The Hanging Mountains

by Sean Williams

  “Don't worry. Mage Kelloman is going to keep the fire back. Highson will make sure we have air to breathe. Just you worry about moving.”

  “Got to—” He couldn't get the words out right. Only as Marmion hurried back into his line of sight leading Heuve and Lidia Delfine, who between them carried the splintered box, was he able to finish the sentence.

  “Got to him.”

  He pointed at Marmion, but it was already too late. The lid of the box was open and Marmion was bending over it. A ghastly silver light rippled across the warden's face as he reached inside and drew out the imprisoned wraith.

  Flames crowded around Kelloman's charm, creating a roaring hurricane of wind that pushed the branches back in a circle overhead. Marmion stood, holding the rough-forged iron weapon upright above him, as one would a sword. Ash and sparks swirled in a furious stream, louder than the hissing of the wraith. Kail wasn't the only one pointing at Marmion by then, at the strange, tortured look on his face and the hand-that-wasn't holding the wraith high. Lidia Delfine was shouting and Heuve lunged forward only to be knocked aside by a mighty whiplash of wind. A funnel of mist spiralled down from the sky, and the roots of the forest writhed at Marmion's feet. In that funnel the Swarm danced—unholy, seductive, and fatal.

  A bright, blue-white spark snapped from the stump of Marmion's severed arm to the wraith's iron prison, a palm's-length away. The crack was loud enough to penetrate Kail's stunned state, driving him to his feet. Another spark flashed, then a third, each louder and brighter than the other.

  When the fourth came, it lit Marmion up like a sun and drove a wedge between sky and Earth so violently that Kail, just for an instant, felt nothing at all.

  Skender twisted his head from side to side, unable to believe they had shaken their pursuers so easily. Not all five of them at once. There had to be one left, trailing them in a blind spot, waiting to pounce with claws and teeth as sharp as needles when he and Chu least expected it. But there wasn't. Something had lured them away.

  The wing ascended sharply, catching a thermal that lifted its nose almost vertically. Skender saw the stricken balloon careering across the sky. Two Panic combat blimps—sleek, manoeuvrable things that looked like pictures of sharks he had seen once—circled nearby, late but welcome arrivals. Some sort of hurricane seemed to be brewing below them all, whipping up the treetops and stirring the fire into a frenzy. Vast sheets of flame rose up high in the air.

  And there, at last—all five of the Swarm, drawn down in a funnel of cloud to meet that rising vortex. Their smaller prey had been completely forgotten in favour of something inside that funnel. Black clouds spread in their wake. Fire and ice. Mist and smoke. The sky clenched like a white-knuckled fist.

  Skender gripped the harness. He had never seen clouds behave like that before.

  “I think,” he said, “that we should get out of here—fast.”

  “Finally we agree on something,” she said, swinging the wing bodily upwards.

  Skender looked behind as they ascended. At the centre of the vortex, at the point towards which the Swarm were determinedly closing, a bright point of light flared once, and then again. The third time, it was bright enough to leave a purple spot on his retina.

  He turned to say something to Chu. The fourth flash cast shadows all across the sky. He had just enough time to feel surprised at its intensity when the sound hit and shook them like a storm-addled leaf.

  Shilly backed into a corner with the others as the sound of the man'kin grew louder. Over sirens and horns, ringing bells and human cries, she could definitely hear heavy footfalls advancing on the citadel. Nothing stood in the man'kin's way. Nothing turned them back. Anyone who tried was pushed aside or physically crushed. Reports of casualties and great swathes of damage preceded the creatures in their thunderous ascent. The whites around Jao's eyes flashed at her as a mass of frightened human flesh crushed them together. Ash fell from the sky like rain. Banner moaned with fear. Shilly didn't understand, and that made her angry as well as frightened. What did the man'kin want? Why this tide of destruction if all they needed was sanctuary from the fire? Why fight when the man'kin of Laure hadn't?

