The Hanging Mountains

by Sean Williams

  Only when one dropped on all fours in order to dodge a knife-thrust from Heuve did recognition fall into place. The Book of Towers, yes—but the Fragments or Exegesis? The former, perhaps. A snippet of words, and a drawing. Definitely a drawing…

  The creature didn't move fast enough. Lidia Delfine caught its throat in an upswing. The slash was powerful enough to send it spinning sideways to land at Chu's feet, spraying blood and thrashing as it died.

  Chu turned her face away. Skender barely noticed. He was thinking: “Pan troglodytes sapiens?” That was the handwritten note scribbled on the side of the drawing he remembered—a drawing which captured the same posture, the same wide mouth and teeth, the same outstretched arm as the creature prostrate before him, gurgling its last.

  He felt as shocked as he would have if the mountains themselves had suddenly sat up and walked off. These things were legends. Stone Mage scholars had debated their existence for hundreds of years. Kept deep in the heart of the desert lands were memoirs written by men and women who had devoted their entire lives to dividing and classifying imaginary beasts such as these—and here was one of them dying at his feet, still hot from the exertion of trying to kill him!

  Chu pulled him back as the outflung arm twitched one final time, swinging its smoke-blackened hook towards him. It missed by more than a metre. He stared in fascination at the creature's hairless body and sinuous limbs; the leather harness and apron it wore; its long fingers and toes; its mouth set in a permanent pout; its pale pinkish skin. Each hand bore curved nails painted a deep green, the colour of leaves. Stitching in black thread traced a pattern of branches and roots across its chest covering. A cap of densely woven black thread protected its domed skull, but left the protruding ears exposed. One lobe was pierced with a single ebony stud.

  For a timeless awestruck moment one single thought utterly consumed him: What had been its name?

  Then chaos returned as Lidia Delfine's foresters fell back, shouting and arguing. Blood-spattered blue robes jostled alongside them, forming a defensive ring within which a hurried conversation took place.

  “There are too many of them!” Delfine said, favouring her left arm.

  Heuve nodded tightly. “We must retreat back up the Pass.”

  “But we can't! The boneship!” Only then did Skender realise that their number wasn't complete. He looked around, growing increasingly frantic. One of the wardens was missing, and so was…“Sal! Where is he?”

  Marmion pressed closer, thinning hair in disarray. “He went back alone. I couldn't stop him.”

  Of course, Skender thought. Shilly. “We can't leave him behind. We can't leave them.”

  “We must,” Heuve insisted. “The Panic lie between you and the boneship. You'll die if you try.”

  “So we run?”

  “We survive,” Delfine's bodyguard snarled. “Our duty is to Her Eminence.”

  “Not mine!”

  Skender lunged forward, his intention only the Goddess knew what. A slight but strong hand pulled him back.

  “No,” said Delfine, lips twisted as though every word pained her. “Heuve is right, although I hate to admit it. I have loved ones down there, too. They are strong; they may prevail. We can regroup later, or not at all.”

  Skender looked at Chu in despair. She nodded. He let his muscles go limp.

  “The Panic?” he asked, querying her earlier use of the word.

  Delfine answered his question by pointing at the body at his feet. “We leave now.”

  “What about the Outcast?” asked Heuve.

  Chu gripped Skender so tight she hurt him.

  Delfine looked at Chu, then at her bodyguard. “I place her in your charge, Heuve. It's up to you to keep the forest safe.”

  “No, Eminence, you can't—” He could say no more. She had moved into the fray and begun telling her people to fall back.

  Chu stood taller and let go of Skender's arm. “Well, then. Shall we go?”

  The big man's beard twitched, but he said nothing.

  “Down!”

  Seneschal Schuet pushed Shilly's head below the top of the gunwales. Something dark rushed over them with a deafening shriek. The tide of fog which, just moments before, had crested the top of the glowing waterfall now swept over them in a wind so cold it pained her.

  A human scream joined the shriek. Shilly turned in time to see one of Schuet's brown-clad companions—one of the few who hadn't left in response to Lidia Delfine's call to arms—snatched off the deck by invisible hands and whipped upwards into the mist. He disappeared, but his scream continued.

