The Blood Debt: Books of the Cataclysm Two

by Sean Williams

  Or could he? Despite the long, exhausting drive, he felt as if they had caught up to the search party with great suddenness. He had no idea what he would do if they did reject him and Shilly. Would he go back home or continue searching on his own? How much exactly did he owe his real father?

  Banner's eyes flicked forward as Tom reached the outcrop. “See that track? Follow it to the bottom. Flash your lights twice.”

  Tom did everything she said without hesitation. The buggy bounced down the side of a shallow hill, jolting in and out of potholes and ruts, shaking the last dregs of sleep from Sal. They found themselves in the middle of a petrified forest. Grey tree stumps, as rough as bark but as solid as stone, surrounded them like silent spectators. Out of the darkness between them emerged the shapes of two angular open-frame vehicles large enough to hold a dozen people each, and a domed tent. A faint tang of smoke hung in the air.

  Tom flashed the lights as instructed and a small group of people emerged from their hiding places. Eyes and crystal torcs glinted in the glare. Sal's shoulder muscles ached from tension.

  “Stop here.” Tom brought the buggy to a halt and killed the engine. “All clear!” Banner called to the rest of her party. “Looks like we picked up some stragglers.”

  One of the Wardens said a short, sharp word, and light blossomed from three mirror-finished cylinders on spikes, anchored in the ground around the impromptu campsite. By the stored starlight, Sal made out more than a dozen men and women moving in to get a better look at them. One of the men was the tallest Sal had ever seen, a rangy giant with thick black hair crowning a deeply lined face. The only one not wearing a torc or a blue robe, his attire consisted of practical leather pants and an open-necked shirt.

  It was this man who spoke first. “Stragglers, eh? I suppose that fool Braham sent you. Doesn't he trust us?”

  One of the other men hissed. “Show some respect, Kail. The Alcaide knows what he's doing.”

  “Not out here he doesn't.” The rangy giant spat into the dirt and stalked away.

  Banner alighted from the buggy and whispered quickly into the ear of the second man who had spoken. Shorter, with a receding hairline and a soft, oval face, he looked more like the Wardens Sal was used to than the hard, abrupt Kail.

  Whatever Banner said, it provoked an instant reaction. “Why would he do that?” he asked, looking at Tom, then Sal and Shilly, in alarm.

  “They say they're here to help.” Banner stepped back in deference to the balding Warden. She looked relieved that they were no longer her problem.

  Sal didn't need Tom's prophetic dreams to tell him what was going to happen next. They were about to be told to go home without being given the chance to speak.

  “I'm Sal Hrvati,” he said, standing up in the back of the buggy and dismounting. “This is Shilly of Gooron. We're here to find my father.”

  A whisper went through the Wardens. The balding Warden nodded as though accepting a challenge. “I'm Eisak Marmion, the leader of this expedition. Alcaide Braham gave us the task of locating Highson Sparre, and us alone.”

  “Have you found him yet?” asked Shilly, coming to stand with Sal.

  “We know where he is.”

  “That's not the same thing.”

  “I'm not required,” said Marmion, moving closer, “to explain myself to you.”

  “Well, we're here now,” said Sal, “and we're willing to help. It'd be easier if you did explain.”

  “We don't need your help.”

  A bark of laughter came from the shadows. Kail's angular silhouette reappeared. “What are you going to do, Marmion? Force him to leave?”

  The balding Warden shot Kail a cold glance. “The best tracker in the Strand has assured us that we'll have the fugitive within our grasp sooner rather than later. Isn't that right, Kail?”

  “We would've had him now if you hadn't got us stuck here like pigs in a bog,” replied the rangy tracker. “While we twiddle our thumbs, he's slipping further and further out of our reach!”

  An old argument was gathering momentum between the two men. To forestall it, Sal said, “Highson Sparre is not a fugitive.”

  “No?” snapped Marmion, turning on him. “Then why is he running from us?”

  “He's not running from you. He's hunting the Homunculus, as you should be. That's the important thing.”

