Etherwalker

by Cameron Dayton

  A detached part of Enoch’s mind applauded the move.

  Just like he taught me. “The real trick is adapting to their strengths.”

  Two more trolls leapt out of the growing darkness, and Rictus met them with his sword blurring the air.

  Enoch finally turned and followed Sal’s frantic nudges. He was trying to remember something Rictus had told him, something important.

  What did he say? What am I supposed to do?

  Mesha hissed from his shoulders.

  The lights! Rictus told me to turn on the lights in the tunnel up ahead.

  He tried to pause, tried to remember the litania eteria, but none of it would come.

  Focus! Why can’t I focus?

  * * * *

  Cal looked back to see Enoch stumbling along behind him, tears streaming down cheeks red from the cold. Overhead lights exploded, syncopating to his wooden footsteps. The cave was almost dark.

  “Come on, Enoch. Just a little bit farther!”

  The tone of concern in Cal’s voice reminded Enoch of Master Gershom.

  Master.

  Master Gershom would be disappointed if his charge couldn’t focus just because of a little cold.

  Focus, Enoch.

  Enoch closed his eyes. He paused.

  The lights. Follow the lines, find the electricity. Direct it to the tubes. Ignite.

  The hallway flickered to life ahead of them, that hateful blue light so welcome now.

  Cal cheered and called back, “Come on, Ric, the light’s on—let’s go!”

  Wait, that’s not what I was trying to remember!

  Enoch staggered to a halt, and Sal spun around to resume tugging on his pants.

  The lead troll. The one with two heads. Where did it go?

  A roar erupted from the passageway in front of them, followed by a softer popping sound. The newly lit passageway was suddenly dark.

  Enoch reached a frozen hand down to unsheathe his derech. The blade slipped from his unresponsive fingers and clattered to the ground.

  “What are you . . .” Cal turned on Sal’s shoulder and saw the shadow.

  “No!”

  The troll stepped out of the dark hallway, its enormous figure outlined by the few remaining lights in the cave. Enoch could hear the small head mewling hungrily.

  Rictus . . . ?

  Enoch turned in time to see Rictus, knee-deep in headless troll bodies, impale another oncoming beast and turn the sword upwards. He was cutting up through the troll’s torso, aiming for the neck. The skewered troll, howling with pain, thrust itself forward on the blade. It grabbed Rictus at the shoulders and pulled, ripping the specters arms from his body. Enoch screamed, but the sound seemed to come from a distant part of him. He couldn’t feel anything.

  So we die here?

  Two more trolls joined the other, ripping Rictus apart.

  We die here.

  An odd whistling tune suddenly filled the air. Enoch looked down, dumbly. Sal had moved to the edge of the bridge and stood tall as Cal played a melody on his pipes.

  The lead troll stepped forward, a look of focused intensity written across its face. The smaller head cooed.

  Cal took a breath and turned towards Enoch.

  “I guess there’s still something human left inside these things after all. I’m going to try and lead them away from you. You get down that tunnel and run until you get to the gate marked with a purple square. That will open to the north.”

  Cal turned back to his instrument and blew another cascade of notes. The troll exhaled wetly and moved even closer. Enoch could smell the thing, sour and musky.

  He couldn’t move.

  Cal finished the melody and turned to face him again, his eyes steady. “Don’t forget what I said, Enoch. About the patterns. About the story.”

  Enoch nodded dumbly and then fell to the metal floor as the troll shoved past him to follow Cal. Sal was moving quickly, knuckle-running along the bridge to where the remaining trolls were gnawing unhappily on Rictus’s bony limbs. Those trolls perked up as well, lifting their heads and shuffling towards the music.

  The tune changed slightly, and, as ordered, Sal crouched and then leapt. The leap carried him ten feet through the air to the last functioning electric lamp. He grabbed onto the bottom edge and hung precariously, and all the while Cal played. The yellow light flickered dangerously. The two trolls and their leader crouched at the edge of the bridge, mesmerized.

  Cal stopped playing. He looked down at Sal and kissed him gently on the shoulder. The trolls growled. All three sank into a crouch, muscles tensing.

