The Blood Debt: Books of the Cataclysm Two

by Sean Williams

  “Sounds amazing.”

  “Perhaps too amazing. None of it could be true. I've always wanted to see for myself.”

  “Why haven't you?”

  “Money, time, other stuff.” She was quiet for a moment. “The last couple of years have been complicated.”

  He was about to ask why when she banked sharply and took them down lower. Taking the hint, he directed his eyes forward. The Aad, at a distance, had none of the clear, sharp lines of Laure. There was no wall, no concerted effort to keep the Divide at bay. Exposed on three sides, its dome-roofed buildings and truncated streets lay open to the elements, both natural and supernatural varieties. The outermost layers were uniformly rundown, with walls collapsing into rubble in numerous places and great rents in the sidewalks. At the heart of the Ruin were buildings that still retained some of their white paint and doors that at least appeared intact. A single, defiant watchtower, four-sided and broad, stood near the city's furthermost point from the Divide. Round black windows dotted its sleek planes like flies on a stick of salt.

  Skender recalled everything written about old cities in the Book of Towers. There were only a few; most, like the Divide, had come into being relatively late in the history of the world. The truly ancient cities—the Nine Stars; the Haunted City; a dead city that moved of its own accord around the Broken Lands; and two others he had glimpsed during his adventures with Sal and Shilly—were dangerous, beautiful, Change-rich places. Strange creatures congregated or were confined there, and to stray into their territories was to invite disaster.

  The Aad looked disreputable and had undoubtedly become home to creatures from the Divide through the years, but it didn't possess the same air those ancient cities did. His gut didn't recoil at the thought of setting foot there. It didn't resemble Laure, either. Laure had the benefit of continuous habitation and a good, solid wall.

  The wind billowed above the ruined buildings, piling complicated shapes on top of an already jumbled topography. It was still too far away to make out much detail and his eye soon wandered, studying the cracked surface of the Divide's heart beneath him. Tracks of many different shapes and sizes crisscrossed in all directions. There were no obvious paths or destinations, just the marks left by unusual feet in dirt and dried mud, possibly years ago.

  A gleam of reflected light caught the corner of his eye, and he turned to his right to see what had cast it. The sun was piercingly bright, baking the land under a strengthening yellow glow. Skender couldn't immediately pin down the source of the glint, but he did see something else strange.

  “Are they the same people we saw last night?” he asked Chu, pointing with his free hand at three distinct clouds trailing a small train of motorised vehicles heading southwest from the ruined town.

  “I don't know, but if they are they're heading in the other direction.” She shrugged. “What does it matter? They can't be your mother's expedition. You said she didn't use buggies.”

  “I know, but—” He was about to confess to a nagging sense of curiosity when a second glint came from the edge of the Divide. “Something's going on down there,” he said instead. “Take us right and up. There's a thermal that'll lift us higher, so we can see better.”

  “Make up your mind.” The wing dipped, then rose into the cloud of hot air billowing up from the wasteland below.

  Another glint. It originated in a shallow notch on the uppermost edge of the canyon wall, a fair distance from where the three vehicles were located. Again, Skender had trouble gauging the scale of what lay below. The inside of the notch was invisible. The vehicles looked like beetles. He couldn't tell how many people occupied them and what else they carried.

  “When you're quite finished gawking,” said Chu, “can you tell me how the sky looks ahead?”

  “It's fine,” he said. “Keep on this heading.”

  “Are you certain of that? The air is unpredictable near the edge of the Divide. You can't take it for granted.”

  Underscoring her words, the wing lurched a metre downwards.

  “See?” she said.

  “You did that deliberately.”

  “I did not!”

  “Well, take us right. There's another thermal. We'll get some more altitude and then we'll be safe.”

  “I shouldn't have to say this,” she said, “but the higher we go, the harder we'll hit the ground if we fall. Aren't you in the least bit afraid of heights?”

  He shook his head. “Where I come from, you get over that sort of thing pretty quickly. Spiders, now, are a different story.”

