The Hanging Mountains

by Sean Williams

  “I don't know whether Panic eyes are any better than human,” Shilly said to Jao, who had come to stand next to her, “but if you can tell whether Highson is over there, I'd be immensely relieved.”

  “So would I,” Jao replied. “Alas, I see no better than you. I'm having no luck looking for Griel.”

  The sight of something moving swiftly and silently through the clouds to one side of the barge sent a momentary pang of fear through Shilly. It came and went, then appeared again some distance away. The Swarm! she thought, and readied herself to cry out an alarm. Then she recognised the swept-back lines of Chu's wing, and relief flooded her.

  Good luck, she wished them, as the balloon docked with the square barge. The midair manoeuvre was conducted in silence and at a sufficient distance that it would have been easy to feel removed from the events taking place over there. But she felt no such disconnection. Her thoughts were entirely on what happened next.

  That explained, she told herself later, why she didn't notice what was happening right beside her—the subtle widening of a gap around Shilly, Banner, and Jao; the lack of conversation when Minister Sousoura glided confidently forward—until the knifepoint pricked her side and a strong, perfectly manicured hand gripped her shoulder.

  “If the Guardian dies,” said the minister, “you die.”

  Shilly could only nod, and watch and hope.

  “Examining the surface of things is the most obvious

  and least interesting way of studying the world.

  Of greater relevance are the things going on beneath,

  between, and behind everything we take for granted.”

  THE BOOK OF TOWERS, EXEGESIS 25:3

  Habryn Kail tried not to wince every time the gondola swayed beneath him. His chest felt taut and hot under his fingers, but the wound only hurt when he moved. Or breathed deeply. Or thought about it.

  He concentrated on the spectacle before him: one city clinging to the steep walls of a spur of rock that was a mountain in its own right, by Strand standards; another hanging in the clouds suspended from balloons as large as the city itself.

  The barge waited between them, preternaturally still under its cross-shaped balloons, a centre around which powerful forces had gathered. He could see four humans standing with four Panic. Rosevear and Highson he recognised; the two others, he gathered from the conversations around him, were Lidia Delfine, the Guardian's daughter, and her bearded bodyguard, Heuve. The four uniformed Panic figures were harder to identify: he presumed one was Kingsman Oriel, the self-styled leader of the city, and two were obviously guards. But who was the one standing to one side with a crude iron circlet around his head, and why did his eyes seem to gleam brighter than the others in the growing light?

  In the exact centre of the platform where the meeting would take place rested a long, rectangular table on sturdy wooden legs. There were no chairs, so it wouldn't be a conference as he had initially imagined it. The platform was surrounded by a wall one metre high, and beyond that was nothing but empty space.

  The balloon sidled up to the platform and one of its crew threw over a rope. Once lashed together, gates on each flying craft were opened, allowing a gangplank to connect the two. Mage Kelloman looked at the plank and his white skin paled even further. Guide wires set at waist height obviously failed to reassure the mage, for the hands gripping the seat in front of him remained tightly clenched.

  Kail could sympathise, but he wouldn't let fear stop him from attending the meeting. When his turn came to cross, he did so without hesitation, following Marmion stiffly, trying not to let his infirmity show and knowing he was probably failing.

  Everyone gathered at the table, adopting positions as much by instinct as by design. The contingent from the Panic Heptarchy stood on one side; those from Milang stood on the other. Lidia Delfine and her mother remained apart for the moment, and they acknowledged each with little more than a slight nod. Highson and Rosevear stood opposite Kail and Marmion. Kail couldn't tell if they were surprised to see him. He still felt slightly unsettled himself at where fate had led him.

  The goateed Panic male with the iron crown took a position at one end of the table, symbolically standing between the two groups.

  “Welcome, friends,” he said, encompassing both sides of the table with outstretched arms. “It's high time we met to discuss our differences. Too long has our true enemy exploited the hostility between us. The moment has come to put the past behind us and begin building the future.”