  The final light went black.

  No!

  There was a roar, a crash, and a snarling cacophony that trailed off into a distant splash. Then, quiet.

  Chapter 13

  “Life is born from rot.

  And so it goes.

  Mud was our first womb.

  And so it goes.

  We shall rot again.

  And so it goes.”

  —Lodoroi Prayer of Acceptance

  Mosk was beginning to realize why the Vestigarchy had never cared to govern the swamps of Garron. Well, apart from the stench of rot, the ever-present mold, and the complete lack of useful resources.

  It was the unpredictably explosive zealotry of the natives.

  The Hiveking had been forced to kill four of their tribal chiefs and put down a half-dozen insurrections in the past three days alone, and still nobody would give him a straight answer. He feared he’d run out of Swampmen before too long.

  Scratching at a new patch of yellow mold at his arm joint, he turned to look out from the wooden tower he’d erected upon arriving at this muddy “capital.” These humans were odd. They had no centralized government, just an amalgam of chiefs whose own power was relative to the size of their specific tribe—and even that power was dependent upon the ability of their tribe to cleverly breed new animals. It was a chaotically shifting morass of merit, indulgences, and unspoken hierarchies.

  The construction of their cities—if you could call them that—reflected this. Sprawling and borderless, they bled from swamp to swamp in a scattered mess. You couldn’t tell where one ended and another began. No highways, no centers of commerce, and no standing army. The Swampmen didn’t seem to see the problem with this, but it made the orderly blackspawn searches his Clots had perfected an impossibility—unless he was willing to commit them to years of scouring every stagnant pool and rotten tree for hundreds of miles. And this would surely inspire countless more insurrections. These people were oddly protective of their stinking home. In fact, Mosk could still hear the cries of righteous anger as these fanatics threw themselves on his spurs. Pitiful. If they saw these mud-brick huts as “hallowed ground,” the frog ponds as “sacred treasures,” then they could have them. Mosk had grown tired of this place—it seemed deliberately grown to discomfort the blackspawn.

  He scratched at the mold again.

  It was humiliating, but the mold was another serious problem. Two of his Clots were effectively out of commission from the stuff, which built up on the joints and restricted movement. He’d had to send them back to Babel to dry out and recuperate. The worst part was how the mold affected his Matrons, newly arrived from the west. Their last batch of eggs—meant to provide replacements for the Clot he lost back in Midian—had arrived dead. The Matrons said the mold clogged the breathing slits in their abdomens, and the eggs suffocated before they could be delivered.

  Mosk gnawed at his upper jaw, the blackspawn equivalent of a sigh. He motioned to his guard. “Tell the handlers to prepare the draconflies. We fly at sundown.”

  His guard clicked assent and moved down the tower mast. Coldmen could use their claws and uniquely jointed legs to scale a bare post easily. They had no need for ladders or those wide human stairs which wasted so much space. Blackspawn towers were practically inaccessible to grounded attackers, perched atop smooth posts like berries on a thorn.

  Mosk didn’t know why he�
��d wasted the time building this one. These Swampmen were pitiful. Woefully armed with green spears, bone knives, and poison darts which snapped off his shell like toys—wonderful tools for hunting a frog, he supposed, but useless against coldmen. The poor natives couldn’t even find rocks to throw on this soggy ground! Putting down their sad little mobs had been like slaughtering grubs back in the warren feedpens.

  Exciting, even nostalgic in its own way, but Mosk couldn’t help but yearn for battle against an able enemy. The Centek, with their unbelievable speed, their devious skill with explosives. That was an enemy to be respected. Or the Nahuati blademasters! The complexity of their swords, the deadly, flowing movements. How Mosk missed those battles—the memory brought a rush nearing ecstasy. He remembered the shock on their faces, the fear in those wet little eyes when these consummate swordsmen realized that they faced a coldman who could read their moves. Who could break their patterns.

  This was why Mosk was Swarmlord. His mind was almost human.

