The Hanging Mountains

by Sean Williams

  As they reached the level they had started at, she sought the hiding places of those stationed to catch the wraiths. The Panic were invisible in their brown-black armour. Where Tom and Mawson crouched in the tiny cave, she thought she glimpsed a flash of blue—Tom's robe, she presumed—and a patch of glowing green.

  Her eyes narrowed, struck by this detail. Griel angled the balloon in towards Jao, Rosevear, and Mikia's perch. As their perspective changed, she confirmed that it was Tom she could see, and a second figure that wasn't Mawson. That figure matched the one she had seen by the waterfall, and Sal's descriptions of the Quorum. But why would one of them be out in the forest, talking to Tom?

  Then she remembered Sal telling her about Mawson speaking the Quorum's strange backward language. Maybe Tom wasn't the reason for the Quorum member's visit, but the man'kin.

  There was no time to ponder the mystery. Jao was waving at her with one long arm, calling for a rope. Shilly tossed one to the Panic female and helped her climb aboard, her beaded hair flailing like whips. Mikia and Rosevear followed, full of questions. Why had they dropped down to the bottom of the ravine? What had they seen? Where was Sal?

  Shilly felt too exhausted and full of questions herself to reply. Had they seen the glowing person sitting with Tom? Did they know what was going on inside that tiny cave?

  Barely were they aboard when Griel sent the balloon plummeting downwards again. Shilly clutched the side of the gondola, afraid of falling out. Only minutes had passed since they had left Sal, but it felt like hours. The day was darkening. It wouldn't be long before night fell.

  Finally, as the bottom of the ravine appeared through the mist, word came from Sal.

  “Shilly, I'm okay. I'm sorry if I gave you a fright. I've had a bit of a one myself. There's something down here you need to meet. It's not the Swarm. I don't think it means us harm.” He paused for a second, as though he couldn't quite bring himself to believe what he was about to say. “It's the Angel, Shilly. We've found the Angel.”

  In the excitement over the Swarm, Sal had quite forgotten the other mystery creature they were supposed to be looking for in the Hanging Mountains.

  Angel says run.

  The words, uttered by a voice as rough and grating as a tombstone dragged along a road, triggered a cascade of memories from his brief journey along the bottom of the Divide, before it had been flooded. Several of the man'kin that he had asked about the Angel had each given him a different answer. The Angel was necessary, Mawson said. It was a gathering point of some kind, a focus; it drew many towards it; it told man'kin they must be free; it said that humans were nothing, not worthy even of anger. No one would survive without the Angel.

  The last statement was the most peculiar of all. Sal had been unable to determine if Mawson had been referring to man'kin only, or every living thing. Either way, the Angel was clearly important. Its word alone had triggered the migration down from the mountains that had saved thousands of man'kin from the flood, apart from those who hadn't moved fast enough.

  Angel says run, the gargoyle man'kin had said.

  At first he had thought the words constituted an order, perhaps a threat. Then he guessed that the man'kin was using the words as a mantra or a mnemonic, similar to those used by Sky Wardens and Stone Mages. To it, he was an alien, peculiar creature, just as it was to him. It might even have offered the words to him as advice, the only form of verbal communication it had to give.

  He rose slowly to his feet, holding his hands up and palm forward, indicating that he was unarmed. That was true enough, although the Change was ready to do his bidding, should he need to defend himself.

  The man'kin repeated its simple mantra, while the second, a muscular, bat-winged beast that walked on four clawed feet, watched in silence. Their blank, granite eyes didn't blink.

  “My name is Sal,” he said, conscious of the creature behind him. Wood and Earth complained as it shifted position. That was the only sound it made. For the first time, he became aware of how eerie it was that man'kin didn't breathe.

  “I set a man'kin free, once,” he said, hoping to avoid a repeat of that particular dispute. He glanced over his shoulder, and found the tip of the arrowhead snout directly behind him. He hadn't imagined it could move so fast.

