The Hanging Mountains

by Sean Williams

  Shilly nudged Sal and reached further along the gondola to wake Highson.

  “We're here.”

  Sal blinked in the dawn light and looked blearily around him. A freshening breeze caught his hair and draped it across his face. He didn't seem to notice.

  “Cold,” he said, indicating the view.

  Shilly thought of Tom and his dreams of ice, but did not pursue the worry that prompted.

  “How do we get in?” Highson asked Griel.

  The Panic's attention was firmly back on the controls of the balloon.

  Jao, stretching with arms that seemed to reach forever, answered: “There's a hatch. I haven't come this way before, but I have gone up on the roof from the inside. It needs to be deiced, sometimes, to prevent the windows becoming coated. It's a very dangerous job given only to the lowest-ranking novices.”

  “A girl died here, once,” said Erged through a yawn. “She slipped and knocked herself out. Vehofnehu had been sleeping and didn't hear; he didn't know she hadn't come down. Only when her father came looking for her was she discovered, still on the roof, frozen solid with a pick in her hand. They say sometimes you can still hear her, when you're out on the roof, hammering away to get Vehofnehu's attention. And he always closes the windows on the warmest day of the year, just in case her spirit melts and comes to get him.”

  Jao laughed. “They're still telling that old yarn to novices? I thought it had died out when I was a kid. Mention it to Vehofnehu and he'll tie your ears in knots.”

  Erged flushed and ducked her red-frosted head in embarrassment, but Griel's serious expression didn't change.

  “It's true,” said Griel, as he brought the balloon around preparatory to landing. “The girl dying, I mean, not the rest.”

  Jao sobered, studying Griel with a curious expression. “How could you possibly know this?”

  “Get Vehofnehu drunk and he'll tell you all manner of things.”

  Then the balloon was landing, and the time for talk was over.

  Sal climbed carefully over the edge of the gondola and placed his feet one at a time on the roof. Although Griel had tied the balloon down and assured everyone they were perfectly safe, he still didn't entirely trust his footing. The wind seemed much more powerful here than it had been when travelling in the gondola, and much colder, too. The thought of slippery ice underfoot made him take every step carefully.

  The hatch hung invitingly open on the other side of the slightly domed roof. Shilly already stood by it, waving him on, and he chided himself for being nervous. Clutching himself to keep the heat of his body in, he followed her as quickly as he dared and breathed deeply and gratefully of the warm air rising from the space below.

  A collapsible ladder led down to floor level. The familiar space was in even greater disarray than he remembered, and contained no sign of either the empyricist or Kemp. A possible reason why became apparent when all of them were inside with the hatch firmly shut behind them.

  “I knew you'd come back here,” said a voice from the stairwell. A large female Panic with her face set in a scowl stepped into view. Her weapon wasn't drawn, but her right hand hung at the ready. Sal recognised her stormy mien, and the metal-clad ponytails.

  “Ramal.” Griel didn't sound especially surprised. “What did you do with him?”

  “The old fool? Nothing. He was gone when I arrived. I thought he'd gone with you.”

  Griel shook his head. “He stayed behind to look after the injured visitor.”

  “Kemp,” said Shilly. “His name was Kemp.”

  “He's gone too,” said the soldier.

  “Vehofnehu couldn't have taken him on his own,” said Highson. “He must've had help lifting him, at least.”

  “If not you, then who?” asked Ramal.

  “Why are you here?” asked Jao. “Have you come to arrest us on Oriel's orders?”

  Ramal snorted. “Naive and foolish I might consider you, but not dangerous, and my line still owes yours a debt of honour, Kingsman Griel.” She bowed in grudging respect. Griel didn't react in any visible way. “I'm here to warn you that Oriel is preparing a full offensive against the humans in retaliation for last night's attack. The dead demand it, he says. Until the humans have suffered as we have suffered, we will not rest. Oriel has, therefore, ordered the city moved to a new location where it won't be so easily found. Anyone who disagrees is being taken away as traitors. That's what you're strolling into. Are you sure you want to stay?”