  Shilly stared in open-mouthed horror.

  “What—?”

  “Stay still,” Schuet hissed. “Where it flies, the Panic are sure to follow.”

  She jumped as a glass dart thwocked into the bulkhead by her leg. “How do you know? What's going on?”

  “Quickly!” He took her hand and pulled her to her feet. Hunched over to keep his profile low, he dragged her across the deck to the cabin entrance. She was half-limping, half-hopping, her walking stick useless. Thick mist wreathed the boneship, making even nearby objects hazy.

  They stumbled through the door. Rosevear stared up at them, eyes full of questions they didn't have time to answer.

  The scream of the taken man ceased with an agonised choking sound. A second later, something crashed onto the roof of the boneship. Arrows staccatoed sharp impacts all around her.

  Two dark shapes loomed in the doorway. She raised her stick automatically until she recognised one as Tom and the other as Highson. A forester woman followed, holding a scrap of cloth to her forehead. Blood trickled around her fingers.

  “How many?” asked Schuet as Rosevear tended to the woman's wound.

  She shook her head, breathless. “All around us. Couldn't count.”

  “Too many to break through?”

  The woman nodded. “There's only two of us on the boat.”

  Schuet cursed. “Why here? Why now?”

  “I hate to be a wet blanket,” Shilly pointed out, “but we won't be running anywhere. Look behind you.”

  Schuet did and saw Kemp, inhumanly flushed and motionless.

  “Yes,” the Seneschal said. “Of course. But what other hope is there?”

  Something splashed outside. The boneship swayed beneath them.

  “The ship,” Shilly said, waving to attract Highson's attention. “It's a reservoir. How much potential is left?”

  “Not enough to sail it away,” he said. “Not on our own.”

  “I wasn't thinking of that. We can channel the potential somewhere else, use it to keep them at a distance—whatever they are.”

  “Just the Panic now,” said the injured woman. “The wraith is gone.”

  “Thanks, but I'm none the wiser about either of them. Highson, can you do it?”

  “We can only try. What do you have in mind?”

  She thought furiously. Footsteps were audible on the deck outside. With the mist still thick, she couldn't see what was going on, but she presumed it wasn't rescue. The only voices she heard were unfamiliar inhuman ones.

  “The man'kin,” she said. “In the water beneath us. We're going to raise them.”

  Highson hesitated. “We don't know whose side they're on.”

  “That doesn't matter. At least they'll be a distraction.”

  “All right.” He nodded, and closed his eyes. With one hand, he reached for her. “Guide me. You too, Tom.”

  The three of them joined, with Highson as the focus. Shilly had no natural talent, but she could help others to use theirs. Designing a charm was akin to drawing, but much more powerful. Instead of drawing from life, a Change-worker drew from within life, tapping into the deeper layers of existence where life made the leap from the abstract to the real, from thought to action. It was, she sometimes thought, the ultimate art. Tom's Engineering knowledge helped her refine the mnemonic she came up with even further, until the mental schema spinning in Highson's mind was one
of the most elegant she had ever seen.

  All that remained was to tap into the ship's stored reserves, which Highson did by leaning forward and placing his forehead against the bone deck. The Change thrilled through him, pure and unalloyed. Shilly's mind lit up like the sun in response, and she cried out for the joy of it.

  She barely heard the explosion outside as two stony forms erupted from the surface of the water, limbs waving and tumbling through the air. They landed heavily on the shore with a distant clatter, like the echo of a stone tossed down a dry well. The bellowing they made as they shook off water and walked again struck her as little more than a murmur.

  “There's something out there,” whispered Schuet, who had inched forward to peer through the entranceway.

  Yes, Shilly wanted to say, seeing through the Change the ferocious confusion of horns and claws that she and Highson had raised from the deep.

  A stooped, vaguely humanoid figure loomed out of the mist and stood framed in the doorway. Schuet backed away, blade upraised.

  “Yield, human.”

  Shilly returned to reality with a jolt at the sound of the voice. It wasn't a man'kin's voice. A crisp tenor, it reminded her of wood splitting. The face it belonged to was no less remarkable.

