The Blood Debt: Books of the Cataclysm Two

by Sean Williams

His descent was not so rapid that he risked skinning himself on the stone as it went past and he used his legs to keep at a distance from the Wall, kicking gently to maintain a rhythmic bounce. He felt like a bug on the vast expanse of the Wall. It seemed to stretch to infinity in all directions. The only details marring its smooth curvature were the giant charms reinforcing the sigils on each block of stone.

  A cool breeze caressed his neck. He relished the touch of it on his raw skin and bruises until he realised its probable source. A wall of water was rushing down the Divide pushing all the air ahead of it. A breeze was probably the best he could hope for, suspended as he was on a string right in its path.

  He made sure the flags were secure against his waist. Red for up, the guard had said. It was imprinted in his memory forever. He just hoped the guards operating the winch were conserving their strength for a late charge.

  Shilly tore her eyes away from Skender as he receded down the Wall. Pirelius and the Homunculus were almost at the tunnel mouth. Movement out of the corner of her eye distracted her from the downward view, and she looked up.

  The heavy lifter rocked from side to side, at eye level, painted pink by the falling dusk. The pilot turned it so it lay lengthways, parallel to the Wall, but its instability only seemed to worsen. Its fiery propellers spun furiously in an attempt to hold it in position.

  Wind, she thought, glancing upwards. There were no clouds, but the sky to the east was growing darker.

  Wind and spray. Time was running out.

  “Faster!” she shouted at the guards turning the winch. “We don't have long!”

  They pulled their handles with increased energy. One, red in the face, muttered to the other, “Who is she, anyway?”

  Shilly ignored him. “What's happening down there?” she asked Sal, wishing she had her stick. She felt unsteady without it.

  “Pirelius has stopped,” he said, his gaze focused on infinity. “He's calling for the Magister.”

  Shilly nodded. “Looking for a rematch.” Thus far, Pirelius was behaving exactly as expected. “Is she coming?”

  “She's sent Marmion again.”

  “Good. Don't want to make it look too easy.”

  “TUNNEL,” rumbled the giant man'kin, startling her. She jumped and turned to face it.

  “What?”

  “TUNNEL CLOSING.”

  The Wall began to shake. Obviously this man'kin had got word to Mawson about the flood and told the other man'kin to start closing the tunnel. “Good. While that's happening, why don't you help those two with the winch? Can you do that?”

  The round face of the man'kin swivelled to take in the guards and the winch. It took two ponderous steps forward and crouched down. The guards backed away, terrified as a giant stone hand grabbed the handle.

  “TURN,” it boomed, and did just that. The winch spun much faster than it had before. Rope vanished over the edge at a furious rate. “TURN.”

  “Excellent,” she said, hoping against hope that she hadn't given Skender the fright of his life. “Make sure you stop when we tell you to, okay?”

  It nodded. “TURN!”

  The Wall quaked beneath them, and she clung to Sal for support.

  “For the last time—”

  At the sound of grinding stone, Pirelius stopped in midsentence and looked around.

  “What?” He grabbed the Homunculus tight around the throat and pulled it closer to him, suspecting a trap. The blade at its throat gleamed. “Magister! What are you playing at?”

  “Nothing, Pirelius,” said Marmion, bellowing to be heard from the shaking canopy above. “Stay calm! The man'kin can't hurt you!”

  Pirelius backed away from the tunnel entrance. The crush of man'kin around him hadn't thinned, and that surprised Sal. He would have expected them to make for other refuges once word spread of the tunnel's imminent closure, but they stayed tight around the man and his captive, and continued to ignore the invisible Kail.

  It took a good while for the truth—that things weren't going the way Pirelius expected—to sink in. In fact, it took the solid chest of a man'kin to drive the point home.

  “Wh—?” Pirelius recoiled from the frozen statue with a look of utter confusion on his face. The man'kin consistently flinched from the Homunculus when it approached. This one—a three-metre-high bearded man in white stone with a beatific expression and outstretched arms—had not.