  “Really? Then I should tell you about the time I was cruising down to pick up a lovely piece of flotsam on the bottom of the Divide. Just as I was about to grab it, a huge spider dropped off the leading edge, right up there.” She pointed to the wing just above their heads. “It was as big as my hand, I swear, and must've been there the whole time. The speed of my descent dislodged it. I—”

  “Enough!” He put a hand across her mouth, unable to repress a violent shudder. “You didn't crash and you didn't go mad with fear. That's all I need to know. Keep the details to yourself.”

  She nipped a finger and he hastily withdrew his hand. “I hope you washed that this morning.”

  “I did, for what it's worth. Laure water isn't much better than mud.”

  “On a good day,” she agreed.

  The wing reached the top of the thermal, and they were cruising again. Skender peered from a surprising height at the edge of the Divide as it crept by below, feeling better now that Chu was more her old self. The three vehicles, still moving, were now ants, and the source of the glint was little more than a dot on the cusp of the yellow dry land. As he scanned the edge of the escarpment, he spotted similar dots strung out in a long line at the edge of the Divide.

  “This is getting stranger and stranger,” he said. He explained what he thought he could see, and she squinted for herself.

  “Either your eyesight is a lot better than mine,” she said, “or your imagination is working overtime.”

  “Perhaps we should drop lower and take a closer look,” he said.

  “I don't know.”

  “Why not? The air is perfectly clear.”

  “You're clutching at sand,” she said.

  “I know, but it's something. I haven't seen much of anything else happening around here.”

  She shrugged and said, with a hint of asperity, “All right. You're the one with the licence.” Angling the wing to her left, she began a slow, lazy spiral downward.

  Skender knew that he was taking a risk, but the worst he could imagine happening was wasting a little time. And it seemed reasonable to him to connect the strange behaviour below with the disappearance of his mother in the area. She herself had suggested that the artefact she sought was valuable and that competing teams might be looking for it.

  Although distracted by thoughts of camel chases and rogue Surveyors, he was ever mindful to check the ways of the wind as they descended. The occasional bump and jitter didn't scare him; he was over his early nervousness, when the slightest deviation from true had sent him into a panic. The licence hadn't lied yet, and it told him that the air between the wing and the ground held no surprises.

  The notches along the edge of the Divide became clearer, to the point where people within them were now visible, lying spread-eagled on the dirt.

  “They're in hides,” Chu said, “waiting for something, or someone.”

  Skender glanced northeast, at the approaching vehicles. “They don't seem to be looking the right way.”

  “Maybe they're about to be surprised, then.”

  He slitted his eyes, trying to make out what object the glints of light came from. The people in the hides were wearing shiny decorations around their necks. It seemed likely that they were necklaces, although that struck him as odd. Change-rich collars designed to protect them from prying eyes? If so, they weren't working very well—not from above, anyway.

  A more down-to-earth possibility o
ccurred to him. The sunlight could be reflecting off crystal torcs. But that posed a whole new mystery. Why on earth would a couple of dozen Sky Wardens be hiding on the very edge of the Strand, as far away from the sea as they were allowed to go?

  “There's someone else,” said Chu, pointing inland.

  He didn't take her seriously until he saw the morning shadow stretched long across the flat land. It was cast by a single person, possibly a man, walking with steady paces over the sand, holding something in his arms.

  “Who the Goddess is that?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “What's he doing out here? What's he carrying?”

  “This is weird,” said Chu. “I don't like it. I think we should get out of here.”

  Skender shook his head. “Just a little longer.” He projected the paths of the approaching vehicles and the walking man. They intersected not far from the line of hidden Sky Wardens. “I want to see what happens.”

  “Why? It has nothing to do with us, and it could be dangerous.”

  “How? We're perfectly safe up here.”

  “My bones disagree.”

  “Your bones don't have a licence. I do, and I'm telling you that the winds are clear. It's smooth sailing all around here.”

