The Hanging Mountains

by Sean Williams

  Griel smiled wider than ever.

  Bodyguards followed Skender wherever he went. He didn't let that bother him, as it wasn't entirely a sign of distrust. Since foresters and kingsfolk weren't completely reconciled yet, Griel had insisted that two loyal soldiers remain with Skender in case he needed protection. Their solid, leather-clad forms were a comfort when Panic citizens stared at him with expressions he still found difficult to read sometimes. Skender couldn't tell if they thought him an oddity like the dawn—something to be marvelled at, safe in the knowledge that it would soon go away—or a threat to be vilified and neutralised as quickly as possible. The shocks of recent times still reverberated through the many ups and downs of the city. As often as he heard laughter and joy, he witnessed tears and grief.

  Highson Sparre, Mage Kelloman, and the Homunculus had arrived from Geraint's Bluff shortly before dawn. Skender found them in a sealed garden not far from the city's heart. Guards lined the entrance, keeping a watchful eye on the strange creature in their midst—even stranger than a human, and that was saying something, to their eyes. Skender could empathise with their nervousness as he approached the group.

  “—what form could it possibly take?” Kelloman was saying, absently brushing the bilby away from his ear. While he could hardly be described as comfortable with the creature, at least he was beginning to tolerate its presence. “Is it bodiless like a golem, or something stranger, like a ghost?”

  “We won't know until we find it,” said Highson. “And we'll have to be careful when we do. We know it eats minds.”

  “Memories and will,” said the twins. “For breakfast.”

  “Speaking of which,” said Skender. “Do any of you know where we can get a feed around here?”

  “Why don't you just ask the guards, boy?” asked Kelloman.

  Skender smiled. “Because I thought you might need a break. You old boys have been worrying at this all night long. It's time you found something new to chew on.”

  “There's nothing else to do,” said the twins, “until we get moving again.”

  Skender couldn't read their expression, but they radiated restlessness like a well-fuelled fire. Every fibre of their beings yearned to continue their journey, but they had agreed to wait for the others before they did. The events of recent days had demonstrated that they couldn't complete their mission by themselves, or whether those who offered to help could actually be trusted. The Swarm might be gone, but who knew what else had followed them from the old times?

  Skender still didn't want to think that far ahead. Just wondering where Rattails and Upuaut might be that second made his stomach turn.

  “You know,” said Highson, slapping his thighs, “I think I agree with Skender. There's no point running headlong into anything. The Goddess only knows when Marmion's going to want to set off. We should take advantage of the hospitality here before we're on the road again.”

  “There are few roads where you're going,” said Kelloman. “Just long climbs.”

  “All the more reason to fill our stomachs.” Highson stood. “Anyone else?”

  Kelloman capitulated, but the twins shook their head. “We'll be all right. We don't need to eat much, anyway.”

  The mage and warden walked with Skender through a wide doorway indicated by the guards. Within, along a narrow corridor and up a flight of stairs, they found a small but serviceable mess. Skender ate briskly, not realising quite how hungry he was until the plate was put in front of him. Panic food was little different from that eaten by their human counterparts in the forest: lots of nuts and beans, most harvested from the ground, but some grown in rooftop gardens using water collected from the mist. The latter had a smoky flavour that Kelloman assured them was considered quite distasteful in Milang.

  “They're a strange mob,” expounded the mage as he picked at a wholegrain fritter. “Both of them. Utterly alike in many ways, yet expending so much energy trying to seem apart.”

  “Just like mages and wardens,” said Skender offhandedly.

  “Nonsense, boy. They are completely different.”

  Highson laughed—a welcome sound, one Skender hadn't heard often from the lips of Sal's father. It didn't last long, but it did lighten the mood somewhat.

  “I gather,” Skender said when his plate was empty and he had leaned back in his seat to digest, “that you haven't heard from Marmion yet.”

  Highson shook his head. “Except to say that we're to arrange a transfer back to Milang at midday. He'll announce his decision when we're all together.”

  “No hints?”

  “Not a one. He's going to have to pull something clever out of his hat, though. The boneship isn't much use to us in the mountains, and some of us aren't fit to travel by foot.”

  “Some of us aren't fit to travel by boneship, either,” said Skender, remembering days of water-sickness all too clearly.

  “Marmion did say,” Highson went on, “that there were things that needed sorting. I'm sure he's right, but what are they and how will they affect us? We can leave Oriel and the Guardian to patch things up here. It isn't really our problem now.”

  “What is our problem?” asked Kelloman gloomily.

  “Don't start that again. At least let our food settle.”

  “What do you mean by us?” asked Skender. “You're not thinking of coming with us, are you?”

  The mage looked aggrieved. “I made the mistake of reporting recent events to the Synod. I say ‘mistake’ because at the time I thought I was doing the right thing, and that I would be immediately recalled to safety. Unfortunately, they've ordered me to go with you into the mountains, to observe what you find there and report back in due course.”

  “To spy, in other words.”

  “Exactly. And alas.”

  The mage flicked a seed across the table to where the bilby was playing with the corner of a placemat. It pounced delightedly on the small snack.

