The Blood Debt: Books of the Cataclysm Two

by Sean Williams

The second thing she saw was Sal's face leaning over her. His lips moved, but her ears were so numbed by the clamour of moving stone that it took them a moment to hear what he was saying.

  “Are you hurt? Can you stand up?”

  She didn't know, but she tried. The surface of the Wall was still shaking, but not so much that she couldn't keep her balance. Sal's hand stayed in hers. When she was upright she embraced him tightly, feeling shocked and overwhelmed that they were still alive. The Wall should have come down. There was no knowing why it had not.

  “What happened?” she asked, putting a hand to her temple. “Did the man'kin stop?”

  Sal edged closer to the outer edge of the Wall, where Skender stood, peering carefully over.

  “They're doing something down there, that's for sure.” Skender's expression was as disbelieving as her own. The bruise on his cheek stood out starkly against deathly pale skin. “And look—there's someone we know.”

  He pointed down into the vast crowd of stony shapes. A clear patch stood out right on its edge, a space in which the man'kin refused to tread. It took Shilly a moment to understand what she was seeing.

  “The Homunculus!”

  “And Pirelius,” Sal added, identifying the second person in the bubble. The Homunculus's wake stretched behind it like a ribbon, winding across creek beds and craterous holes in the Divide floor. There was no sign of Kail.

  Before she could ask where the tracker might be, the sound of running feet rose up over the alarum. Shilly looked back the way they had come and saw at least thirty armed guards sprinting towards them.

  There was nowhere to hide and no point trying to run. Shilly straightened, forming a tripod out of her legs and her stick to maintain balance on the trembling stone. She had no intention of moving just because someone told her to.

  “What in the Goddess's name are you four doing up here?” shouted the leader, a different one to the woman they had deceived at the gate.

  “We're acting under the authority of the Magister,” Gwil began, raising his briefcase.

  “That doesn't matter. You have to get out of here. It's not safe.”

  “Why not? The Wall hasn't come down. The man'kin have been repelled. Haven't they?”

  The guard didn't waste time replying. A suspicion that Gwil's supposition—and Shilly's own—might be deeply flawed began to dawn on her. The guards hadn't come to arrest them. Most of them ran right past them to take up stations along the Wall's northern edge, not facing out to where the man'kin waited, but inward, towards the city. They looked down.

  Only then did she realise that the calling of the man'kin was coming from both sides of the Wall, not just the outside.

  “Oh, no,” she said, limping across the top of the Wall and looking down. Rooftops and spires clustered around the Wall for much of its length. The base was almost invisible.

  “There!” cried one of the guards, pointing down. A cloud was rising from under a ramp leading to a warehouse that had seen better days. Through a gap in the woodwork, she glimpsed a stream of dark shapes moving into the city.

  The guards ran to join the one who had shouted. From packs slung over their shoulders they produced golden, glassy spheres, which they lobbed down on the man'kin. Flashes of light blossomed where they struck. The stone creatures roared.

  Shilly's knuckles turned white as they gripped the rail. The spheres operated on the same principle as the trap she and Sal had planted outside the workshop in the dunes. Light, stored and amplified in the crystalline lattice of the glass, found explosive release when that glass was shattered. Man'kin weren't flesh and blood, but they weren't invulnerable, either. Stone bodies blew apart in the brilliant explosions; others lost limbs or faces.

  And they weren't the only casualties. Each flash of light brought down walls and sent bricks flying. The area appeared to have been evacuated—sensible, she supposed, given the Wall was under attack—but she still worried that someone would get hurt. Anyone still down there was likely to be blown to bits if the man'kin didn't pulverise them first.

  From her elevated viewpoint, she could see more guards converging through the city streets. Some leapt across the rooftops to attack from higher ground. They fired golden globes with slingshots, sending them arcing high overhead to fall in the midst of the man'kin. More stone flew. More buildings collapsed. The air was full of the sound of devastation.