  “Maybe that's what I don't like. How can the air be so calm? We're over open land and the sun is up. It should be like the inside of a kettle!”

  “Then we got lucky. Chu, I don't know what's going on, but I think we need to find out. It probably has nothing to do with my mother, but that doesn't mean it isn't important.”

  “All I care about is my own skin.”

  “Fine,” he snapped, “so remember that your skin wants to fly, and helping me will convince the Magister to help you. Do we still have a deal or don't we?”

  She didn't respond immediately. They continued in slow wide circles over the walking man and his burden, and over the people in the hides, descending further with every complete circuit. The figure striding with the regularity of clockwork across the parched land was as black as anyone Skender had ever seen. The object in his arms could have been a sack, or a person. It was impossible to tell.

  “Okay,” said Chu, taking a deep breath. “But if anything goes wrong, I'm going to—”

  That was as far as she got before the wind emptied out of the wing and they were suddenly falling.

  Skender's stomach leapt to his throat. He let go of Chu and clutched at the straps for support. They were spinning, tumbling.

  “What's happening?”

  “I don't know!” she yelled back. “You said the air was clear!”

  “It is!” He tried to orient himself against the swinging horizon. He could see no chaotic flows gripping the wing, no miniature storms or hurricanes invisible to the naked eye. The air was as clear as it ever was.

  And that, he suddenly realised, was the problem. It wasn't just the air around him he couldn't see. He couldn't see the air anywhere.

  “The charms!” he cried. “Something's killed the charms!”

  She looked around her, at the wing and at him. His tattoos had faded, and so had the black marks normally adorning the wing. Her knuckles whitened where they gripped the control straps.

  “We're falling free!” He heard panic in her voice, barely hidden behind an iron determination to remain in control. “But it's okay! I trained for this. There are ways to ditch without getting hurt.”

  “With a passenger?”

  She didn't waste energy answering the question. Wind whipped around them, blinding him. No longer his ally, it was both tenuous and as treacherous as a gale. Chu's arms wrenched at the wing, brought their graceless descent under a measure of control. He tried to help her, but feared that he was only making things worse.

  They were falling like stones. It struck him abruptly that they could both die. The higher we go, the harder we'll hit the ground. In that instant, every other concern became insignificant: his mother, the identities of the strangers below, what Chu's plans were, and what she really thought of him…

  “Hold on,” she said. Her hands yanked at the wing's slender control surfaces. “This could be rough.”

  The ground ballooned in front of them. Chu threw herself backwards, trying to bring the nose up. The wing resisted. Skender could see them smacking hard against the ground if he didn't do something fast, so he wrapped both arms around her and wrenched their centre of gravity higher. The nose jerked and skewed to the right.

  “Not the wing!” she cried, kicking outwards. “Don't damage the wing!”

  The blur of the ground resolved into dirt and stones, rocks and stumps of trees, and then Chu's legs were running, trying valiantly to match their velocity. Skender covered his face with his hands, unable to do anything more than ride it out, feeling the heat of the sun reflected off the ground at him and the sudden lurch of impact, and hearing the awful scraping of leather against dirt, as a landing even worse than the one the previous night unfolded beneath him.

  “Sal, wait!”

  Shilly was three metres behind him and falling back, unable to match his pace. His reasons for bursting from the hide and running out into the open were a complete mystery. He was blowing their cover. Marmion was going to skin them alive!

  That this was her first concern appalled her. She cursed herself as she tried her best to keep up with him. Behind her in the hide she had left Tom with the glass globe and the decision whether to use it or not. She had kept one of the flares, just in case. Not knowing what Sal had seen or sensed in the heat-dancing landscape around her made it difficult for her to know what to do.

  Sal was running as though all the creatures of the Divide were after him. But he wasn't looking behind him. He was looking ahead and up.

