilly's life she had never seen vegetation thicker than low saltbush.

  She wasn't about to leave Sal's side to explore with the others. Even when he stirred and successfully managed to stand up on his own, she didn't suggest they move far. He needed to recuperate.

  “What were you doing when the snake hit?” he asked her as she led him by the arm into the boat's central cavities. Smooth bubbles of bone opened up around them, providing a cabin large enough for six people to lie comfortably beside the supplies purchased in Laure. “Were you asleep?”

  Shilly shook her head. She had been awake since midmorning. He lay down on the thin mattress at the rear of the space and she showed him what she had been working on, distracting herself from thinking about Kemp.

  “The dream again, Carah?” he asked, examining the sketches she had made. Page after page of intricate scribbling; vain attempts to capture the complexity of the patterns she saw in her mind.

  “It won't let me go,” she said. “Always the same things: sand and something buried; a pattern I'm supposed to transcribe; being outside my body, looking at myself. I think it's important, if I could only work out why.”

  “Have you talked to Tom about it?”

  She shook her head. Since the flood, she had avoided the young seer for fear of what he might tell her. Already, the dream that he had revealed to her in Fundelry was beginning to come true: You and I were riding a ship of bone up the side of a mountain…The rest, about frozen caves and the end of the world, didn't bear thinking about any sooner than she had to.

  “This doesn't feel like prophecy,” she said.
“I'm not seeing what's going to happen, but something that needs to happen, I think.”

  “Could it be a message?”

  “Who from?” She frowned. “The only person I can think of is Habryn Kail, if he's still alive—but if he had something important he needed me to know, he could just tell me outright.”

  “Could, yes.”

  She dropped her chin to her chest. Thoughts of Kail provoked equal parts sadness and anger in her. The nephew of Lodo, her first teacher and guardian, the tracker would have been the closest thing to family she might have had, had he only revealed himself to her before being swept away by the flood.

  “You saw through his eyes, at the end,” she said to Sal. “If you'd learned something through him, or felt something, you wouldn't keep me in the dark. Would you?”

  “Of course not,” he said instantly.

  And she could tell that he wasn't telling her the whole truth.

  She sighed. What was it about Sal and Kail? Ever since Marmion had told her the truth about him, Sal had been on edge. Whenever the tracker's name came up, he did his best to change the subject. She didn't want to believe that Sal was keeping something from her, and she had no real reason to believe he was—apart from a gut feeling. That feeling wasn't going away in a hurry, and she had learned to trust her instincts.

  She opened her mouth to ask him outright.

  “How are we doing in here?” Highson Sparre's stocky frame filled the circular entranceway, casting them into shadow. “Need a hand?”

  “No, we're fine,” said Sal. “Thanks.”

  Sal's father didn't take the hint. Light returned as he came to join them. Sal's wiriness had no origin in Highson, whose broad shoulders looked as though they carried more than their fair share of worries; deep lines around his eyes and mouth and dark hair running rapidly to grey completed the impression.

  “I actually came to ask you—” He stopped when he saw Shilly's drawings. “What are these?”

  “I don't know,” Shilly said quite honestly. “Have you ever seen anything like them before?”

  “I don't think so. You should run them by Skender. If they're in the Keep library somewhere, he'll have seen them.”

  Shilly had thought of that, but Skender hadn't been capable of intelligent conversation since leaving Laure.

  “You were going to ask…?” she prompted.

  “Oh, yes.” Highson turned to Sal and lowered his voice. “When you were holding the tiller, did you feel any trace of the Homunculus?”

  “No,” said Sal.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Why? Did you?”

  “I don't think so.” Highson's broad forehead creased. “But I'm not a water-worker—none of us are, and why would we be? The Alcaide would hardly send someone like that inland.” He laughed softly at the irony that a river now flowed where just a week ago, and for centuries beforehand, only dust devils and man'kin had roamed.

  Sal and Shilly exchanged a glance. She was glad to know that she wasn't the only one obsessed with their own personal mysteries.

  “Perhaps you should talk to Marmion,” Sal suggested. “He might've felt it.”

  Highson shook his head emphatically. “Not until I'm sure he's come around to our way of thinking. We don't want the twins dead. He's tried to kill them once already and would've left them to the flood without second thoughts. I want to know why they saved me before I'll hand them over to him.”

  Sal nodded but had nothing to add. He lay back on the bed and closed his eyes.

  “This isn't the best time,” said Shilly, trying not to be harsh. At least father and son were talking.

  “Of course. I'm sorry.” Highson backed away until he was blocking the light from the entranceway once more. There he hesitated long enough to say, “That was a powerful move, and bravely done. On the deck before, I mean. You've grown so much since the Haunted City.”

  With that, he was finally gone.

  Shilly felt the coolness of Sal's scalp and whispered softly when he went to speak. “No, my love. Sleep. You've done all you need to for one day.”

  “Kemp?”

  “I'll check on him later. He'll be okay. I promise.”