  He backed away, and the frozen man'kin fell out of range. It shook its head, uncannily as though waking.

  “The one from the Void is here,” the man'kin said. “Tiden har kommit.”

  Pirelius just frowned at that, but the effect on the Homunculus was startling. It straightened with a jerk.

  “What could you know about that?” it asked the man'kin, its superimposition of faces twisted in anguish.

  “The time has come,” the man'kin stated matter-of-factly. “It has always been. You are there. We are there with you.”

  “You weren't there! You couldn't possibly know!” The Homunculus wriggled in Pirelius's grip, but the bandit clung tight. The blade bit deep into its throat, drawing not blood but a strange silver mist that bubbled and ran down its chest. “We are alone!”

  The sound of propellers whining drew Kail's eyes upwards. The heavy lifter was swooping lower in defiance of the rising wind. Sal couldn't have been more surprised to see Marmion dangling from a rope ladder if the Sky Warden had been stark naked and clutching a flower between his teeth.

  “I'll kill it!” screamed Pirelius as Marmion dropped to the dirt in the safety zone. “I'll kill it!”

  “I know,” said Marmion coolly, making reassuring motions with both hands. “That's exactly what I want. And if you'll just stay calm, both our chances of making it out of this alive will significantly improve.”

  Skender was having trouble keeping up. One moment he had been descending at a steady pace, the next the world had dropped out from under him and the Wall was streaming by. He had cried out, fearing for a moment that the rope had snapped and he was falling to his death. But the harness still had a tight grip on his backside; he wasn't in free fall and hadn't skinned himself too badly against the store. Somehow the crew up above had found a way to accelerate his descent without dropping him.

  Then, with the ground finally coming appreciably closer, the heavy lifter had lunged for him—or so it had felt—and he had covered his face with his hands, fearing a new catastrophe.

  Death spared him again. When he dared part his fingers, the dirigible was heading for the sky.

  Skender looked down. Someone else had joined the party below. A Sky Warden, judging by the colour of the robe. He groaned, recognising Marmion's bald spot. What was he doing there?

  The ground was coming up awfully fast. He fumbled at the pouch, thinking, Red for up, green for down, white to stop. He produced the white flag and waved it. Nothing happened.

  “Pay attention, you idiots!” he cried uselessly, flailing the flag in desperation as the ground swelled beneath him. “White to stop! White to stop! White to—”

  With a throat-closing jerk, the winch suddenly slowed, forcing his chin down on his chest and the flag out of his hand. It flapped around his legs on the end of its string as he came to an abrupt halt a metre from the ground. He heard a “glurk” and realised that it had come from him.

  The rope jerked again and he dropped the rest of the distance. His feet hit the ground and his legs promptly gave way. He landed face first, staring at Shilly's stick. He didn't even know he'd dropped it.

  A stone snout poked him, hard.

  “Ow!” Skender sat up and backed against the Wall with the stick in his hands. The reservoir of the Change in the carved wood trembled against his fingertips, aching to be let out. He stood and confronted his attacker.

  It was the man'kin pig he had spoken to the previous day.

  “You are needed in this world,” it said again, and trotted away.

  Skender let out a panicky breath and looked around. The groun
d was as broken as a freshly turned field. Further along the Wall was a metal door, glowing red. The man'kin stayed carefully away from it. Several dozen man'kin congregated outside the tunnel mouth, to his left. He could feel the stone slabs shaking behind him as they closed ranks, gradually shutting the makeshift entrance to the city. A pang of compassion for the stone pig struck him: it would be stuck outside when the flood came. The water would dash it to pieces.

  But what was death to something that saw all its life at once? He didn't know. He was, mainly, just glad that the other man'kin were ignoring him.

  They stared, instead, at a confrontation taking place a dozen metres away. In the centre of a clearing, Pirelius and the twins had squared off against Marmion. Their voices were buried under the sound of the Wall rearranging itself, and another sound—a growing rumble the origin of which Skender tried not to think about. No one appeared to have noticed his arrival apart from the pig.