  That was when she saw it: a shape that could have been an enormous golden swallow dropping out of the sky. It angled in from above her and to her right. That it was the same thing she had seen the previous night, blocking the moon, she had no doubt. It was a flying wing of some sort, carrying two people below it. But what was it doing here and now, she asked herself, and why was it plunging at such a steep angle into the ground? If it hit, as it was bound to at any moment, its passengers were certain to be killed.

  It levelled out at the last moment, turning a fatal drop into something more controlled. Lurching from left to right, it skidded across the dirt, raising a cloud of fine, dry dust into which Sal unhesitatingly ran.

  “Sal!” she shouted, trying to make her stiff leg move more quickly. “Sal, be careful!”

  He didn't seem to hear her. Not caring about discretion any longer, Shilly pulled the flare from her pocket and did as Tom had instructed her. The top cracked with the sound of breaking chalk, and she held the base well away from her face as it ignited. With a bang and a fierce whizzing sound, the firework shot up into the sky, trailing a line of black smoke behind it. It exploded high above her in a multicoloured cloud. Seconds later, another, much fainter bang came in reply from away to her right.

  The dust had settled enough for her to see Sal again, and the wide scar the flying wing had carved into the yellow ground. Sal was bending over the wing, trying to get at what lay underneath.

  “Don't touch her!” called a muffled voice. “She's hurt!”

  “I can see that!” Sal said, pitching his voice reassuringly but loud enough to penetrate. “We have to get her out of the harness. Hold still. I see the latches.”

  Shilly could hear the concern he was trying to hide. There was blood on the ground where the flyer had skidded to a halt.

  The wing wobbled.

  “Easy!” Sal said more firmly. “I've got her. Can you get the wing off us? I need to look at her.”

  Shilly limped to a halt as the wing lifted up and away. She reached out a hand to help the person underneath. As the wing swung upright and the face of the person attached to it became visible, she took a step backwards.

  “Skender?”

  The name registered, but Skender di
dn't seem to see her at first. He looked at her and his gaze skidded away. His eyelids fluttered. Then he put a hand to his head and sank to his knees under the weight of the wing.

  She forgot her surprise and moved in to help him. He was filthy and his robes were torn. The way he moved suggested that he was in shock.

  And no wonder, she thought. After five years, he had just literally dropped out of the sky upon them.

  “Is she…?” Skender's concern was solely for the person stretched out on the ground between them. A young woman, Shilly saw; about her age or a little younger. Sal had turned her over and bunched a wad of fabric from his tunic in both hands and pressed it to her forehead. It was turning red fast.

  “Head wounds bleed a lot,” Sal said, gritting his teeth. “It's hard to tell what's going on underneath.”

  “Help her.” Skender reached out with one badly grazed hand and gripped Sal's shoulder. “Like you helped Shilly when she broke her leg. Heal her!”

  “I can't,” Sal said. Shilly noted that their identities seemed to have sunk in, even if he hadn't acknowledged them in any other way.

  “You have to!”

  “I would if I could.” Sal looked up at Skender with desperation in his eyes. “But I'm telling you—I can't.”

  In the dust and the heat of the moment, with an unknown woman's blood pouring through Sal's fingers onto the ground and an old friend pleading for the woman's life, Shilly felt a powerful chill, as of a cold, iron blade sliding down her spine.

  “He's not lying,” she said, turning to peer around her. Sal looked foggy-headed, as though trying to see through a veil. Skender's eyes were still not quite focusing. She herself felt no different—but being only sensitive to the Change, not naturally talented in it, she supposed she wouldn't.

  Out of the weirdness of the heat haze to the southwest, a man walked towards them, carrying someone in his arms.

  She let go of Skender and stood up. Despite the dread she felt, she would not confront that moment on her knees in the dirt. She would meet it face to face, and she would not scream like Larson Maiz.

  The Homunculus stepped out of the wilderness. It looked like a man, but as it drew closer that first impression faded. Shilly was unable to bring it into focus; its outline constantly shifted, making its precise form difficult to pin down. Its skin was a deep, textureless black and it seemed to have too many arms. Its pace was even and unhurried.