  Griel looked undecided. He glanced at Jao, who said, “We need to talk sense into someone. If we just walk away, we're as bad as Oriel.”

  “Hardly,” Griel snarled. Then he nodded. “Yes, you're right. And where would we go, anyway? To Milang? The humans would have us arrested as spies, or worse.”

  Ramal looked at them as though they were dangerously mad. “It's your decision. But you won't get far with these in tow.” She flared her broad nostrils at Sal, Shilly, and Highson.

  “Don't worry about us,” said Highson. “We're not exactly helpless.”

  Sal nodded. His reserves of the Change were fully recovered. It would feel good to be doing something. “What have you got in mind?”

  “Charm our way past the guards. Shilly can help design something for the three of us.”

  “Of course,” Shilly said, “but to what end? Oriel won't listen, and shouting on street corners is only going to get us arrested for sure.”

  “The Quorum,” said Sal. “We'll talk to them, see what they can do for us. They've come from the future. They must know something.”

  She looked at him, wide-eyed. “Yes. Yes, of course. And we can see if they know anything about Tom while we're at it.”

  “All right,” said Griel. “That's what we'll do. Ramal, are you going to stand in our way?”

  The big female raised her hands. “I will let you get yourselves killed, if that's what you plan to do.”

  “Thank you. You're dismissed, then.”

  Ramal bowed with the minimum of deference and headed back down the stairwell.

  “Right,” said Griel. “You three get started on your charms while we try to work out where Vehofnehu might have gone.”

  Sal, Shilly, Rosevear, and Highson went into a huddle while the three Panic set about searching the observatory. Aiming for complete invisibility would be too draining, they quickly decided. Better to deceive an observer's eye into thinking they were Panic than to cloud it completely.

  While Shilly sketched the charm required on a scrap of paper, Sal crossed the room to talk to Griel. “We need clothing or armour—as much as you can find that'll fit us. The fewer holes the charm has to patch, the longer we'll be able to maintain it.”

  Griel took him to a large chest near the entrance to the stairwell. It was full of clothes, redolent with the musty smell of the empyricist. “There might be something in here.”

  “Thanks.” Sal began the slightly distasteful task of picking through an old man's wardrobe. Gloves that looked like they might fit Highson, even with their short thumbs; a brown robe for Shilly decorated in gold thread with the tree motif of the Panic; a broad leather belt that barely went around his waist. There was nowhere near enough to act as an ordinary disguise, but sufficient, he hoped, to shore up the charm Shilly was designing. He tossed aside a pair of broad, open-toed sandals that would never accommodate human feet and an endless series of faded long-armed smocks.

  At the very bottom of the box he found a battered iron circlet as wide across as his outstretched fingers. Although obviously very old, it showed no sign of rust and was surprisingly heavy. He weighed it in his hands for a moment, then, feeling no telltale tingle of the Change, slipped it onto his head, wondering if it would fit.

  As soon as the cold metal touched his temples, a strange sensation swept through him. He felt suddenly hollow, like an empty bottle—and as soon as that feeling registered, something rushed into him, filling him up like water, right up to the brim. Every nerve tingled, from his fingertips to
the depths of his stomach. Every sense thrilled. He wanted to leap to his feet and shout for the joy of it. Never before had he known such vitality, such inspiration, such completion.

  The voice that roared through him nearly knocked him off his feet.

  // YOU COULD BE THIS POTENTIAL SUCH GREATNESS INSIDE YOU WAITING TO BE FREED SUCH STRENGTH //

  He reeled from the sound of it, although he heard nothing at all with his ears. The stream of words dropped directly into his mind with the force of weights. They didn't seem so much directed at him as granted him, as though a window had opened on the mind of something much larger than him, giving a glimpse into its incredible workings.

  // YOUR POTENTIAL YOUR GREATNESS WHAT COULD BE I GIVE YOU I OFFER YOU YOUR STRENGTH AND SURETY //

  Another window, another blast of pure, powerful thought. He understood then, that he was being offered something—a gift, perhaps, of power. He saw himself at the head of a mighty order, great and luminous, uniting the many disciplines of the Change across the Earth. Wild talent would no longer be feared or forgotten, an aberration left alone in the hope that it would burn itself out quickly. Instead it would become the norm to which everyone aspired. An era in which wildness was, if not tamed, then at least used— for wildness had its place in the world, and was dangerous only when misunderstood.