  “Spare us the rhetoric, Griel,” snarled the sour-faced Panic male standing opposite the Guardian. Oriel's forked beard was an exercise in vanity. His bald skull shone like polished ivory in the morning light. “I'm here solely to listen to a confession. It's a bit late for an apology. Too many of my people have died. When retribution has been made, then and only then will I consider peace.”

  “Retribution?” the Guardian echoed. “We have committed no wrong.”

  “No?” Oriel vented his anger directly at her. “You confound our compasses and attack our patrols—”

  “As you attack our patrols, without provocation.”

  “You send your ghouls and wraiths to destroy our homes.”

  “They have destroyed our homes, too—and killed my own son.”

  “The kingsfolk have lost entire families!”

  “Clearly, both sides have suffered,” broke in Griel. “On what grounds do you accuse each other?”

  The Guardian turned and reached for the cotton sack carried by one of her soldiers. At the same time, Oriel reached down to his feet.

  With a clatter, two bloodstained pieces of armour—one broad leather chestplate patterned with leaves, the other a light chain shirt featuring circular motifs—slammed down on the table.

  “The so-called wraith we shot down was wearing this,” said Griel, indicating the chain shirt. “The body inside was decidedly human.”

  “The wraith we shot down was a Panic soldier,” said the Guardian.

  “Both were fakes,” said Marmion, stepping up to the table. “Your enemies played on your natural suspicion to divert attention away from them.”

  “Why should I believe you, human?” sneered Oriel.

  “Because I hold no allegiance to either side. Because my people have helped both foresters and kingsfolk in this struggle.”

  “You've aided traitors and saboteurs. You have kidnapped my entire city!”

  “As you have kidnapped the Guardian's daughter and taken prisoner friends of mine.” Marmion waved away the objection. “We can stand here all day, trading insults and slights, but that won't get us anywhere. I suggest we open our minds to the possibility that we're being used and do something constructive about it.”

  “I have no reason to believe you.” Oriel folded his long arms. His black beard stuck straight out from his chin, a stance of unmistakeable hostility. “You have no evidence to back up your claims. I see only a plot to undermine my rule and therefore my people.”

  “Your rule?” asked Griel. “Your people?”

  Oriel puffed out his chest. “I rule by the mandate of the Heptarchs.”

  “What happened to the King? To the notion that the Heptarchs act in his stead?”

  “Times are changing, Griel. Haven't you noticed? The Quorum is gone. The city is under attack. Perhaps it's time for the Heptarchs to step permanently aside for a new King, since the old one obviously isn't coming back.”

  “Isn't he?” In one smooth motion, Griel took the iron circlet from his head and threw it on the table between them. “Try it on for size. I dare you.”

  Oriel looked down at the scuffed grey circlet, then back up at Griel. Something passed between the two Panic males that Kail didn't quite fathom. Not an understanding, exactly. Perhaps a recognition, but of what, he couldn't tell.

  “I have been granted a vision,” Griel said softly, “of a time when foresters and kingsfolk work together. Some say fog and wood shouldn't mix, and traditionally that has always been s
o. But perhaps the time has come for a change—a change for the better, erasing old suspicions and healing wounds untreated for too long. Fog and wood do mix in the forest, to magnificent effect. Why shouldn't we?”

  “You're a fool,” said Oriel softly, but he made no move to pick up the circlet. “I do not listen to fools.”

  “Then you'd better listen to reason,” said Marmion, forcing his way into the tense standoff between the two Panic males. “You want evidence? I'll give you evidence.”

  Pushing the crown back towards Griel, he indicated that the guards carrying the wooden box should come forward. They hefted their burden onto the table, where it settled with a thud, then stepped back.

  Marmion put his one hand on the box's rough pine lid but did not open it. The barge swayed as though a strong gust of wind had caught its broad underside.

  “The creature in this box is one of the nine that has been hunting these forests since three weeks ago. It comes from the time before the Cataclysm, a time we know very little about. I know this, though: it's mindless and rapacious; it would kill us in a frenzy of bloodlust were I to set it free now. It is not the sort to plan and enact elaborate revenge.”