  He went to move closer and was hauled up by the rope. He tugged on it, hoping the winch operators would take the hint. They did. Rope hissed to the ground, giving him much-needed slack. He followed the pig through a petrified forest of man'kin, none of whom paid him any attention. He was ready with the red flag and Shilly's stick if they did.

  Words gradually coalesced out of the noise.

  “—really think she's coming back for you?”

  “Of course she is. We have a deal.”

  “We had a deal, too, and look where I ended up!”

  “I don't know anything about that—but I do know that the Magister is afraid at the moment. You can use that to your advantage.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “Because I'm down here with you.” Skender was close enough to see Marmion's expression. It was one of determination and fear. “Would I take a risk like this if I didn't think it worthwhile?”

  “Pah!” Pirelius spat into the dirt. “I don't trust anyone without knowing what they have to lose.”

  Skender peered from behind a statue of a horse as Pirelius dragged the twins away from Marmion. Pirelius came up sharp against a frozen man'kin, and flinched away from it into another.

  “Get out of my way!” he bellowed, flailing with his free hand for the thong he had used to whip Skender into submission.

  “They're afraid of the Homunculus,” said Marmion, following him, “and with good reason. You have to listen to me.”

  “I don't have to do anything.”

  “Kill it or we'll all die!”

  “No!” The twins’ mingled voices rose up over the argument between the two men. “You must let us go! We still have work to do!”

  Pirelius shifted his grip on the knife and plunged it deep into the Homunculus's shoulder. The twins howled and fell to their knees. Pirelius removed the blade and wiped it on his leather pants.

  “I'm tired of this game,” he said to Marmion. “Tell the Magister that if she's serious, she needs to come down here now and talk face to face, or—”

  Pirelius stopped. It looked to Skender as though he had finally noticed that his main bargaining chip was worthless. The man'kin weren't attacking the city. They were standing around him and his captive, waiting for something.

  His gaze took in the tunnel mouth for the first time. His eyes widened, then narrowed as he turned to Marmion.

  “You lied to me, you dirt-faced, blue-coat bastard.”

  “I told you the truth, every word. The Magister is afraid because you can hurt her. You can use that to your advantage, if you're quick.”

  Pirelius stiffened as he looked over Marmion's shoulder, along the Divide. His mouth opened in shock, but no words came out.

  Skender followed the direction of his stare. Over the heads of the man'kin, a foaming, dirty-white wall had appeared.

  “Goddess,” he breathed. The rising wind took the word from his lips and swept it away.

  Shilly stared at the approaching flood, not quite able to comprehend the scale of it. She had happened to be staring up the Divide as it came into view, rounding the bend to the east. It looked like a giant wave rushing in from the sea, but there was no chance of it slowing and retreating, as normal waves did. This was growing nearer with the speed and power of a tsunami, sweeping up everything in its path.

  “What's going on down there?” she asked Sal, barely able to tear her eyes away from the sight. “Why are they taking so long?” The view over the edge wasn't encouraging. No one had moved, and every second was precious.

  “Pirelius has just worked it out,” came her lover's distant reply. Sal's fingers clenched the rail as the Wall shook and rumbled beneath them. “I don't know what he's going to do.”

  “How long until the tunnel is closed?” she asked the giant man'kin. “Are we still in danger?”

  The man'kin nodded.

  A prolonged shudder forced them to their knees. Shilly resisted the urge to instruct the man'kin to haul Skender up to safety. Wishing with every breath Skender would hurry up, she peered over the edge and waited for the red flag.

  Kail was as still as one of the man'kin caught in the wake. He hadn't moved throughout the entire confrontation. Sal could feel the ache in the tracker's legs and back and the patience with which he endured it. The older man was exhausted but his poise was perfectly intact. Waiting was an integral part of being a hunter. It was all about seizing the right moment to strike, no matter how long it took to come.