  “They tunnelled!” said Skender over the racket. Shilly couldn't blame him for not grasping the situation straightaway. The man'kin didn't need to bring down the Wall to get into the city. All they had to do was rearrange the stone blocks comprising the Wall so they could walk right through it. She kicked herself for not seeing it earlier.

  “We have to stop them,” she said, crossing back to the far side to look down at where the man'kin were swarming into the tunnel mouth. She could see it clearly, now she knew it was there. It looked like little more than a shadow on the base of the Wall, but stone figures were going into it and not coming out again.

  “Hey, you!” she yelled at the guards. “Try on this side! You'll have better luck hitting them, and do less damage to the city.”

  The leader of the guards saw the sense of that, and ordered his troops to do as she said. Soon the golden globes were falling in graceful arcs through clear air straight into the swarming masses of man'kin. It didn't seem to deter them. They clawed their way forward. Nothing was going to turn them back.

  “This is useless,” Shilly said, turning to Sal. “We have to close the tunnel somehow.”

  “There's only one way,” he said, nodding further out into the Divide. “The Homunculus won't be able to close the hole, but it could plug it well enough.”

  “Yes!” She gripped his arm with excitement. His plan would work if only they could put the Homunculus in position quickly enough. But how to get word to Pirelius?

  Someone else was obviously thinking along the same lines. The heavy lifter she had noticed before was moving across the sea of man'kin towards the clear spot Pirelius occupied. A blue-robed figure leaned over the side, waving.

  Shilly squinted. “Who does that look like to you?” she asked Sal.

  He didn't reply.

  “Sal?” She turned to look at him. His eyes were hollow. He didn't see her. “Sal, are you all right?”

  Sal was elsewhere.

  “I know you're out there,” he sent through the Change. With senses other than the usual five, he probed the complicated topography of the Divide and felt a flicker of the mind he was looking for. “If you're out there, you can hear me.”

  “Loud and clear,” Kail responded. The tracker's mental voice was weary but firm. “Is that you on top of the Wall?”

  “Yes. Where are you? I can't see you. You're not in the wake, otherwise we wouldn't be able to talk.”

  “Where I am isn't important. What's happening is…”

  Sal's extra senses shifted, and suddenly he was experiencing the Divide through Kail's eyes and ears. The vision was a pale echo of reality, one painted on top of the view he was actually seeing, but clear.

  Pirelius was stumbling over the rough ground, his eyes darting at the man'kin all around him. He drove the Homunculus on with the knife pressed firmly in its back. The Homunculus walked with both heads down, letting itself be shoved, edges blurry and indistinct. The man'kin throng snarled and badgered them from outside their protective bubble. Pirelius ignored them. Bizarrely, he seemed to be singing.

  “Cannon to the right of them,

  cannon to the left of them,

  cannon in front of them—”

  “Pirelius!” called a voice from above. “You have to listen to us!”

  Pirelius waved a beefy fist at the sky and kept lurching onward. Heavy stone feet had thoroughly churned the ground they walked upon. Ahead, Laure loomed. Sal could see himself at the top of the Wall, near the guards dropping globes down on the man'kin. An artificial storm raged at the bottom of the Wall. Light flashed and thunder rolled. Clouds of d
ust rose up, dark and ominous. The beginnings of night spread across the floor of the Divide as the sun faded into the west.

  “Boldly they rode and well,

  Into the jaws of Death,

  Into the mouth of Hell—”

  “Pirelius! We need your help!”

  Kail's eyes lifted, giving Sal a glimpse of the heavy lifter descending over the fugitive and his hostage, testing the edges of the wake. Sal was surprised to recognise Marmion hanging over the edge of the gondola.

  “She says you'll be well paid!”

  Pirelius barked a vinegary laugh and kept singing.

  From outside the vision Sal felt a hand tugging at his arm. It was Shilly, trying to attract his attention.

  “Are you all right? What's going on?”

  He did his best to focus on her. “I've found Kail. He's showing me what's going on down there.”

  “Is that Marmion with the Magister?”

  “Yes.”

  “What's he doing there?”

  “She must have brought him when the lifter came for her, since he knows more about the Homunculus than anyone. Or thinks he does.”