  She pushed against the people pressing around her, forcing her way forwards to the front of the crowd. Warden Banner called her name, but Shilly only slowed long enough to give the warden Minister Sousoura's knife. Someone had to make a stand, and it might as well be her. She would make the man'kin listen—she who had spoken to the Angel and lived. She would make them listen if it killed her.

  She broke free and limped to the centre of the torn and tattered lawn. The crashing and smashing reached a crescendo. Before she could have any second thoughts, the southern wall of the citadel collapsed in a heap, torn down by mighty stone hands. Delicate mosaics went flying in thousands of multicoloured pieces. The belltower dropped with a roar, its giant bell tolling one final time as it fell.

  Grey granite shapes burst through the rubble, shrugging it aside as though it was straw. With massive jerking movements they looked at the frightened crowd, then at her, and kept walking.

  Two of them, fierce creatures with bat-ears and claws and teeth as long as her hands, thudded to confront her with feet that left deep indentations in the ash-covered grass. Part of her wanted to giggle, despite their ferocious appearance. Only two. Judging by the sound they had made, and the reports from below, they should have been hundreds.

  She opened her mouth to say something—anything that would make them stop.

  A flicker of light registered somewhere at the edge of her vision, and then a clap of thunder so loud it hurt her ears.

  And the man'kin did indeed stop right before her, just for a moment.

  Lightning.

  Kail came back to himself in time to hear the rumbling, rolling echoes of thunder returning from the mountainsides. A jagged violet line stretched vertically down his vision. The air stank of the Change.

  Marmion had fallen in a heap at the centre of Kelloman's charm with the lump of crude iron, now glowing red, beside him. Darkness had fallen with him, and a strange kind of silence that spoke of too much noise rather than too little. Kail's senses were overwhelmed. He was having trouble enough standing, let alone keeping up with events.

  Kelloman's charm continued to keep the flames at bay, although they danced like fiery dust devils desperate to get in. Kail blinked, registering a change in the wind. The vortex that had gripped them was easing, breaking up into erratic gusts. He looked up, expecting to see the Swarm upon them, with ghastly arms outstretched and mouths open wide, but all he saw were dark clouds looming.

  Thunderheads.

  What had happened to the Swarm? The last time he had looked, there had been five of them converging on Marmion and the imprisoned wraith. Now they were gone.

  Lightning flashed again, but more distantly, and the boom of thunder was less overpowering.

  Something new dropped out of the sky, descending in a heavy, shimmering sheet. Kail opened his mouth, feeling hot moisture over his lips and face. His hearing returned, bringing him a loud, vibrant hiss and the sound of relieved cries from his companions.

  Rain.

  At last he understood. The wraiths were gone, blasted by lightning. The rain would bring the fires into check, perhaps even extinguish them completely. Human and Panic helped each other up and checked each other's injuries. Perhaps, he dared think, all would be well.

  Marmion lay unmoving in the mud. Kail went to him, rolled him over. Water splashed the warden's face, and his eyelids fluttered.

  “What happened?” he croaked, barely audible over the noise.

  “Fires make their own weather,” Kail said. “With a little help.”

  “It worked?”

  “Looks that way. I honestly thought you were giving them what they wanted. The Swarm, I mean. I'm sorry.”

  “Don't be.” Marmion struggled to sit, using his one flesh-and-blood hand to grip Kail's shoulder. The mud beneath his feet was a slippery mixture
of ash and dirt, but the air smelled clean and cool. “It's not over yet. That was only six of them. There are still three left.”

  “Three we can handle now we know how to.”

  “We can, yes. But it's not just about us.”

  Realisation hit him. “The Homunculus. Sal!”

  Marmion gripped his arm. “Talk to Griel. See if one of his combat drones can get to Geraint's Bluff at top speed.”

  “You want to help them?”

  “I want to give the twins a chance to prove themselves. We owe them that much.”

  Kail stood, seeking Griel through the intensifying downpour.

  On the ruined hillside known as Geraint's Bluff, a wolf's ululating howl broke the silence. Until recently, Sal had been sitting on a rock waiting for Shilly while the twins prowled restlessly, arguing silently between themselves. His head came up at the sound and he searched the misty forest around him for the source of the call. The sound had a lonely quality to it, as though its owner had come a long way and still had some distance to go.