  That's what we are to Yod, Skender thought. A snack to tide it over. He thought of all the minds lost in the Void Beneath, all their voices stilled forever. Yod had devoured them and escaped.

  He shivered.

  “Have you ever thought,” he asked Highson, to change the subject, “of separating the twins? I mean, you made the Homunculus. It's designed to adopt the shape of the mind inside it. Couldn't you cut it in two, or make another one?”

  Highson looked down at his hands. “I fear,” he said, “that some of the ingredients required were very hard to find. That's why I had to steal them from the Novitiate collection. Now they're used up, and there are no more. I doubt Marmion would take the suggestion well, anyway.”

  “Who cares about what he wants? The twins deserve a break—if you'll pardon the pun.”

  Mage Kelloman looked at him with eyes narrowed. “What's up with you, my lad? You're entirely too cheerful for someone who almost cooked his hide yesterday.”

  Skender coughed to hide his embarrassment. He could feel his ears going red. “That was nothing,” he said. “My eyebrows will eventually grow back.”

  “You're stuck here at the end of the Earth with nothing but a bunch of misfits and monsters for company, and you almost seem to be enjoying it. I'm beginning to think you're as mad as everyone else around here.”

  “I just reckon you should think about it,” Skender said to Highson, who was also looking at him with a perceptive gleam in his eye. “Separating the twins, I mean. It might do them the world of good.”

  “Maybe you're right,” Sal's father said with a sigh. “They've certainly been asking questions about the Homunculus. Perhaps that's what they've got in mind. There are many things in play that I don't understand, though. If we make the wrong move, it could be a disaster. I wish there was some way of knowing what was coming…”

  Highson trailed off, leaving the sentence unfinished. Mawson and Tom were still missing, along with the Quorum. Without them, there was no possible way of telling what the future held. They were trapped in the present, like everyone
else.

  Skender thought of Kemp and the Panic empyricist who had promised to look after him. Neither of them had been seen again, either. The group that had set out from Laure was shrinking fast. They would be lucky, he thought, if just one of them lasted long enough to meet Yod.

  That was a thought he kept to himself. When Kelloman and Highson returned to the subject of their distant, mysterious adversary—as he had always known they would—he left them to it and took his bodyguards on a stroll elsewhere.

  The fresh air was cool on his burned skin. His hands still stung as though soaked in scalding water. Before going to Milang with Marmion, Rosevear had given Skender a vial of ointment, instructing him to apply it to the sore areas every two hours. The time had come and gone for another application.

  As the mist rolled back in, cutting off the view from all but the highest reaches of Milang and the mountains behind it, he returned to his room and did as he was told.

  “Your hands are sticky,” Chu said when she came back to the room, exhausted from her long discussion with the Panic balloon-makers. Her hair had been braided behind one ear, and beaded like Jao's. He wasn't aware that she had slept at all. He had nodded off before her, and she had been gone when he awoke.

  “Yours are dry,” he said. “They'll scar if you're not careful.”

  “So? Adds character.” She let go of his hand and sat on the bed next to him. “You can't possibly be tired. Not after last night.”

  “Are you telling me I snored again?”

  “You always snore.”

  “And you always lie.” He looked at her, feeling as though he could melt into her brown eyes forever. “You just kissed me, though. That was nice.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I wanted to. I kissed you last night too, if you remember.”

  “I do remember.”

  “Well, that makes a change.”

  He smiled. “Is this something we should talk about?”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “I don't know.”

  “We talk enough as it is, I sometimes think. Not that I don't like that,” she added hastily. “I like talking to you. It always makes me feel better about things.”

  “Even though we argue?”

  “Because we have something to argue about, and because we care enough to argue about it.”

  “Ah. Clear as fog.”

  She smiled. “I'm just glad that we didn't die yesterday, or the day before, and I worry that if we die tomorrow all we'll have done is talk.”

  “We're not going to die tomorrow.”

  “The day after, then, or the day after that.”

  He brushed a strand of thick, beaded hair from her forehead. “We'll only die if you keep on crashing us into things.”

  She punched him, then winced at the sting in her hands. “At least we look good in black.”

  Skender sat up and applied the ointment Rosevear had given him to the affected areas of Chu's hands.

  “So, did you get a chance to talk to Heuve?”

  “I did.” She looked simultaneously smug and sad. “He offered me a position in the citadel guard.”

  Skender's eyebrows went up. “You impressed him that much?”

  “It was only a matter of time. He had to give in eventually. They always do.”

  He didn't rise to the bait. “What did you tell him?”

  “I turned him down.”

  “I thought you might.”

  “It wasn't easy. Even though I think he was feeling guilty about sending me after Eitzen and the others, it's still a big compliment. I would've killed for it a few days back.”

  “Was he offended when you said no?”

  “You know Heuve. He's always offended.”

  “Did you tell him you're going to change your surname?”

  “Hardly. And there's no point making a big deal about that until I work out what I'm going to change it to, so keep that quiet for the time being, okay?”

  “I will.” He smiled. “You could stay here with the Panic instead, you know.”

  “Are you likely to?”

  “No. I want to see this through, whatever it is.”

  “Then so do I. If that's okay with you.”