  It was strange, Sal thought. The longer he dipped into the tracker's thoughts, the more he picked up. Not just fatigue and philosophy, either. There were glimpses of people and places he'd never been—from Kail's memories, he assumed—and emotions that triggered faint echoes in him. The most surprising was a surge of affection for someone he recognised instantly: Shilly, as she had looked on the edge of the Divide, shortly after he and Skender had flown away. Her expression was concerned and determined at once. He felt Kail looking at her with pride and sadness.

  The mixed emotion was snatched away as Kail focused on events in front of him. Pirelius was a man who had never been particularly stable. Kail had watched him long enough to know that for certain now. Pirelius was backed into a corner, feeling betrayed and operating on the very limits of his resources, but he was far from stupid.

  Kail could practically see Pirelius's mind working: in a moment the tunnel into the city would be closed, while something vast and terrible bore down on them from the east—a flash flood of stupendous proportions—that he would be caught up in if he didn't act soon.

  The bandit was desperate and had never been more dangerous.

  “The time for thinking is over,” declared Marmion in exasperation. “If you won't kill it, I will.”

  The Sky Warden produced a slender blade from beneath his robes. It gleamed like ice in his hand. He lunged forward, and the deadly tip stabbed squarely at the Homunculus's chest. The Homunculus looked up from its daze and swayed away, too slowly. Its many eyes triangulated on death's bright, metallic sting, hypnotised by its inevitability.

  Light flashed from Kail's left. Something bright and fierce left a sharp blue trail across his vision. It looked like a tiny ball of lightning, and discharged into the knife Marmion held. With a thunderclap the blade exploded, sending the warden flying backwards in a spray of metal and blood.

  Pirelius staggered and fell to one knee. The look of surprise on his face was almost comical, but it didn't last long. He moved more quickly than Sal could credit, shoving the Homunculus with a roar, his sights set on the tunnel.

  “He's worked it out!” said Sal, teasing his mind from Kail's with difficulty. “We can't let him use the Homunculus to stop the tunnel closing!”

  “I know,” said the tracker calmly.

  Kail was already moving, coming out from cover and reaching with practised hands for the weighted cord dangling at his waist.

  Pirelius travelled no more than three steps before coming face to face with a frozen man'kin. He sidestepped to his right and found another in his path.
/>   “Get out of my way!”

  The roar of water was almost so loud as to drown out his words completely. Kail caught sight of Skender struggling through the forest of living statues with rope and harness trailing from him. The stick in his hand was expended, useless, shrivelled, and black like charcoal. Kail waved him away.

  Pirelius wrenched the Homunculus from side to side, finding man'kin frozen before him every way he tried to run. Kail felt the man's desperation rising in time with the roar of the flood. The leather thong dangling from his left hand cracked to no avail.

  “You!” he roared. “You have destroyed me!”

  The words were directed upwards, to where the heavy lifter had been. The sky was greying over; the dirigible had fled the gale preceding the flood.

  The bola in Kail's hand spun as Pirelius backed away from a snarling stone visage with wide, despairing eyes. He had no hope left for himself. That much was clear. All he wanted to do was hurt the Magister before he died—and the Homunculus would be the instrument of his vengeance.

  “No!” Sal heard himself cry aloud as Kail let the bola fly.

  He could feel Kail's determination to do the right thing. Kail had made a promise—but Sal had promised, too, to rescue the Homunculus, to come back for it later. What could he possibly do now to stop the inevitable? Killing the Homunculus would solve everything: the city would be safe if the tunnel was allowed to close, and the world would be saved from the threat it presaged. That was what Marmion wanted.

  The bola flew with deadly force and aim. With a sickening sound, it wrapped itself around Pirelius's neck and snapped it in two. The bandit dropped like a sack of stones, and the Homunculus fell free.

  The roar of the stones and the water was deafening. Skender, caught between the two, felt squeezed and shaken by two competing sonic shock waves. He gaped as Pirelius fell and blood sprayed from his mouth. The bola had seemed to come from nowhere.

  “Quickly!” shouted a voice over the double roar. The man'kin were moving again, running to add their weight to the gradually closing gap in the Wall. It didn't sound like one of their voices.