  Her gut niggled at her, telling her not to be so sure of that. The serious nature of the wound and the poison spreading through Kemp's body made any prognosis uncertain. As Sal's breathing deepened and became gradually slower, she wished she had been less nervous of Tom. He rarely offered his visions unasked. If he'd seen the attack on the boneship ahead of time and told her about it, she might have found a way to avert the situation they now found themselves in.

  Sal woke to the sound of arguing.

  “I'm telling you he could die!”

  “That's a risk we have to take.”

  “Is it? I don't understand how you can be so cavalier about this.”

  “I'm not being cavalier. I'm being practical. Kemp's life means as much to me as it does to you. I simply have other concerns to weigh against it. Kemp may not die. There may be resources ahead that we can use to save him. On the strength of those possibilities, I say that we will forge ahead.”

  Sal recognised the voices. The second, arguing for the mission to continue, belonged to Marmion. The first was Rosevear. Such was the concern in the young healer's voice that Sal feared gravely for his friend. Alive, yes, but for how long?

  He sat up. His ears still rang from the effort of bringing down the snake that had attacked the boneship, but he could live with that. Ringing was better than the hum that always rose up when he dipped too deeply into his wild talent, a deadly, droning warning that if he went any further the Void Beneath would take him.

  Swinging his legs off the thin mattress, he stood and took a moment to recover his balance. His head no longer felt as though it might shatter at the slightest touch, so that was an improvement. Kemp lay in one of the other cots, haggard and labouring under his injuries. Shilly had gone out onto the deck, presumably to observe the confrontation. He followed in her footsteps, weaving only slightly.

  “If he dies,” Rosevear said, “it'll be on your conscience as well as mine.”

  The sun had moved during his recuperative nap and now hung far to the west over the cliffs of the Divide. Even so, its light was still bright enough to dazzle Sal as he stepped out of the bone enclosure. The entire crew had gathered: Marmion and his wardens, standing in ones and twos across the long deck; Chu and Skender sitting side by side on a coil of rope, their thighs not quite touching; Highson and Shilly near the entrance to the boneship's interior, just to Sal's left. Even Mawson, the animated stone bust of a man with high temples and brooding expression, watched from the sidelines, propped up against one of the bulwarks and surrounded by knees. He, out of everyone, arguably had the most to lose if Kemp succumbed. The immensely strong albino frequently acted as his arms and legs.

  “If Kemp dies,” Sal said, speaking loudly so all could hear, “there's only one proper place to lay the blame.”

  Heads turned to face him. Marmion's eyes narrowed. “And where might that be?”

  “On the snake, of course. That's not to say we shouldn't do our best to care for him—he deserves no less than that—but we can go only so far in providing that help. Our mission was always going to be a dangerous one, and he knew that. He wouldn't want us to turn back just for him. I'm sure of it.”

  Marmion looked relieved, and perhaps a little surprised that Sal had sprung so readily to his defence. “Thank you.”

  Rosevear wasn't to be mollified. “You don't know the full situation, Sal. I can't treat Kemp with the limited resources I brought with me.”

  “We've been over this,” Marmion said. “There are forests ahead, less than a day's journey from our present location. There will be all manner of herbs and fresh water at your disposal. Kemp will be better off there than here, or perhaps even in Laure.”

  “And if he dies before we get there?”

  “Tell me honestly: how likely is that?”

  Ro
sevear looked crestfallen. “I don't know. The poison has spread throughout his body. There was nothing I could do to halt its progress. He has a fever and the wound will not close: either of these factors could lead to complications.” He sighed and examined his hands, front and back. “A day might make all the difference in the world, or none in the slightest. To be utterly truthful, I'm not sure that anything I can do will help. No matter where we are.”

  The news was sobering. Sal felt for the young healer. He had tasted impotence, and found it bitter and lingering.

  “We will make all haste,” said Marmion soothingly. “You are absolved of any blame should your worst fears be realised. I will take that responsibility.”

  Rosevear nodded, but clearly took little comfort from the warden's words.

  “Right.” Marmion put the matter behind him with a brisk round of instructions. The wardens set to work, preparing to cast off from the rugged shore by tightening cables, building charms, and stowing the remains of a hasty meal. By the look of things, Sal had missed dinner. His stomach rumbled at the thought, and he was heartily glad when Shilly joined him, pressing a sandwich of flat bread and salted meat into his hands.

  Wary of getting in the way, they retreated into the heart of the boneship where Rosevear had returned to sit with Kemp. The healer looked tired. Sal's sensitivity to the Change hadn't recovered, but he could imagine the toll saving Kemp had taken. Rosevear glanced up as they entered, then away.

  “I'm sorry that didn't go the way you wanted it to,” said Sal. “If it helps, remember that agreeing with Marmion doesn't come naturally to me.”

  Rosevear managed a wan smile. “The worst thing is that he would expect no different if it was him here, not Kemp. He may look as though he's recovered from losing his hand, but I can assure you he hasn't.”

  “No,” said Shilly, rubbing absently at her stiff leg. “You don't lose something like that easily.”

  “It just pains me to be so helpless. Look.” Rosevear peeled back the bandages covering Kemp's stomach. Bluntly geometric black tattoos stood out against the albino's pale skin, one of them only half finished. “Have you ever seen anything like this?”