  “Yet you claim that these are the beings responsible for setting my people against hers?” asked Oriel, indicating the Guardian with a contemptuous flick of a finger. “Your lie is paper-thin.”

  “It's no lie. Your empyricist recognised the spoor of these creatures. Were he present, he could identify our captive here.”

  “Do you know where he is, Oriel?” asked Griel, nodding at one of the female soldiers. “Ramal found his observatory empty yesterday.”

  “That mad old tree frog? Who cares where he gets to when he's not in his nest?”

  “Perhaps we all should,” said Marmion, “because he might even identify the new player that has joined the game: another creature from the old times, a being called Upuaut that we might describe as a golem. Two of our number have met it: Kail here, and Skender, who is watching this meeting from nearby. The nine hunters, once called the Swarm, have been given purpose and new potential for mischief by Upuaut. This one is your true enemy. The hunters we can kill, one by one, but not if our efforts are divided, not if we set to each other's throats like angry dogs, not if we let Upuaut win before the true battle has really started.”

  “He's right,” said Highson Sparre on the far side of the table. “We have no quarrel with either you or the Guardian, and we have no allegiance, either. That we're human doesn't make us any more likely to cooperate with the foresters. We have our own purpose, our own mission.”

  “So why are you helping us?” asked Oriel over his armoured shoulder. “Out of the goodness of your hearts, I suppose.”

  “No,” said Kail with utter frankness, “because you're in the way.”

  Griel barked with laughter. “They have us there, Oriel. Why don't we get a sense of perspective and talk like adults rather than the children we've become?”

  Oriel snorted. “You can talk all you want. There's nothing in that box but air, and nothing behind these words but dreams and lies. Minds from before the Cataclysm? I'd rather believe in traitors. Not if we were the last people on Earth would I ally myself with you. And you?” He indicated the outsiders with one sweep of a gloved hand. “You go on your merry way as you wish. I'll not stop you. But if you come near my city again, I'll have you all killed.”

  “That's a decision you would live to regret,” said Marmion softly.

  “Is that a threat?” Oriel leaned low over the table so he was eye to eye with Marmion.

  “Yes, but I'm not the one making it.” Marmion opened the lid of the box and pushed it roughly forward.

  Oriel recoiled as though Marmion had thrust a snake into his face. A second later, everyone around the table did the same. Kail felt it too: a wave of icy malignancy and hate radiating outwards from where the wraith lay imprisoned. He forced himself not to look away, darkly curious to see with his own eyes what had only been hinted at since his return.

  Within the wooden box, resting on a bale of straw and dried leaves, protected from the outside world by an inner shell of lead, was a cylinder of rough-forged iron. Neither vigorously worked nor completely unfashioned, it looked like no weapon Kail had ever seen before, yet it had a pommel at one end bound up in dark leather thongs and came to a blunt point at the other. Between those two points, the iron resembled a cross between a club and a sword, with blunt charms carved in a straight line down one side. The light skittered sickly off it, as though repulsed.

  That wasn't the worst of it. Inside the metal, the being it contained railed against captivity. It hissed through the Change, as if in pain. The sound issued from the metal itself, as though it had been heated and dipped in hot fat.

  “Speak,” Marmion commanded it.

  The hissing continued unchecked.

  “I know it can talk,” Marmion told Oriel. “I've spoken to it, and so have Skender and Warden Banner. It's a living being, if not very bright, and it has clear preferences. It prefers the night, for one. That's probably why they're here in the Hanging Mountains, where the sun is perpetually shrouded and the hunting is good. Even this morning's weak light pains it. Perhaps it would prefer to be locked up again, safe in the darkness for the rest of eternity.”

  He reached for the lead-lined lid, and the wraith's voice rang out in the icy morning. I am Giltine, the one who stings. Come, my sisters, come!

