The Hanging Mountains

by Sean Williams

  “Hello, Shilly,” said Tom around a mouthful of roasted chicken. Her stomach growled at the sight, but her confusion was too great even to contemplate eating.

  Behind him sat three of the Quorum, watching her with luminous jade eyes, and Mawson, propped upright by a cloth-covered bundle. Over him loomed the massive, rounded shape of the Angel, blind and expressionless.

  “You—” She wanted to say something appropriately outraged, but the right words failed her. Yes, she was angry, but she was also desperately curious. “What in the Goddess's name are you all doing out here?”

  The empyricist grinned broadly. “For exactly that reason, Shilly. Please, join us. We'll tell you everything.”

  The ground shook gently beneath her as she hobbled closer. She looked up nervously, dreading a rockfall, but the tangle of roots and vines above effectively kept such at bay.

  “This is Shathra, Bahman, and Armaiti.” The three glowing figures didn't react when introduced. Scattered tiles, each displaying a different letter, lay in lines on the loamy ground between them. One line spelt out the cryptic phrase: world-tree needs pruning.

  “They already know who you are,” Vehofnehu went on, reminding her of the time she had seen one of them by the waterfall, and the sense of recognition she had gleaned from that quick glance. “We've been waiting for you. Our numbers are almost complete.”

  “'Our numbers'?” she echoed, finally finding her tongue. “Who exactly are you, anyway?”

  “Sit, Shilly. Eat,” he insisted, and she gave in. He squatted opposite her on wiry, flexible legs. Tom's gaze didn't shift from her even as he continued to eat. “We are those who have some knowledge of what's to come—although you must understand that what I mean by ‘knowledge' is an ambiguous thing, just like the world itself and the future awaiting it. We know enough to understand that we don't know enough. That's why we have gathered together. To compare notes, if you like. Between all of us, we have a chance of determining what path to take.”

  “I don't understand,” she said. “Don't you already know what's going to happen? You—” she pointed at the Quorum members “—travel backwards in time, so you've seen our future already. You—” Mawson and the Angel “—see all times as one. And you—” Tom didn't react when she singled him out “—have been dreaming about it for weeks. How much more information do you need?”

  Vehofnehu was nodding excitedly long before she finished. This was the most animated she had ever seen him. “On the face of it, my dear, you're absolutely right. But the face is just one aspect of a person, and it's also just one aspect of the truth. We see the future from many different angles, and what we see is always incomplete. Tom's dreams are fragments; the man'kin see all possible futures, not just one; the Holy Immortals—as I have known the Quorum for many, many years—are still recovering from that future, and their memories are shaky, traumatised things. And then there's me. Back in my observatory, I studied the movements of the stars, seeing reflected in them the deformations of this Earth. Even there I found only ambiguity and confusion.

  “Into this confusion stepped two people. One of them was you, although your significance was not immediately obvious. Only much later, when I had organised the extraction of your friends Tom and Mawson, did the man'kin mention the dreams you've been having. The pattern, the sand, the voice. You've been struggling to understand their meaning, and I believe that I have deciphered them. They're a message, a very important message indeed, and I think our best efforts should be expended in doing as it says—once we work out what that is.”

  “I thought of that.” She stared at him as one slightly concussed, hit by too much information at once. “But who could it be from?”

  The Panic empyricist grinned. “I'm pretty certain you wouldn't believe me.”

  “Why not?”

  With a clinking of tiles, the glowing man called Shathra spelt out a new message: not all golems are evil.

  She stared at the words, unable to decipher them even though their meaning was simple. How did they connect to her question, to her dreams? Was Shathra trying to tell her that the message came from a golem? She couldn't work it out.

  Trading one mystery for another, she asked: “So who is the second person?”

  The empyricist barked with laughter, and spent a moment spelling out her question with the tiles—so the Holy Immortals could appreciate the joke too, she assumed. She flushed and balled her hands into fists, feeling mocked and left out of some grand conspiracy.

  Tom still watched her, as silent as a mouse from his corner of the group. She thought of him, just a handful of days ago, saying I've dreamed all our deaths as casually as though talking about eating breakfast or taking a shit, and she wondered what he was thinking about now.

  “Listen,” she said. “I came here for answers. If you're not going to give me any, I might as well go back to Milang and work it out for myself.”