  Marmion fumed. “Your father may not think he's a fugitive, Sal, but he is a thief. His actions have resulted in the death of at least one man. Until he deigns to explain himself, I am justified in seeking him as well as the thing he summoned. Since he's following the Homunculus, finding him will find the other. Does that make the situation clear to you?” His gaze swept the circle of Wardens. “Would any of you like to question my judgment while we're at it?”

  Shilly raised her hand.

  “I wasn't asking you,” Marmion said.

  “I know, but I'd still like to know. Why are you sitting here twiddling your thumbs? Why aren't you doing what you set out to do?”

  For a moment, Sal thought she had pushed Marmion too far. His eyes bugged and his face went red. He raised one finger and pointed it at her like a weapon. A whisper of the Change rustled through the campsite like a fitful breeze. Sal tensed, ready to defend her if she needed it.

  Then a switch seemed to trip inside the Warden, and the pressure eased.

  “All right,” he said lowering his hand. “We might as well put you to use. Banner, get Tom under the hoods of the buses. I want them ready to roll before midnight. Kail, check the course Sparre is following and make sure it matches the one on our charts. You two,” he pointed to Sal and Shilly, “come with me.”

  He turned and headed off into the darkness, robe flapping between his legs. Sal hesitated a second, then followed. Shilly came with him, leaning heavily on her stick when the terrain became rough underfoot.

  Marmion led them unerringly away from the parked vehicles. He had obviously walked this way many times. Sal tried to discern any details out of the darkness, but his eyes had adjusted to the mirror-light: the absence of landmarks was profound. He took Shilly's hand to steady her, and was glad of her support when he tripped over a stony tree stump and almost went sprawling.

  “Where are we going?”

  The silhouette of Marmion looked over his shoulder. “Let's make one thing absolutely clear, Sal. I'm under no obligation to tell you anything. You're here without invitation and without my approval. That may be your father out there, but Alcaide Braham put me in charge of this search party, and I will not bow to your threats or manipulation.”

  The Warden's persistent defensiveness surprised him. “We're not trying to manipulate you,” he started to say, but Shilly interrupted him.

  “Warden Marmion, are you afraid of us?”

  “Of course not,” Marmion responded immediately. “Why would I be afraid of you? You're just a couple of young idiots off on an adventure.”

  But Sal could hear the fear loudly in the man's voice, underlying the anger it disguised. The understanding dismayed him. There had been incidents in the past, yes, but they were forgotten now—or so he had hoped. What did Marmion think they were? Monsters?

  “Don't mistake us for something we're not,” Shilly said. “We're not kids, and we're not completely ignorant. Someone we care about is in trouble, and we're trying to help. The past is irrelevant. If we work together, we'll do a much better job than if we work separately or against each other.”

  Sal smiled in the darkness. Shilly was good at getting what she wanted. The fact that they had lived in Fundelry for so long without anyone giving them away was testimony to her diplomatic skills.

  Marmion, however, was no hick Alder or Mayor.

  “No one knows exactly what happened five years ago,” he said, his voice less strident than it had been, “when you escaped from the Haunted City. You defied the Alcaide, the Syndic, and the Conclave with suspicious ease; someone must have helped you do it. Although he denied the charge, Highson Sparre is com
monly assumed to be that someone. So don't give me any empty rhetoric about wanting to help your father out of the goodness of your heart. You're two fugitives helping a third—helping him get away from me. That's how I see it. Yes, you can stay, but be assured that at the slightest sign you're betraying those I serve, you will suffer the consequences.”

  “We understand,” said Shilly, her voice grave. “And now we've got the posturing out of the way, are you going to tell us what we're doing out here? Or is stumbling around in the dark the way you usually go about your business?”

  Marmion drew a sharp breath.

  Without warning, all sensation of the Change fell away, as though a heavy veil had been drawn over the world.

  Shilly and Sal stopped dead and looked around in alarm. Superficially, the night seemed no different from a second ago: there was no sound apart from the sighing of the wind; the multitude of stars still twinkled above. But something essential had been taken away from it. The Change was as important a part of the world as light, and without it Shilly felt like someone suddenly struck blind.