  “Let me ask you something, first,” he said, kneading her slippery hands with his. “Have you noticed how people keep putting us in the same room, wherever we're sleeping? It's like they know something we don't, or they think we're doing something we're not.”

  It was her turn to flush. “There might be a simpler explanation.”

  “Such as?”

  “I'm one step ahead of you, making sure it stays that way. It just seems simpler,” she said, cutting across him. “Would you rather share a room with Marmion? I know I wouldn't. And I'd rather put up with your snoring than Warden Banner's.”

  He laughed, and pulled her closer. “You're insane.”

  “Quite probably. And you're forgiven.”

  “For what?”

  They were too close to look at each other. Her breath was hot on his lips. “For forgetting, of course.”

  He couldn't help teasing her. “Forgetting what?”

  “Me.” Their lips touched, briefly. “Hana.”

  Then her arms were around him and she was holding him, nestling her head on his shoulder. He breathed in deeply of her scent and held her back just as tightly.

  “Thank you,” he said into her hair, meaning every word. “That's a beautiful name.”

  “The Change is neither good nor evil, but it always

  comes at a cost. One must let go of something

  in order to gain something else.”

  THE BOOK OF TOWERS, FRAGMENT 257

  The room had fallen deathly silent. Kail could feel the tension as clearly as if it were wire connecting Sal, Marmion, and Jao with ever-tightening strands.

  “What do you mean, she's gone?”

  “Just what I said, Sal. She's not here. She was taken when the man'kin attacked.”

  Sal stared at Marmion, jaw working. The Change stirred restlessly through the room, unfocused, seeking release. For the first time, Kail could see why people feared wild talents. The young man before him contained such incredible potential, and it was building, rising, turning in on itself.

  Then—gone. Sal looked down at the ground, exhaled, and looked at Jao.

  “I want to know how it happened.”

  Kail heard a threatening edge to Sal's voice. The anger was not erased, merely buried for the time being.

  The Panic female looked shaken and upset. “It wasn't an attack. I keep telling people that, but no one will believe me.”

  “Then what was it?”

  “I think…” She hesitated, looking around the room at the people staring at her.

  Rosevear sat next to Marmion, and Lidia Delfine sat next to him, a large bruise turning yellow down the side of her face. Heuve stood at the back of the room, looking naked without his beard. The fire had crisped it clean off, along with his eyebrows. Seneschal Schuet stood next to him with his right arm in a sling. The Guardian was elsewhere dealing with a mess of ministers “needing discipline” as she had put it.

  Warden Banner was also missing, nursing a broken leg earned while standing in the man'kin's path.

  “I think they only came for her,” Jao said. “I know that sounds crazy, but that's the way it looked to me. They came bursting through the citadel wall. They could've crushed her and killed everyone else, if that's what they wanted. But they didn't. They stopped in front of her. She spoke to them.”

  “What did she say?”

  “The same thing they kept saying the last time we saw them.”

  “‘Angel says run’?”

  She nodded. Her eyes shone. “They didn't say anything in return. The leader, the one in front, just knelt down like a camel and she climbed onto its back. Then they went off the way they had come, carrying her with them.”

  “Ways of running,” Sal s
aid slowly, “that don't require legs…”

  The way he said it, Kail could tell it was a quote.

  “Why would she go with them?” asked Lidia Delfine. “They'd just knocked down half the city.”

  “She had no reason to be afraid,” said Sal. “Man'kin have never hurt anyone we know.”

  “But without an explanation, without saying anything…”

  Sal looked as though he was grappling with that particular issue too. “Shilly isn't stupid. She wouldn't have gone unless she thought she had to. It might be something to do with Tom and Mawson. Maybe she hoped the man'kin would be able to lead her to them. Or maybe—” He stopped abruptly, and shrugged. “You know as much as I do.”

  “I'm sorry,” said Jao, bowing her head with a tinkling of beads.

  “Don't be.” Despite Sal's obvious confusion and hurt, he was clear on that point. “It's not your fault.”

  Kail cleared his throat. “Did they leave a trail?”

  “Clear through the city then off into the forest,” said Heuve. “A child could follow it.”

  “Then I suggest I do just that.” Kail had become accustomed to hiding the tightness in his chest, and Rosevear's ministrations seemed to be having some effect. “The sooner I leave, the better.”

  “I'll come with you,” said Sal.

  “Just hold on a moment,” said Marmion, raising his hand for silence. “Let's not dive into anything too hastily.”

  “I'm going,” said Sal, “and you can't talk me out of it.”

  “Let me finish. Tom spoke to you of a prophecy, did he not? Something concerning him and Shilly and a cave of ice? Doesn't that suggest to you that she's safe for the moment? Or at least that she will be, until that particular prophecy comes true?”

  Sal nodded stiffly.

  “Well, then. You can go after her with my blessing. I'd do it myself if I didn't have more pressing matters. But at least stop to think, first. We don't want you running into a trap.”

  “That does make sense,” said Kail. “And there's someone else I'd like to have along. If we wait until he arrives, we'll be better off. There's safety in numbers, after all.”

  “Who?” asked Sal.