  “Angel knows,” said the gargoyle.

  Sal took a deep breath and forced himself to face the worn, featureless head. Its surface was lined with cracks that crossed and recrossed like a crocodile's back.

  “Are you the Angel?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said the gargoyle from behind him.

  “Why don't you talk to me directly?”

  “You don't have the right ears.”

  “What ears should I have?”

  “Ones that hear.”

  The Angel's head didn't move, which he took as a positive sign. It could have killed him easily, had it wanted to. He wasn't planning on giving it a reason to change its mind.

  The balloon had obediently flown away when he had thought that the man'kin might grow angry at its presence. Taking advantage of the frozen stillness, he quickly called Shilly. She simply had to see this; she would understand it better than him. After a moment he heard the humming of the chimerical engine returning.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked the Angel to cover the sound.

  “Liberating the ’kin.”

  “Which ’kin?” Then he realised. “Oh, the moai. What are you liberating them from?”

  “That which comes.”

  “What which comes?”

  “Angel says that which comes.”

  “We want to help you,” Sal said, slowly and clearly, emphasising the plural. “Many man'kin died in the flood. We want to find out why that happened and prevent it ever happening again. Will you help us? Will you help us understand what's going on?”

  “Angel says ’kin do not die. We are not born. We just are.”

  “Drowned, then. Buried in mud. Whatever. You'd have to agree that this isn't a good thing.”

  “All things are as they are. Angel says—”

  “The Angel says a lot of things.” Sal thought of Mawson, far above. Now more than ever he needed a man'kin interpreter, a voice he could trust among these strange, confounding minds.

  Three stone heads swivelled as a rope ladder slithered down the trees nearby. Sal hastened to reassure them.

  “It's just Shilly. I want you to meet her.”

  “We have met her,” said the gargoyle.

  “You have?” His puzzlement couldn't have been more complete.

  “She raised us.”

  “She raised you? I don't understand.”

  “She knows us.”

  The bottom of the rope ladder danced as someone descended. It was moving too quickly to be Shilly, though, with her weakened leg. Sal assumed it wouldn't be Griel, since Shilly didn't know how to operate the balloon's controls. They must have ascended and brought someone else down with them.

  “This isn't Shilly,” he told the man'kin as Jao climbed warily into view, moving with swinging, loose-jointed grace. “This is Jao. She's a friend.”

  “Let me judge that for myself, will you?” said the Panic female, dropping to the ground with one hand on the pommel of her hook. “Griel sent me to check on things before letting Shilly down.” Her dark eyes took in the tableau before her: two roughly human-sized and human-shaped man'kin, plus another considerably more alien, surrounding Sal near the clod-filled hole where a moai had once sat. Seeing that Sal wasn't obviously harmed, she waved vigorously at the balloon, barely visible through the foliage.

  “I wouldn't have called Shilly down if it wasn't safe,” said Sal, resentful at having his judgment questioned.

  “Griel wouldn't let her go until he knew what else was down here.” Calm black eyes regarded him, then flicked to the Angel. The tip of its nose didn't shift to acknowledge her. “Another friend of yours?”

  “I don't know,” he admitted. “Are we friends?” he asked it, then corre
cted himself, remembering what Tarnava had said about man'kin not knowing the meaning of friendship. They will charm your mind into knots. “Are we on the same side?”

  “We are not your enemies,” ground out the gargoyle.

  “That's something, I guess.” Jao walked around the giant man'kin while Shilly descended one awkward step at a time. The balloon dipped lower, saving her some degree of effort. When its underside bent the topmost boughs, she was within a metre of the undergrowth.

  Sal gripped her hips and lifted her the rest of the way.

  “Where's my flower?” she asked.

  “I got you this instead.”

  She leaned on him, missing her walking stick, and looked at the man'kin in wonder.

  “I know you,” she said, pointing at the two facing the Angel.

  “That's what they say.” Sal turned to study her, mystified. “How is that possible? I didn't think man'kin ever came as far south as Fundelry.”