  Beside him, Sal saw Shilly dressed in the finery of a queen, brilliant and insightful, the mind behind the power. The two of them would transform the Earth and its people into something wonderful and irresistible. Together, they would rule forever.

  “That's not who I want to be,” he said, hearing the words as though they came from the bottom of a well. “I know who I am. I don't want all that stuff. I have everything I need already.”

  The window remained shut, but the seductive vitality remained.

  “I'm serious. I had this choice years ago. I would've taken it then if I was ever going to. Don't you think?”

  // RELEASED //

  The hole in his mind closed with a slam, and this time he was thrown off his feet, away from the crate and across the observatory, scattering chairs and maps and ornaments as he went. He skidded to a halt on his back, ears ringing. The crown flew from his head and skittered away, out of sight under a daybed.

  Shilly was instantly at his side. “What is it? What happened? Are you all right?”

  He looked up into her worried face, and felt himself break out into an inappropriate smile. He cupped her cheek, relishing the warmth of her, the feelings she evoked in him.

  “I'm all right. I touched something I wasn't supposed to, I guess, and turned down an offer most people would kill for.”

  She frowned and looked to Highson, as though wondering if he also thought Sal had lost his mind. Rosevear pressed forward to examine him, but Sal brushed the healer's hands away. Physically, he was fine.

  “What did you touch?” asked Griel, his face alien and unreadable.

  “An iron circlet. It went—” He sat up and peered past Shilly in the direction he thought it had gone. There was nothing under the daybed. “I don't know where it went.”

  Griel and the others searched the observatory for any sign of the circlet, but it had disappeared.

  “Do you know what it was?” he asked Griel. His legs wobbled underneath him as he climbed to his feet, but an echo of the unnatural vitality he had felt lingered still. The touch of Shilly's hand thrilled through him like an electric shock.

  “If you were anyone else, I'd say you must be lying or mad.” Griel spoke with his usual frankness. “But you're not Panic; you can't possibly know the legend of the King's crown. He may be gone but it remains, appearing in times of crisis to those with great potential. I always thought it was just one of those stories designed to teach kids proper ways to behave—like don't boast or you'll do badly; accept your strengths quietly and you'll succeed. But if you've seen it, received the offer right in front of us…”

  Sal didn't know how to respond. Shilly was still staring at him. Jao looked more annoyed than surprised. He dusted himself down with shaking hands. The last dregs of euphoria hadn't faded, and he repressed an urge to laugh uproariously.

  “How's that charm coming along?” he asked Shilly and Highson. “Can we get out of here soon, before I stumble across something else?”

  “Just about done,” she said. “Give us a minute and we'll be ready.”

  Sal had more than a minute. He had a whole lifetime ahead of him. He didn't need to be king of the world to enjoy his place in it, and at that moment, more than any other, it seemed as though nothing could harm him or those he loved. As he gathered up the accoutrements he had deemed useful from the empyricist's wardrobe, he hummed a tune his adopted father had once sung. Even that memory of past loss couldn't touch him.

  Griel uncovered no notes left by the empyricist, no clues as to his whereabouts, and no indication that he and Kemp had been taken by force. The lack of evidence gave little reason for them to linger. As soon as Shilly was ready, they left the observatory and headed into the city. The cage made three trips up and down the Way, bringing two or three people at a time down to its lowest level. There they found that the guards had been dismissed by Ramal.

  Charmed to resemble Panic citizens with long arms and jutting faces, the humans hurried along the floating city's complicated byways once more. Shilly avoided looking at Sal, unnerved by his altered appearance even though she knew it was still him, beneath the illusion. They encountered no resistance and few Panic; those they did see barely glanced at them. The mood of the city was tense and distracted by anger and grief. Children were kept indoors for fear of another wraith attack; windows were shuttered and doors locked; the only songs breaking the silence were in mourning to the dead. Griel didn't take them anywhere near the section of the city that had been destroyed, but the pain of it permeated everywhere.