  Small eyes peered from beneath low brows and around a broad nose with nostrils flared wide. Thick, freckled lips barely concealed the sharp teeth within. The creature's protruding chin was tufted with white hair that had been plaited and beaded with gold. It wore a leather uniform decorated with brown-and-black ribbed straps down its sides. The arms it held in readiness at its sides were prodigiously long and wiry, but muscled, perfect for a warrior. It smelt musky, of exertion and exhaustion, of flesh, not stone.

  In its right hand it held a wicked, curved hook pointed directly at Schuet.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “I heard you,” said Schuet. Over his shoulder, he asked Shilly, “What happened to the man'kin we raised?”

  “I don't know.” She was as surprised as he was. The charm had evaporated in her shock at seeing the creature before her.

  “They ran away.” The creature's eyes shifted to her. “Why would they do that, if you summoned them?”

  “I don't know that either,” she admitted, cursing the failure of their one and only chance. The boneship's reserves were now drained. She had no more surprises up her sleeves. “They're fickle.”

  “They are indeed.”

  “What do you want with us?” asked Schuet.

  “We hunt the winged old one. We assumed it came at your bidding, until we saw it take one of your own.”

  “We thought it yours.” Schuet stood poised for a moment, then lowered his blade. “If we are not to be harmed, I will yield to you.”

  “Seneschal!” the other soldier exclaimed.

  “Quiet, Mikia. I have little choice.”

  “Indeed. We outnumber you three to one.” The creature took Schuet's blade from him. “Your safety is assured, if you do as you're told.”

  “Wait.” Shilly was confused. Did that mean Schuet had surrendered? Where did that leave her and the others? “Who are you? What are you? Where did you come from?”

  “I am Griel,” said the creature, frowning. “Do you not know my kind?”

  She shook her head.

  He—given a lack of obvious breasts and hips, Shilly settled on that pronoun—looked around the chamber at the wardens, then back to her. “His kind—” Griel pointed a long index finger at Schuet “—the foresters, call my kind ‘the Panic.’ We call ourselves kingsfolk. We live in the forest.”

  “I thought they lived in the forest,” she said, pointing at Schuet.

  “We both do,” said Schuet. “Therein lies the problem.”

  She understood, and so did the wardens captured with her. Highson raised his eyes to the ceiling. Tom sat heavily on a bale of supplies. Rosevear stayed carefully between Griel and his patient.

  They were caught in the middle of a territorial war.

  Two more long-limbed Panic appeared in the entranceway. One said something to Griel in a whisper too soft for her to overhear. Griel nodded.

  “We're leaving,” he announced. “All of you, including the sick one. You're coming with me to stand before the Quorum. Pack everything you need, quickly.”

  With a hollow feeling in her stomach, Shilly thought of Sal, last seen on his way to help Skender. “What about the others?”

  “They fought well. The survivors are retreating up the Pass as we speak.”

  Who? Shilly wanted to ask. Who are the survivors? But Griel was unlikely to know names. To him, they were probably indistinguishable: flat-faced, short-armed, in various shades of brown.

  “How long will we be gone?” asked Rosevear, rummaging among his supplies.

  “Assume forever,” said Griel, turning and walking out onto the deck. He clicked his fingers before disappearing into the mist, and two guards came to take his place.

  “This is just great,” Shilly muttered, fighting tears of frustration and anger. “Now what do we do?”

  “As we're told,” said Schuet. A significant glance added more clearly than words, for now. It was little comfort. In the time it took them to think of a plan and escape, they might be marched kilometres away. Where would Sal be by then? Would he think her dead?

  Deep inside her burned the spark connecting them. While that lived, she would never give up hope—and neither would he, she knew. But hope was a tenuous thing, just like life itself. It could be snuffed out in a moment. She dreaded that day more than she dreaded her own death.

  Putting the thought from her mind, she set about packing on the assumption that Sal would join her at some point, stuffing as many of their belongings into one bag as she could carry, then helping Rosevear prepare Kemp to be moved.