  “Let me tell you something you already know.” The empyricist calmed her with outstretched palms, patting the air, and she knew she would never get used to the sight of his long fingers and short thumbs like that. “You're here for a reason. We are all here for a reason. What's coming sends shock waves backwards in time, changing the world in ways big and small. More wild talents; restless man'kin; new movements in the stars; and dreams like yours, filled with strange urgencies. Those of us who see the symptoms must band together to do something about the problem. You're part of that now. You can't go back to Milang.”

  She started to protest, but he hadn't finished. “You're not a prisoner, Shilly. Don't think that. You came of your own free will, as we knew you would. Sal will follow, but we have a good headstart, and that gives us some time. When he catches up, you can go with him. Indeed, it seems important that you do, judging by what Tom has told us. We don't want to stand between the two of you.”

  Still Tom said nothing, but she heard his words as clear as day: Kemp is the only one who stands between you…he had said on the boneship, when the end comes.

  “Where's Kemp?” she asked. “What did you do with him?”

  “Let's talk about golems, first,” said Vehofnehu, shifting on his rump. “Shathra is quite right. They are not all evil, although they seem so to us. You've met a couple and have had good reason to fight them, but there are others with different agendas. They move through the world at an angle to us, finding their own way to their own destinations. When our paths cross, it can be for good or ill, but they have as much right to be there as we do. And some of them can be beneficial.

  “There is a crown in my observatory,” he started to explain, “a simple circle of iron—”

  “I've seen it,” she interrupted him. “Sal put it on, then Griel. The last I heard, Oriel was considering wearing it.”

  That took him off-guard, which pleased her. “Oriel? What on Earth was Griel thinking?” He put the issue aside with an obvious effort. “My point about the crown is this: it's occupied by a creature that has no name, which grants to its wearer a vision of his or her profoundest desire. I've worn it, and I can tell you that the visions are powerfully seductive.”

  She nodded. “Sal and Griel were very different afterwards. The crown seemed to make them capable of anything.”

  “That's the charm of the crown. It's not really doing anything but unlocking its wearer's potential. The crown thrives on the achievement of that potential, or at least the striving towards it. It's not harming the wearer, but it is, technically, a parasite, a kind of golem that lives in the crown rather than in a person's mind.”

  “And that makes it okay?”

  “I don't know. That would depend on who is wearing it, I guess, and what they do with their potential.”

  She could see that, but she still struggled with what it meant. People could be coerced by dreams as well as threats, and coercion of all sorts struck her as being intrinsically wrong.

  “This is where you talk about the glast,” she guessed. “It's a sort of golem too. Right?”


  The empyricist nodded.

  “And the glast is the second person?”

  With a flick of one long wrist, Vehofnehu peeled back the cloth covering the bundle beside him.

  Shilly tried not to react, but her shock was difficult to suppress. Kemp's body lay under the cloth, curled into a fetal ball with knees tight up against his chin. His eyes were open but saw nothing. He could have been dead for all the movement he made; even his breathing appeared to have ceased. But he wasn't dead. He was something else.

  In appearance, he had changed utterly. His flesh was black and glassy. His tattoos were white and seemed to hover a fingernail's thickness above his skin. The blacks of his eyes had also turned white and gleamed with a light of their own.

  The thing before her was still recognisably him. His features were unchanged; the sheer size of his body was unaltered. That it wasn't really him was hard to accept.

  “Is he—?” She swallowed. “Is it awake?”

  “Not yet, but I don't think we'll have long to wait.”

  “What makes you think it's going to help us? It attacked the boneship, remember?”

  “That was no accident, Shilly. It was trying to become one of you, I think, in order to communicate. Sal was probably its first target, but it settled on Kemp when Sal proved too strong. We'll find out what it wants to say when it wakes up—but I can't believe it went to so much trouble without having something to offer.”

  Shilly nodded distractedly. A cold feeling spread through her at the thought that it might have been Sal lying in front of her, not Kemp. She would have preferred none of her friends to be hurt, had she a choice, but she was acutely aware now of how much worse it could have been, from her point of view.

  “And then what?” she asked. “Where is all this leading us?”

  “That's the problem,” Vehofnehu said. “The future is hidden from us, so we're going to have to make it for ourselves. That's why we're gathering, here and elsewhere, to increase the clarity of our foresight and to muster our full strength. We'll need all we can muster to make sure we have a future, to take on Yod and erase it from our world once and for all.”

  She nodded, thinking: it had slept for an eternity, but was waking now, and it was hungry.

  “Is this what you dream, Tom?” she asked, remembering his coldness in Vehofnehu's observatory, the sense of increasing distance between him and everyone else.