  “They don't. I fished these two out of the lake by the waterfall, while the Panic were attacking us.”

  “We weren't attacking you,” said Jao in a defensive tone. “Griel thought you were human reinforcements from the west, come to fight alongside the Guardian. Then the wraith attacked, and he assumed you had summoned it.”

  “However it happened, you were boarding the boat and I couldn't just sit back and let you.” Shilly turned back to Sal. “The bottom of the lake is full of man'kin. These two looked the most desperate. But when I pulled them up, they ran away.”

  “Angel says run.”

  “Yes, so you keep repeating.” Sal couldn't keep a lid on his exasperation. It would soon be dark, and he didn't want to be stuck on the ground with three unpredictable man'kin any longer than he had to. “Will you talk to them, find out what they're up to? They say they came here to liberate a moai—” he pointed at the hole where the stone had previously sat “—but they won't say why. Maybe you can make sense of this.”

  The great stone head swung silently, as though on massive, internal gimbals, to face Shilly.

  “Angel says the sense is this: there is no sense. There is only what is.”

  “What's that supposed to mean?” asked Jao.

  “My question exactly.”

  Shilly waved them both silent. “I raised you from the bottom of the lake,” she said to the gargoyle, “but you didn't stick around. You ran here to meet the Angel.”

  “We ran here to meet you.”

  She blinked. “Why?”

  “You know us.”

  “I don't know you. I picked you at random.”

  “Angel says there is no random.”

  “Then what is there? Some grand design?”

  “Angel says there is no design or sense or random. There is only what is. You know us. That is, Shilly of Gooron, and so it is—like the things you dream.”

  Her dark skin went a shade paler. “How do you know that I dream? How do you know my name?”

  “It is, so we know.”

  “But how?” Sal could see Shilly struggling for a way around the break in comprehension. “Is it like a memory? A memory of the future?”

  “Angel says there is no future. There is only now.”

  “Yes, that's right. All times are one to you. Does that mean you know me in the future?”

  “You know. You dream.”

  “Can you tell me what my dream's about?”

  “You know. You dream,” the gargoyle repeated. “Angel says run.”

  “Why do you keep saying that?” She flexed her stiff leg irritably. “And anyway, I can't run.”

  “Angel says—”

  “Don't you dare.”

  “Angel says there are ways of running that don't require legs, just as there are ways of hearing that don't involve ears.”

  The surprisingly long sentence was followed by an odd moment in which all three man'kin turned their heads to the east, as though at a noise Sal couldn't detect. They held that pose for a heartbeat, then began to move. The two smaller man'kin turned and lumbered down the hill, along the Angel's ragged path. The Angel man'kin took three giant, lopsided steps around Shilly, Sal, and Jao, then began to lope after them.

  “Wait!” Shilly called. “You can't just leave!”

  “Looks to me like they're doing just that,” said Jao dryly as the giant form vanished into the shadows at the very bottom of the ravine. The sound of its progress—less noisy than it had been on the way up, since it had already flattened most of the trees in its path—faded into the distance.

  When it had gone, the Panic female turned to her two human companions. “Are you going to fill me in on what just happened?”

  “As soon as we work it out,” Sal promised, “you'll be the first to know.”

  Shilly cursed herself for not thinking quickly enough as the balloon ascended through the mist. The sun had long vanished from sight, plunging the ravine into utter darkness. How Griel navigated, she didn't know, but he did it much more carefully than earlier. The fog was cool and clammy against her cheeks and ears. Sal's hands on her shoulders reassured her somewhat, but didn't touch a deeper core of dissatisfaction.

  They had learned next to nothing from the Angel. Instead of blathering on about memory and the future—always a fruitless task with man'kin—she should have pinned it down to specific issues, or tried at least. What else did it know about the Homunculus and the twins, which other man'kin called “the One from the Void”? What was it trying to save the moai from? What did it mean by that which comes?