  “What did you do?” she heard Sal ask Marmion. His words fell flat and lifeless on her ears. “What have you done to us?”

  “Nothing,” said the Warden. He had stopped walking and turned to face them. “You feel it, then.”

  “Of course we feel it.” Sal looked around. “This spot is—” He struggled for words. “—dead.”

  “Is it a Change-sink?” she asked.

  “No, and it's not just here,” Marmion said. “The deadness extends all the way from here back to Gunida, to where we started. What you're feeling is the wake of the Homunculus.”

  The night seemed to close in around her, full of suffocating silence. She shivered, thinking of Larson Maiz, frightened to death by the thing Sal's father had brought into the world, whatever it was. “It came this way?”

  “And recently, too. The wake has been getting stronger the closer we come to it. We've been measuring the width and the way it varies depending on the landscape and vegetation it passes through. It seems to spread further when there's less around it—the earth and living things interfere with it, reduce its strength. We had no idea how strong it would become in the Broken Lands, and that was our mistake. While Kail followed the wake on foot, the rest of us were using the roads to cut in front of it, head it off. We must have just missed it. We crossed its path without warning, just over that hill. The buses died immediately, sucked dry of the Change. We lost contact with Kail. We were stuck.”

  “Did you see it?” asked Sal.

  “No.” Marmion shook his head. With his thoughts focused on something other than the two of them, the Warden seemed much less defensive, although never truly comfortable. “Nor did we see your father. We could only sit and wait for Kail to find us, in the hope that he could get the buses going again. He couldn't. He's never seen anything like this before. Neither has Banner. Hopefully, she and Tom can get us moving again soon, otherwise we'll have to continue on foot, thereby losing our only advantage.”

  His voice was full of frustration, which Shilly could understand. To have been so close to the Homunculus and then have it snatched out of his grasp must have been galling. And now she and Sal had appeared, adding to his problems.

  “Who is Kail, exactly?” asked Sal.

  “Habryn Kail is a tracker from Camarinha. They get a lot of strange things spilling over from the Divide up there, and he knows the spoor of most of them. Or so he says. Seems to me there's not much skill in following something that leaves a trail two metres wide and travels in a perfectly straight line.” Frustration turned querulous. “You two, travelling on your own, would probably catch it quicker than we would with all our impedimenta.”

  Shilly took pity on him. “But what would we do when we caught it? I presume you have some sort of plan.”

  Marmion, barely visible against the stars, bent down and picked up a stone. “You're still feeling the wake, right? This is several hours old. Can you imagine what it must be like standing next to the Homunculus?” He issued a sound that might have been a snort. “None of us are keen to jump uninformed into that situation. Until we can see it, even from a distance, and maybe work out what it wants, we're as much in the dark as you are.”

  The Warden threw the stone into the blackness. It clattered and skittered away.

  Shilly could appreciate his position. No living thing could get rid of the Change entirely as, by definition, that which didn't change couldn't be alive, but it left the exact nature of the Homunculus still very much in question.

  “No plan, then,” she said.

  “Not as such,” he said, as sombre as the dead night around them. “Still want to help us?”

  “Sounds like you're going to need it.”

  The revving of an engine came from the impromptu campsite. Light spilled across the rugged ground, catching Marmion for an instant then sweeping elsewhere. An afterimage of the Warden remained frozen in her eyesight briefly. He didn't look especially relieved by the latest development.

  “Let's get back,” he said. “I want to follow Tom's progress.”

  They followed him out of the Homunculus's wake. The background levels of the Change swept over them again and she felt Sal physically relax beside her.

  She wasn't so easily reassured. The little they had learned about the Homunculus only served to make her more worried, not less. What else could it do, if it put its mind to it? Where was it going, and why? What would they find waiting for them when they caught up with it? And where was Highson amongst all this craziness?

  The only thing she was certain of was that they were caught up in the world again. She thought of Fundelry, and her heart ached.