  Sal stopped by one of the human bodies to pick its pocket. Seeing the narrow hilt of a pocketknife protruding from its belt, an idea occurred to him—one both unpalatable and necessary at the same time. He needed something more permanent than the muddy concealment charms he had drawn on his forehead and chest while descending. Already the waterfall was beginning to undo the protection they provided.

  Ducking into a small recess near the base of the waterfall, he set to work. The sound of fighting from both quarters had died down, but he was aware that he might be spotted at any moment. Charms to confuse the eye and ear were second nature to him, but he had never been in such concentrated combat before. He preferred not to test them against a sword-wielding warrior whose senses were heightened from adrenalin.

  The blade was clean and sharp. Its tip tugged neatly across his skin, leaving bloody lines in its wake. Quickly, calmly, he redrew charms that wouldn't fade in a hurry. Just as long as his concentration remained intact, so too would the illusion that he wasn't there. The pain helped keep his mind focused.

  When he was finished, he folded the blade closed with a snap and put it into a pocket. Blood trickled down his cheeks and neck, but he ignored it. Stepping out of the recess, he headed off through the fading fog to where the boneship still floated, tied firmly to the shore. Shilly was in there; he could feel her anxiety, her nervousness. He wanted to call her, to put her mind at ease, but feared alerting the Panic. If there were Change-workers or sensitives among them, he would immediately reveal himself by doing so.

  Two slope-shouldered Panic stood on guard by the gangplank. These creatures had the same physical arrangement as a human of two arms, two legs, trunk, and head, but the way they walked and moved was very different. When they attacked the humans on the beach, he had seen that they loped with smooth grace across flat and stony ground and that their long arms had the extra strength that better leverage would allow. When they stood erect, their heads jutted forward in a profoundly threatening manner. Sal had no intention of taking anyone on face-to-face if he could avoid it.

  Slipping into the water under cover of water-hugging mist, he waded out, then swam when the bottom dropped out beneath him. H
e wasn't a strong swimmer, but he managed the distance to the ship. Getting aboard was more problematic, and it took him several attempts to get a hand up onto the bulwark and pull himself over.

  He crouched on the deck for a moment, catching his breath and dripping red-tinged water. He could hear footsteps all around him. The Panic were ransacking the ship's supplies, rummaging through everything, and obviously taking what they thought valuable. That fitted their reputation for “banditry and murder,” as Delfine had put it. He only hoped their need for the former had put the latter on hold for the moment.

  One of their number ran towards him. He shrank back into a niche, putting his trust in the charms to keep him hidden. The Panic ran by, but it had been a close call. It wouldn't be long before one of them tripped over him. He needed to get off the deck and find somewhere to think.

  Up. When the way was clear, he climbed onto a barrel and then raised himself up onto the boneship's sloping roof. The piscine shape of the hullfish skeleton was most apparent from that vantage point: a ridged crest ran along the top, where dorsal fins had once been attached; various holes and indentations, all now carefully caulked or turned into exhaust vents, marked where eyes, ears, and other organs had reached from the protected interior to the world outside. Sal slipped off his sandals and clambered on the balls of his feet towards the front of the ship.

  What he saw there chilled him even further than the water had. A man's body was splayed on the bony surface, unnaturally still. His russet uniform had been torn open in several places and Sal saw deep gashes in sickly white flesh. Blood—surprisingly little—lay in a spreading pool around him. Not a large man in life, he now looked like a broken doll discarded by a giant child.

  Sal remembered the dark shape that had swooped on Marmion and him above the waterfall. He had no evidence to connect that shape with the dead man before him, but it seemed to fit.

  It killed my brother two nights ago, Delfine had said with hatred in her voice, and I will see it dead.

  Sal carefully skirted the body, hearing voices faintly through the boneship's roof. Shilly and Rosevear were down there, along with Tom and Highson and another man whose voice he didn't recognise. When he reached the forward edge of the roof, he peered carefully over. Another two Panic guards watched the doorway, making sure the prisoners couldn't escape. He considered dropping down on them, but didn't feel confident of taking on two at once. If only Kail had been there…