  And this was why he hated having to rely on a human. Until he received more Clots from the Vestigarchy, Mosk simply didn’t have enough claws to search all of Babel and secure the northern kingdoms from this supposed Pensanden threat. Nyraud was a painful necessity for Mosk right now, but the Hiveking had no illusions as to the man’s loyalties. Fear for his city, that alone kept the man searching for the etherwalker—fear and his ridiculous obsession with hunting. Why this “Hunter King” chose to revel in the art of sneaking up on an inferior enemy rather than the fire and blood glory of battle was beyond Mosk’s desire to comprehend.

  Regardless, he’d had to rely on the Silverwitch Kai to keep Nyraud in line for now. She had plans for the city that were . . . unsettling, even to the Hive King.

  It was time to return. Mosk had wasted enough time in the swamps. If the Pensanden were here, he’d be as useless as the rest of the natives. North was where the real danger remained. North, where remnants of the old tek still slumbered and dangerous knowledge still moved through hidden channels. The Pensanden would eventually have to go there, wouldn’t be able to resist—and while Mosk may have failed at catching the hatcher en route, all that really mattered was keeping him from Tenocht.

  Chapter 14

  “All Are Prey.”

  —Motto of King Nyraud’s Kingsguard

  The only reason I’m here is because Keyr couldn’t keep her big mouth shut.

  Sera tipped her wings slightly, dipping under the low clouds which always seemed to huddle around the Akkadian foothills. She knew that she couldn’t blame Keyr entirely. It was her own fault for bragging about the Nyraud encounter in the first place. The memory made her uncomfortable, and her hand went up to feel the short blue hair where her father had chopped off what remained of her tresses.

  She was lucky to have gotten away with border patrol and a haircut. The Roost Dame had been furious. Expulsion had been discussed, even a clipping! Sera had no idea that they took the Babel Treaty so seriously.

  The wind was light down here, so Sera locked her pinions into a soaring pattern and tried to relax.

  If Lamech hadn’t intervened, I could have been wingless. Flightless. Grounded!

  She wondered if human girls ever got grounded, and if so, how it was done.

  Restricted jumping?

  Regardless, she had resolved to avoid Nyraud and his Gardens like the plague. Her curiosity had cost her some freedom, some respect, and a whole lot of hair. Not worth it. And she really didn’t mean to have put the Spire at risk. She knew that the Alaphim were suffering, that the Nests were empty year after year.

  What’s that?

  There was some sort of a caravan down below: a dozen long-tailed murs circled around a camp fire. A few cloth tents set up nearby.

  There’s nothing but empty hills between here and Babel. What would merchants be doing here?

  Sera reached up to twist her eye-rings into deeper focus. Like all angels, she was proud of her sight. The Alaphim naturally had vision that could rival that of an eagle—this was part of their heritage. But the brass-rimmed lenses that fit snugly into their occipital cavities enhanced that vision to an astonishing degree. Lamech said the Alaphim were the truest art, “the marriage of gene-sculpting and prosthetics.” Lamech said a lot of odd things. The centenarian was still spry—the Alaphim may be largely infertile, but at least we’re long-lived—but Lamech never flew patrol anymore. Just kept to his coop reading those books of his.

  Father had warned her about spending too much time with him—said Lamech couldn’t let go of a past that was long gone. But Lamech was lonely, and Sera was the only one who ever listened to the old rooster. Besides, he had the best stories!

  He remembered when the Spire had been networked to a dozen other angel Roosts.

  He remembered when the Vestigarchy still feared the Alaphim.

  He remembered that horrible time when several northern Roosts had betrayed their purpose and served as scouts during the Hunt—actually hunting their Pensanden lords—and ushered in the Dawn of the Arkángels.

  He remembered the betrayal that followed the Dawn. He said that the Arkángels brought the curse down on all the Alaphim. That forgiveness from the Pensanden—pardon from a dead race—was required for the angels to thrive again.

  So much for that.

  But best of all, Lamech remembered the stories his grandsire had heard from his grandsire about the time before the Schism. Sera loved those tales—back then the Alaphim were the elite messengers of the Tzolkin Core! Lamech said that while there were faster, even instantaneous ways of delivering messages in those wondrous times, nothing compared to receiving a message from the hands of an angel. It was the highest honor. It meant the gods smiled down upon you!