  “Did you hear that?” asked the twins, staring at him with four wide-set eyes.

  “Of course I heard it.”

  “You really did?”

  Sal couldn't fathom the incredulity in their combined voice. “Why wouldn't I?”

  They didn't answer immediately. Picking their way across the tumbled slope, sending smaller rocks rattling downwards in miniature avalanches, their Homunculus body looked as alien as ever.

  When it was standing as close to him as he would let it come, the twins said, “That's Upuaut.”

  “The golem thing?” Sal had listened for most of the night and the morning to the twins' account of their strange adventures with Kail. “What's it doing here?”

  “It's come to kill us, I guess,” said the twin called Seth, and Sal could not disagree.

  Less than an hour earlier, an echo of distant events had come to him—fire and fright and teeth like broken glass—and he had wondered what was happening with his friends, and with Shilly in particular, elsewhere in the forest.

  Then yadeh-tash, the ancient stone pendant that the man'kin claimed as one of their own, whispered through the skin of his chest, warning him of a storm nearby. That had surprised and unnerved him, for in the muffled stillness of the mist forest, storms seemed a distant, alien phenomenon.

  And finally the warning had come from Highson through the Change: Be on your guard. The golem is abroad with one-third of the Swarm. We're on our way.

  Sal had kept that warning to himself, not wanting to rattle the twins. The one-day deadline wasn't up yet. He didn't want them to leave before time.

  The wolf howled again, louder and longer than before. Instead of loneliness, this cry conveyed eagerness and hunger.

  “I want to know why you can hear it,” said Seth's brother, Hadrian, “when Kail couldn't.”

  “Yes, what makes you different? Is it something to do with those signs scratched on you?”

  Sal responded defensively to the strange accusation. “They're just ordinary charms, the same as the ones I've drawn to hide us here. Underneath them, I'm the same as anyone else.”

  “You can't be.” The flat assertion defied contradiction. “There must be something about you that's special.”

  There was no point in denying what he knew to be true, even though he had spent half his life rejecting the assertion that it meant he was special. “I'm a wild talent.”

  “What does that mean?” asked the twins.

  “It means…Well, it just means that I was raised away from the wardens and mages who might've taught me how to handle my talent when it came, and because of that I've gone my own way. I do things differently, that's all.”

  “Must be more to it than that,” said Seth, “if you can hear the wolf.”

  “What if that's all it is—just a wolf?” he asked. “You could be jumping at mozzies.”

  “We could be,” the twins agreed. They didn't sound convinced. Their two superimposed faces scanned the tree line for any sign of their ancient enemy.

  Sal stood up and shivered. Although it was barely noon, the day seemed to have suddenly chilled.

  “It's not just a wolf,” said a voice from behind them. “I'm so much more than that.”

  The Homunculus and Sal whipped around. Above them, stepping out of the trees, was the skinny figure that Sal remembered from the Aad. He had only glimpsed the man's face briefly, but he would never forget its tortured expression. Now, that expression was gone, but the sense of agony, of wrongness, remained. There was something entirely new in the man's head now.

  “Stay back,” said Sal, feeling the Change stir in instinctive response.

  “Or what? You know what will happen if you try to attack me. You'll empty yourself and we'll take you over. You'll be lost forever in the Void. You'll die and be no use to anyone.”

  The man's eyes were awful—black, pain-filled pits—but his mouth was worse. Every word came from a place devoid of hope, waking troubled memories.

  “I helped kill one of your kind once,” he said. “Or like enough. You're vulnerable inside that body. If I kill it while you're in there, you'll die too.”

  “But how will you kill the body while I'm inside it?” The terrible figure walked down the landslide, following much the same path the twins had before. “There's the rub.”

  “We could tear your throat out,” growled the twins, “as you would tear out ours, given the chance.”