  Oriel stared at the thing with horror on his face. He could clearly hear the voice, although it spoke only through the Change. “What is it? How have you bound it—and why?”

  “Its origins are unknown to me,” said Marmion. “All I can tell you is that it has been confined to the iron by the charms you see etched in the metal. As to why—”

  “We can't kill it,” interrupted Kelloman. “Believe me, we've tried. Fire knocks them out but doesn't get rid of them entirely. Not the sort of fire we have access to, anyway.”

  “This is the thing that killed my brother,” said Lidia Delfine, grief and hatred warring openly across her face.

  “If it's what you say it is,” said Oriel, “then we should throw it into the Versegi Chasm and have done with it forever. Why haven't you?”

  “It's only one of them,” Marmion said. “Only so long as the metal is intact will the binding remain fast. Should it rust or melt, its efficacy will end, and the creature will escape.”

  Come, my sisters, come!

  Kail raised a hand to his chest, where his wound had begun to itch. He tried to remember everything the twins had said about the creatures called the Swarm.

  “There are ways to fight them,” he said, a vision burned in his mind of the Homunculus driving the Swarm back with one palm outstretched. “I've seen it done, but the means is beyond my knowledge.”

  “Where have you seen it?” asked Oriel. Highson, too, glanced at him, lips tightening.

  “That's not important,” said Marmion. “We can discuss the details later. The important thing to agree on is that this is your enemy, not each other—this and eight more creatures exactly like it. Once we cross that hurdle, much that is presently difficult will become simpler.”

  Oriel nodded warily, indicating that he was listening but not yet fully convinced. “How am I to know that this isn't some elaborate parlour trick?”

  Marmion reached out and slammed the lid shut. “If this thing succeeds in bringing its sisters here, you'll be in no position to doubt any longer.”

  “Is that likely?”

  “You now know as much as I do about these creatures. This was a risk I had to take, in order to convince you. Are you convinced?”

  Oriel looked more shaken than anything else. “You bring me here,” he said to Griel, “with threats of death and destruction, only for me to hear more of the same. I am not relieved of any of my fears. They are, in fact, worsened by the fear I see in your eyes.” He swept the gathering with his stare. “Are we mice who cower at the shadow of an eagle? W
e are not. We face this evil the best way we can, and if that means talking—” he put his hands on the table and stared down at the box “—then I will talk. But I make no promises.”

  “None are required.” Marmion stepped back and waved the guards forward. They removed the box from the table and put it to one side. “Guardian? I'll let you negotiate the release of your daughter. When you need my advice regarding the Swarm, I will be here.”

  Marmion backed away to join the others, leaving the major players to thrash out their differences.

  “Clever,” whispered Kail.

  Marmion feigned a nonchalant shrug. “They would've worked it out eventually.”

  “I'm not so sure about that—and that's not what I meant, anyway. You did this deliberately. You and Griel, I bet.”

  “What?”

  “Got everyone together in one place. Opened the box.” Kail became conscious of Kelloman listening in. “The traps you laid in the forest caught nothing, but what could be a better target than this?”

  The mage's eyebrows went up. “A bit of a risk, don't you think? We're not exactly in the best fighting shape.”

  Marmion shushed him. “We're as able as we'll ever be. And Griel had nothing to do with it. Maybe he guessed, or came to the same conclusion. I don't know. But the result is the same. We're all here and waiting. If the Swarm don't do something now, they never will.”

  “We're not all here,” said Kail.

  Marmion looked at him inquiringly.

  “The Homunculus is missing. I notice you've been keeping that particular detail very quiet. Are you hoping Upuaut will get rid of that problem for you?”

  Marmion leaned in close and spoke with tightly wound restraint. “There's nothing I can do for the Homunculus now. It's beyond my reach—and I'm glad for that, to be honest. I can only deal with one crisis at a time. I'm only human.”

  Kail raised a calming hand. He believed Marmion, which surprised him, and he resolved likewise to let the matter of the twins go for now. Wherever they were, whatever they were doing, he only hoped they would remain safe.