  “The Age of Machines never ended; the magic that drove it simply stopped working. Since then, Humanity has learned a new magic and built new machines—and so we will do again, should the Cataclysm strike a second time.”

  THE BOOK OF TOWERS, FRAGMENT 129

  Aheavy pounding at his door woke Skender from a deep sleep. At first he thought the sound came from inside his head, and he rolled over with a groan, cursing himself for drinking too much the night before. Memories of Chu and Magister Considine faded in and out of focus. He was unsure how much of it was real. Perhaps he had dreamed the whole thing.

  The hammering persisted. Staggering to his feet, he crossed the tiny room and opened the door.

  “For you.” A dark-skinned youth thrust a thick envelope into Skender's hand.

  “Uh, thanks.” The messenger didn't wait for a tip. Skender shut the door and retreated into his room, turning the envelope over in his hands. It was marked with a large, important-looking seal in red wax and had his name written in ornate fashion on the front.

  He didn't need to open it to know what it was. Its prompt arrival suggested that his memories were as accurate as ever.

  “Curse it,” he muttered, collapsing back onto his bed and wishing he were dead. His eyes felt hot and heavy. The leftovers of dinner—aromatic meatballs and spicy vegetable wraps—formed an acidic, oily residue in his stomach that simply didn't bear thinking about.

  There came another knock at the door.

  “Go away!” he said. “Haven't I suffered enough?”

  “Hardly,” returned a familiar voice. “I've barely started on you.”

  He groaned and hauled himself up. Chu stood outside his door clad in her flying uniform. Her bright, laughing eyes took him in with one up-down sweep.

  “Nice underwear. And skinny is good for flying. You could use a bit of muscle, though. We'll work on that this morning.”

  He retreated from her relentless energy and fell face-forward onto the bed. “I'm not planning on doing anything this morning, except quietly dying.”

  “Nonsense.” She followed him into the room and shut the door behind her. “You've got a mother to rescue.”

  “She can wait.”

  “What about me, then? Don't you want to show me what you're made of?”
>
  “You already know. I'm a stone-boy, and I'll drop like a stone if you push me off that tower.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. There's only one way to find out.”

  He could feel her looking at him, and pictured her with hands on hips, lips pursed in prim amusement. All trace of the previous evening's gloomy backlash had apparently vanished.

  “Why are you so bloody perky?”

  “I'm a morning person. And I figure that if I do right by you, it'll look good on my record. How could the Magister turn me down then?”

  He groaned. Nothing had changed. He was still a pawn; a means to her selfish end.

  She hauled him back onto his feet. “Come on. Brush your hair and clean your teeth. Fill a water bottle. We'll rustle up some breakfast and then start training. It's not like we have forever, you know.”

  He gave in. She was right, and unstoppable. The chance of getting any more rest with her around was nonexistent. He might as well submit and get it over with.

  And maybe, he told himself, he'd feel better after one of those noxious potions the locals called coffee.

  “Is this what I think it is?” she asked, picking the envelope off the bed as he struggled with the lacings of his robe.

  “Open it and see.”

  She did so with one deft swipe of a fingernail and withdrew the thick sheath of papers, flattening them out on her lap. A corner of something black poked out of one side.

  “‘Name: Skender Van Haasteren the Tenth. Address: the Keep. Age: sixteen.’ Hey, that's the same as me. I thought you were younger.”

  “Just naturally immature,” he said. “Look, why don't you take it? I've got no use for it.”

  “It doesn't work that way.” Her eyes scanned the rest of the form. “Excellent. I was hoping they'd do that.”

  “What?”

  “They've given you a standard miner's licence, probationary for three months. You're subject to the same regulations I was.”

  “So?”

  “That means you're rated to carry a passenger.” She folded the papers and put them in the envelope, which she stuffed in a pocket at the back of her pants. “Ready? Good. Let's use some of that Interior coin of yours to fill our bellies. And then, my friend—” she clapped his back loud enough to make his head ring, “—you and I are going to soar like birds.”