  “But—”

  He waved her silent. Something was happening on the Divide floor.

  A guard in black and gold leather armour had swung by rope from the heavy lifter into Pirelius's bubble of safety. Pirelius taunted him loudly and brutally, while keeping the Homunculus carefully in the way. The guard circled both of them, trying to find an opening, but Pirelius was too canny. Feinting to his right, he kicked out with his left leg and caught the guard by surprise. He staggered back a step and was caught up in the relentless crush of man'kin. With a scream, he was swept away.

  “You morons,” yelled Pirelius up at the dirigible. “You won't get rid of me that easily!”

  “What do you want?” yelled Marmion.

  “She took what was rightfully mine, and I want her to pay!”

  “Who?”

  “The Magister, you idiot. Tell her to talk to me herself, not cower behind some spineless lackey!”

  Marmion's head withdrew, then returned a moment later. “She has nothing to say to you.”

  “Really? We'll see about that when I reach the bottom of the Wall. How are you going to keep the man'kin out when the charms stop working?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what this creature can do. You've seen it with your own eyes.” Pirelius gave the Homunculus a push, sending it staggering forward. “It kills the Change, so it can kill the Wall. That's all that keeps the man'kin outside the city. When I get close enough—”

  “You're an idiot, Pirelius!” hollered a new voice. The Magister's face peered over the edge of the gondola.

  “Ha!” crowed the bandit. “You appear at last, you old witch! Now you realise the threat I am, you deign to speak. Well, I'm not listening. Nothing you can say will deter me!”

  “How about this? The Wall has already been breached; the man'kin are already inside the city. You're wasting your time on a fool's errand. You've failed!”

  The sound of the Magister's laugh was chilling over the crashing of the man'kin.

  Pirelius wrenched the Homunculus to a halt. He craned his neck to see. The tunnel mouth leading through the Wall was obscured, but the number of man'kin milling outside it had obviously shrunk. They had to be going somewhere.

  Although the city was under attack and its last defence had failed, just as Pirelius had hoped it would, the bandit seemed almost bereft. He looked from the Wall to the Magister and back again, a man who had lost everything, even one shot at retribution.

  “Let's leave,” said the Homunculus, speaking for the first time. “We'll take you to safety. You can put all this behind you and make a new life elsewhere.”

  “Don't listen to it!” shouted the Magister. “You can have a life right here, right now. I'm prepared to make a new deal with you.”

  Pirelius looked up at her with hatred in every line of his face. If he had his way, the heavy lifter would be struck from the sky and crumpled like paper, killing everyone aboard. Sal could feel his loathing even through Kail's mind. The time for songs and bravura had passed. His grim determination to hurt the Magister consumed him.

  Gradually, a smile formed on his face.

  “You want me to help you,” he said as the dirigible drifted lower over him.

  “Yes.”

  “How have they got in? A tunnel?”

  “We need you to close it, stop them coming through.” The Magister's eyes glittered. Her expression was haughty, even when asking for aid. “Do it, and you walk away free. Both of you.”

  “No!” said Marmion, lunging forward to take the Magister's arm. Guards pushed him back.

  “You have my word on this,” the Magister said to Pirelius, ignoring the Sky Warden.

  Pirelius's laugh was no less chilling than hers. He raised the knife so it pressed against the Homunculus's neck. “Your word is worth less to me than the life of this monster. I should kill it now and rid the world of both of you.”

  “And die yourself, without its protection? Your posturing doesn't impress me, Pirelius.” The Magister's voice betrayed not the slightest fear that he might do as he said. “I'm a businesswoman. Let's talk business or the next thing I drop on you won't be a guard.”

  Pirelius spat in the dirt. “Hag.”

  “I have no idea what you think I did to you, but calling each other names solves nothing.”

  The bandit pushed the Homunculus into motion. It staggered forward like a sleepwalker. “This isn't over,” Pirelius said. “We will have a reckoning.”

  This the Magister didn't grace with a reply. Her head retreated and the heavy lifter surged smoothly forward.