  The balloon slowed and drifted to port. At Griel's command, Jao flashed a shuttered mist globe at Erged and Highson. An answering flash indicated that they had been noticed. Griel swung the balloon in close to the treetops.

  When the two of them had settled into their seats, Sal outlined what had happened below.

  “The Angel?” Highson's expression was invisible in the gloom, but his incredulous tone allowed her to picture it perfectly. “Here? Remarkable! And you don't think it was a coincidence?”

  As Sal repeated what the man'kin had said about the Angel liberating the moai, she told herself that, mystery or not, the incident hadn't been a complete waste of time. They may not have found the Swarm, but they had found something.

  The knot she felt tightening around her would unravel in time, if only she kept picking at it.

  “What now?” asked Mikia. “We've got no bait, and it's as dark as a crabbler's armpit out here.”

  “Let's get the others,” said Jao. “Then we'll decide.”

  Jao flashed the light at the cave containing Tom and Mawson and waited for an answer. Receiving none, she tried again.

  “He was asleep before,” said Sal. “Maybe he's nodded off again.”

  “Try calling him,” Jao ordered.

  Sal hollered Tom's name three times, sending echoes dancing around them. No answer came.

  Shilly's gut felt tight. She had completely forgotten what she had seen earlier: a green figure sitting with Tom and Mawson in the cramped cave.

  When she told the others, they were as mystified as she.

  “What would the Quorum be doing out here?” asked Jao, her prominent brow dropping even lower.

  “Get ready to find out,” Griel barked. “I'll move us closer.”

  Jao and Erged moved forward, preparing to leap across to the cliff face the moment Griel negotiated his way through the trees. They kept the light unshuttered and their hooks drawn. Shilly clutched the back of the seat in front of her, fearing the worst.

  Jao jumped first, landing nimbly on all fours on the rocks. She disappeared into the cave, trailed closely by Erged.

  The five seconds that followed were the longest in Shilly's life.

  Jao emerged, grim-faced, shaking her head. In her hand she held the hook Griel had given Tom.

  Shilly barely breathed. Dead? First Kemp, and now Tom. It was too awful.

  “They're gone!” Jao shouted across the gap. “Both of them!”

  �
�Where?” called Griel.

  “Hard to say. There's no blood. No sign of a struggle. Maybe they went willingly.”

  “With the Quorum?”

  Jao just shrugged.

  Shilly rested her head on her hands as the two Panic climbed back aboard. Sometimes she despaired of ever understanding anything.

  “So what do we do now?” asked Sal.

  “We keep hunting,” Griel ground out from the darkness. “That's what we do. Wherever your friends have got to and however they got there, I'm not going to rest tonight until they're found.”

  “Out of the goodness of your heart or because you think they're up to something?”

  Griel didn't answer. With a whir of its propeller, the balloon lifted up and away, into the night.

  “Of all our senses, the heart is the least reliable.

  It blinds us when we need most to see. It stops up

  our ears when we need most to hear. But we grant it

  influence out of all proportion and beyond all need,

  because it never lies.”

  THE BOOK OF TOWERS, EXEGESIS 4:22

  The knoll stood out from the surrounding forest like a bald man's head, with a fringe of palms resembling a crown in which a colony of tiny flying insects had made a home. Getting there had taken half a day's walk along winding, increasingly overgrown paths, up and down the hilly terrain. All of them in the expedition—bar one—did their share of lugging equipment, from stuffed packs to heavy cases slung between two people and filled with arcane paraphernalia.

  Their arrival at dusk either accompanied or triggered a major swarming event, resulting in the inadvertent swallowing of more than a few hapless bugs. Skender pulled the neck of his black robe up over his nose and blinked furiously to keep his eyes clear. Even so, he was not immune. When a bug went up his nose, he coughed and spluttered and tried not to think of it wriggling down into his lungs. At least, he told himself, they weren't biting.

  When the sun faded and the sky turned dark, the swarm of insects died down. The party set about preparing the camp for both night and a wraith attack.