  Sal didn't seem to notice. Amongst Lodo's notes were descriptions of tinctures used by some Change-workers to keep people awake longer or to make them feel temporarily stronger. Sal's behaviour reminded Shilly of those descriptions. Immediately after the incident in the observatory, he had been restless, confident, unable to rest, and now he scaled the city's ladders and ramps like he was genuinely one of the kingsfolk. His thoughts seemed half a second behind his actions.

  They met the first signs of resistance at the entrance to the place where the Quorum lived. There, beneath three golden balloons, each as large as the Alcaide's boneship, four guards tried to arrest them. Griel and Jao's names were on a list of dissidents circulated by Oriel, it seemed. People on that list were to be apprehended and taken for interrogation, or killed if they resisted. Griel, of course, resisted. Once hooks were drawn, events happened very quickly.

  It ended with one Panic soldier bleeding from a wound inflicted by Griel, and another gutted by Erged. The guard who had tried to lunge at Shilly had caught the full force of her charmed walking stick right between the eyes and he lay sprawled, stunned, at her feet. The fourth had gone for Highson. Sal, stepping in to defend his father, had exerted his wild talent in response.

  The shock of it still echoed off the hanging buildings around them. Ties and stays vibrated, humming notes too low for her to hear. Even Sal seemed surprised in the aftermath, and that surprise finally erased the odd look that had been in his eyes since trying on the iron crown. Now he was himself again, and she was relieved on that point, if few others. His exertion had disrupted the charm camouflaging them. Anyone looking would see them for what they were.

  They discarded their makeshift disguises, useless now the charm was broken. Griel opened the doors and hustled them inside. They hurried along a spiralling corridor that led to the heart of the building, passing a series of interesting artefacts Shilly would have liked to examine more closely. They sparkled with the Change, clearly relics of the times before the Cataclysm. Two tall doors stood ajar at the end of the corridor. A terrible wailing came from the other side of them, piercing in its volume and distress.r />
  “Srosha, why?” wailed a Panic female's voice. “Avesta, Armaiti, Mannah—how could you do this to us? Have we not been dutiful? Are we unworthy?”

  A series of loud crashes followed. Griel burst through the doors, exposing a startling scene.

  Shilly recognised the room instantly—the black-walled octagonal chamber lined with bookshelves that Sal had described—only now the books had been hurled around the room and the font at its centre had been tipped over. The fluid within now lay in a puddle across the floor, still casting a green light, so that shadows danced crazily on the walls. Shilly felt as though she had been plunged underwater. Her chest tightened instinctively.

  Nowhere in the room was the Quorum to be seen.

  “You too, Bahman? And you, Horva? Why do you abandon us? What have we done to deserve it?”

  The cry came from a dishevelled Panic female of middle years on the far side of the room. Her grey hair, once long and straight, now hung in wild disarray, as though repeatedly yanked at in despair. Her lined face was disfigured by deep scratches. Hollow eyes gleamed in the light. She didn't react to Griel's entrance, except to exclaim “Why? Why?” at him, as though he possessed the answer.

  “Tarnava!” He took her by the sloping shoulders and shook her. “Tarnava, what happened? What's wrong?”

  “They've gone. Can't you see?”

  “I see, but I don't understand. Was it Oriel?”

  “No. Oh, no.” Tarnava wept openly, tears smudging the kohl painted around her eyes. “It was them themselves. They left us in the night. No word, no thanks, no signs at all. Just gone—gone, and nothing left for us who cared for them all these years. What are we to do now? Why would they have done this to us?”

  “You're a fool, cousin,” said a low voice from the shadows. A second Panic female—Elomia, Shilly presumed—stepped forward. She looked as wild as Tarnava, but radiated potent fury rather than desperate loss. Just looking at her, Shilly knew she was the one responsible for the chaos wreaked on the bookshelves. “You're asking the wrong questions. They haven't left us. They haven't even arrived yet. In your madness you forget everything we ever learned about them.