  Sal dropped out of the vision. Someone was shaking his shoulder again. He blinked and focused on the real world.

  “What is it?”

  Shilly pointed over the interior side of the Wall, a worried look on her face. He was startled by the transformation in the city. Fires were burning where the man'kin had broken through the Wall. Thick smoke belched along the city streets. The city guards had fallen back several blocks as a heavy tide of man'kin filled the streets. Creatures of all sizes and shapes swarmed over the cobbles of Laure, an irresistible mass of living stone.

  The press was formidable. Those man'kin that could escape the crush, did. Some climbed up onto roofs and took station on the eaves, roosting like gargoyles. Others weren't content to sit only a floor or two up. They leapt from building to building, seeking ever-higher vantage points. At least two were scaling towers just a handful of metres away from the Wall itself.

  That was a concern. Sal backed away as a large, fat man'kin with a cherubic face climbed hand over hand to the top of a nearby tower, the ease of its movement belying its sheer mass. From that vantage point, it turned to look at them with dead, stone eyes.

  “Oh, shit,” said Shilly, gripping Sal's upper arm painfully tight. “I think it's about to—”

  She didn't finish as, with a crunch of stone and a roar of effort, the man'kin leapt across the gap between them and onto the Wall.

  “Earthquakes, bushfires, flash floods, hurricanes: we ignore these signs at our own peril.”

  THE BOOK OF TOWERS, EXEGESIS 10:24

  “Run!”

  The command came from the leader of the guards, and Skender didn't hesitate to obey. The sight of the giant man'kin—at least four metres high and weighing several tons—launching itself from the tower was enough to make him move. The force of its leap was sufficient to topple the tip of the minarette it had been standing on, sending bricks and tiles crashing down onto the streets below. With a deafening crunch, the broad chest of the man'kin struck the edge of the Wall not metres from where he stood. Its fat fingers scrabbled for purchase and caught the guardrail. Metal twisted with a painful squeal but held. Stone ground against stone, and the man'kin hauled itself up onto the roof.

  Skender, running almost backwards, hypnotised by
the creature's massive strength, tripped over the ragged hem of his robe and fell awkwardly onto his side. Shilly shouted something but he couldn't hear her over the heavy thudding of man'kin feet. A guard threw one of the light-globes into its back. Bright energy flashed, followed by a surge of heat so powerful Skender averted his eyes.

  “Hold!” shouted the leader of the guards. Skender blinked and looked up into the giant statue's face. It stood over him, so close he could reach out and touch its leg. A globe thrown now was just as likely to kill him, and the first didn't seem to have done any damage at all.

  “MAWSON,” the man'kin said in a voice like mountains falling.

  “Sal set him free,” Skender protested, scrabbling backwards on his hands and feet.

  The man'kin followed as though tied to him with string. Its expression was blankly intimidating. “MAWSON FRIEND.”

  “He's our friend, too. He wouldn't want you to hurt us.”

  The man'kin shook its head and reached down with one bulbous hand. Skender tried to run but barely made it upright before massive stone fingers wrapped around his torso and pulled him into the air.

  “No!” Its grip was tight. He could hardly draw breath enough to shout, “Don't!”

  “MAWSON FRIEND MUST.”

  Skender felt himself raised up high. He closed his eyes, nerving himself for being dashed to the stone. He thought of Chu and was glad she wasn't there to see this.

  “MAWSON FRIEND MUST LOOK.”

  The moment of his death didn't come. He remained suspended in the air, firmly contained by the creature's stone fist. His many bruises complained, and for once he was grateful for it. While he hurt, he remained alive.

  The man'kin shook him.

  “MAWSON FRIEND MUST LOOK NOW!”

  The creature's leaden words finally sunk in. Skender opened his eyes. The man'kin held him disconcertingly high above the top of the Wall. The view was almost as impressive as it had been from under Chu's wing. The spreading stain of the man'kin horde darkened the streets below, while the mass of living stone outside had shrunk to less than a quarter its original size. The twins and their captor cut a straight line through them, with the Magister's heavy lifter following discreetly above.