  Tom nodded. Among his new friends he looked perfectly comfortable. Normal.

  “Have you always known it would end up here?”

  He shrugged his bony shoulders. “Dreams are confusing. I see lots of things.”

  “He does indeed,” said Vehofnehu. “Good and bad, bad and good.”

  “I see Fundelry a lot, but that doesn't mean I'll ever go back there.”

  The letter-tiles tinkled again, spelling out the word Goddess.

  Shilly frowned at the tiles, wondering what that interjection could possibly mean. The Holy Immortals were watching her, their glowing eyes creepy and intense. The Angel was watching her too, and so was Mawson. They were all watching her, she realised, and all of a sudden she didn't like it much at all.

  “Well, what's your big plan? How are we going to kick Yod out of here, once and for all?”

  Vehofnehu indicated the tiles. “My friends here have already answered your question.”

  “The Goddess? She's just a myth. The weather-worker of the village Tom and I grew up in used to tell me the old stories of the Cataclysm, but that doesn't mean…” She trailed off. Vehofnehu was nodding, and she realised that writing off stories about the Cataclysm could be slightly stupid, given the things she'd seen in recent weeks.

  “The Goddess is real,” said Vehofnehu. “I knew her, and I know where to find her body. We're going to waken her. She's going to show us how to get rid of Yod.”

  Disorientation swept through her. A goddess and a glast, a conspiracy of seers, glowing green people from the future, a mad not-quite-human—and her, a cripple with bad dreams. What sort of army was this? What hope of success had any plan they concocted?

  “You're insane,” she said.

  “Quite possibly.” The empyricist grinned.

  “And you, Mawson—I can't believe you're going along with this!”

  “The time has come to stop running,” said the man'kin.

  “Is that what the Angel thinks, too?”

  “The Angel says fight.”

  She felt like putting her head in her hands and either weeping or howling with laughter. More gets done in the shadows than in the light, Griel had said, but that reassured her not one jot.

  “Why me?”

  Vehofnehu barked again. “Where else would you rather be, Shilly, than at the centre of the world? You've already spent too long at the periphery, watching as others excel. Here's your chance to make a difference. Here's your chance to shine. You won't turn us down, not while there is breath in your body.”

  “You think so?”

  “Prove me wrong and I promise that the man'kin will take you back.”

  She looked at them, all watching her, and knew Vehofnehu was right. At least about that. While there was a chance she could help, she had to stay. She was tired of hobbling along behind everyone else, always feeling left out. Marmion seemed to respect her now, and that was an improvement, but what use was respect when she still had no talent, no official position, no clear role except to boss people around?

  “All right,” she said. “You've got me. But only if you tell me one thing.”

  Vehofnehu spread his unusual hands, the picture of reason. “Ask away.”

  “Who is sending me the dreams? Why have they picked me to be part of your little gang?” Because I'm going to wring their neck when I eventually catch up with them.

  “There's only one possible person,” he said, sobering, “and I don't think she had a lot of choice. It's you, you see. You from the future—or from a future, at least—reaching back to give you what you need to defeat Yod. Only time and unlocking the message will reveal what that is. Does that answer the question to your satisfaction?”

  She stared at him for a long time, weighing up possible responses. When she did speak again, the single word made birds, not long settled, take to the night sky in a flurry.

  To conclude in

  The Devoured Earth

  Books of the Cataclysm: Four

  In a forest, no tree stands alone. Root systems extend for kilometres, linking plant to plant by means invisible to humans and other ground-dwellers. The same applies to writers—this one in particular.

  Thanks specifically to: Deborah Halpern for the use of her magnificent creation; Nick Linke and Robin Potanin for much-needed and persistent friendship during the last few months; Seb and Rachel Yeaman, my “other” family; dear friends and respected peers on the Mt. Lawley Mafia, Visions, and Clarion South lists; and Kim Selling who, even while pursuing her own life adventures, still finds time to help with plant names and other important details.

  All this, and much more, is deeply appreciated.

  Sean Williams

  Adelaide/Nagoya, July 2005

  One of Australia's leading speculative fiction writers, Sean Williams is the author of numerous works for adults, young adults, and children, covering new space opera, science fiction thrillers, fantasy, and horror. He has also written for Star Wars and Doctor Who, two franchises he has loved since a child. A winner of the Writers of the Future Contest, recipient of the “SA Great” Literature Award, and a New York Times best seller, he lives with his wife and family in Adelaide, South Australia. You can visit his Web site at www.seanwilliams.com.

 

 

 
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