  “Oh, I'll have the chance. Make no mistake of that.” Upuaut showed the yellowed, chipped teeth of its host. “You don't frighten me, even in this puny body I inhabit, with its twisted mind and sordid memories. And you obviously don't frighten Sal. What sort of power do you think you have? If you can't inspire fear, it can't be as great as you imagine.”

  Sal visualised a series of shapes Shilly had taught him while making repairs on their underground home. As the golem came closer, he shifted the stones beneath it just slightly, enough to make it stagger then freeze with its arms outstretched.

  “Easy, boy,” it said, “or you'll bring the whole lot down on you.”

  “And you with it.”

  “That's not the most stupid thing you could do, but it'd certainly be ill-advised. A wasted opportunity, if nothing else.”

  “You have nothing I want.”

  “Oh, no? Don't come to that conclusion too quickly. At least hear what I have to say.”

  “About what?”

  “Your missing friends, for one.”

  Sal, the Homunculus, and the golem formed an equilateral triangle splayed across the side of the mountain. Sal glanced at the twins, who quivered with suppressed emotions several metres away. Their frames of mind were impossible to read.

  “Golems can't lie,” Sal said, “but I wouldn't trust you, no matter what you told me.”

  “Yet you trust this abomination.” The golem indicated the twins with one broken-nailed hand. “This freak of unnature. What does it know of this world? What can it possibly tell you about the shadow drawing long across us all? What stake has it in our fates? It doesn't care if we live or die.”

  “We care,” said the twins. “We gave up our lives to be here.”

  “You made this world as it is by leaving. You fashion its undoing by returning. How does that prove your goodwill?”

  “I'm not sure I see the point you're making,” said Sal. “Are you suggesting I'd be better off on your side? Because if that's the case, you're wasting your breath.”

  The ghastly smile faded. “You're being hasty again, boy.”

  “Empty threats and empty promises. That's all a golem has to bargain with. If I won't bargain, you're nothing. You might as well go back to the Aad and bother someone else.”

  “My threats aren't empty,” growled Upuaut, its guttural tones testing the capacity of the human throat it spoke through. “Look around you. We four are not the only ones abroad this fine afternoon.”

  A chill wind stirred the hillside. T
he mist roiled as three tapering midnight shapes glided into view. Sal tensed, but they came no closer than the golem itself. They circled the three-way confrontation making a sound like metal scraping on glass, eyes and open mouths gleaming.

  Sal forced himself to speak levelly. “At least you are making threats now. That's more in character.”

  “You aren't the one I'm threatening,” it said. “Just your companions.”

  “What did they ever do to you?”

  “They are responsible for the ruin of the world!” The sudden fury on the golem's face was startling and raw. “They will pay!”

  “We did what we could to save the world,” the twins said, eyes roaming across their combined face as they tried to track all three wraiths at once. “We paid the price.”

  “You saved nothing! Everything I worked for, everything I aspired to, you destroyed. Alongside Mot I could have turned back the tide. Yod would have been repelled. But you got in the way. You denied what was rightfully mine.”

  “You know nothing about Yod,” hissed Seth. “It would've eaten you and your precious Mot and still been hungry.”

  “You lie!” The golem turned its anger onto Sal. “How can you believe these fools to be your only hope? Your delusion is as great as theirs. Other forces are stirring, other plans. The seers are gathering. The imp is a-wing. I and my kind do not intend to sit idly by and watch.”

  Sal thought of yadeh-tash still whispering at his throat and wished he knew what the other wraiths were up to.

  “I see your plan now,” said Hadrian. “It's the only one you have open to you. You're going to kill us and return the Realms to their natural state. You know that'll set Yod free, but you think you can fight it better that way. You think you and a handful of tired old energumen can do what the Sisters of the Flame, the Ogdoad, Baal, the Duergar Clans, and the Handsome King could not. You're so fucking wrong it makes me sick.”

  “Yod is starved and weak,” the golem retaliated. “It is as frail as you are. If we control the timing of its emergence, we control its fate. You would rather let it come forth when it's good and ready. You'd wait until the jaws of death close tight around the world before doing anything to save it!”