  Sera turned and circled, high above the caravan. She could only see one merchant down with the animals, probably a lowly stable hand. That was odd—even the eastern reaches of the kingdom could be dangerous, and leaving an entire camp under such minimal protection was a really bad idea. In fact, Sera could already see a pack of nerwolves circling the perimeter.

  Uh oh. I better go warn the poor man.

  Bending her wings at the pri-ulna, she spread her secondary feathers to catch the air. Dramatically slowed, she put her head down and coasted down to the camp below her. The stable hand was watching her now. It always made Sera smile to see the envious way humans looked at angels.

  Of course they envy us.

  She decided to show off a little—tucking her feathers behind her back, diving to the earth, and then snapping them out to their full length before touching down. A cloud of dust billowed the ground at her feet, startling some of the murs. The man looked impressed.

  “You’ve got some nerwolves circling the camp, merchant.”

  The man cocked his head at that, smiling.

  “Merchant? Do you recognize the device on my collar, bird?”

  Huh?

  It was a sanguine arrow versant on a field of green. The heraldry of Babel. Sera went cold—she’d just landed in Nyraud’s hunting camp.

  In a flash, she furled her wings and launched upwards. Beating furiously against the air, she lifted above the trees. Too late, she saw the nerwolves that had been circling the camp stand and pull back their pelts—they were Nyraud’s huntsmen, and each trained a bow on her.

  I’m high enough, I can dodge their—

  With a thud, something smashed into her back, wrapping around her wings. She screamed and fell, crashing to earth with a sickening crack. Sera couldn’t breathe and her legs were numb. Gasping, she rolled over to see Nyraud stepping back from her, one foot pinning her wing to the ground. The king was panting hard—that leap from the tree behind her had been impossible. Inhuman. But he was laughing, flexing his shoulders as he brushed a leaf from his tunic.

  “I missed you the first time, girl—you shouldn’t have given me a second chance.”

  He leaned over and quickly tied her wrists together with a cord.

  “Immunity,�
� gasped Sera. “The treaty!”

  King Nyraud laughed again.

  “Your trespasses into my Gardens make that null and void for you, my dear. You are mine now.”

  Here he leaned close to rub his hand over her close-cropped hair.

  “I guess you liked what I started with my knife, eh? Too bad about that color, though—I don’t know what the Pensanden were thinking with the blue. A side-effect of the brassy ‘extras’ woven through your bones, perhaps?”

  Here he rolled his foot over the thin, penultimate joint of her wounded wing. Metal scraped against metal. Sera screamed.

  “I haven’t hunted Alaphim in a long time. Maybe we’ll take you back to the Gardens and get you back on your feet again. Oh, we’ll have to do something about all that flying nonsense. But we’ll give you a sporting chance.”

  Sera spat at him, eliciting further laughter. He turned to one of his huntsman.

  “Grab me some shears; I’m going to clip her now. And have Tehr prepare the smaller cage. It looks like it will have a different occupant than we had originally planned.”

  The huntsman left, shouting instructions to the man Sera had descended to help. Nyraud removed his foot from her wing and placed it against her chest.

  “You’re young for an angel. I thought your people had forgotten how to lay eggs—or are they adopting from the other avian species now?”

  Sera just looked away.

  I won’t give him the satisfaction. He just wants me to react so he can hurt me more.

  The huntsman had returned with a pair of large iron shears. He handed them to the king. Nyraud lifted them so Sera could see. He gave two quick practice snips. Sera struggled and tried to roll away. She still couldn’t feel her legs.

  “I usually use these when I need to field dress a manticore—their armored skin will turn most knives. But I imagine they could do the job.”

  He leaned over and lifted her left wing by the primaries. Sera screamed.

  “Why all this noise, my dear? I know that you won’t feel anything. You see, I’ve had some good opportunity to study Alaphim anatomy. Closely. I know that your ‘wings’ are nothing more than metal contraptions, heirlooms given to an angel child when an old one dies. Your surgeons—what do you call them again? Boneweavers? They attach the wings to those grotesque limbs you have growing between your scapula, weld them tight, and pretend you’re birds!”