The Blood Debt: Books of the Cataclysm Two

by Sean Williams

  A faint memory stirred, and with it his hopes. “Did we talk about this last night?”

  “You bet,” she said. “You think I'm crazy, but it'll take more than that to change my mind.”

  “About what?”

  “Going with the wardens, of course. What else? They're heading for the Hanging Mountains—for the fog forests and the balloon cities. This is my big chance to see where my family comes from. I'm not going to turn that down.”

  “I guess not,” he said, his stomach doing a gentle backflip. He didn't know whether to be relieved or appalled. “I guess that's what we argued about.”

  “Not at all.” The beginnings of a smile returned. “That was about who would win a wrestling match between Kemp and the quartermaster. I think you're overestimating your white friend's reach, but would you listen? Pfft. For someone who professes to like girls, you're rather smitten with Kemp's form.”

  “I am?” he squeaked.

  She laughed again, and he felt his face burn.

  “So what about Kazzo?” he asked. “If you're not staying in Laure, what gave him the impression that you were? Was he just lying?”

  “Why does it matter what that jerk says? Sure, I said I'd meet him for a drink. I even hinted that I might spend the night with him if he'd ditch that slutty Liris. But now he'll sit in the bar for a while and get bored. Then he'll give up and go home alone, feeling like an idiot. Serves him right, the shit.”

  A knot of tension loosened inside him. “And me? Where do I stand in all this?”

  “Well, that's up to you. When you've decided which you'd rather do—go back to your father's safe little nest, or come with us to the Hanging Mountains—you let me know.”

  That wasn't entirely what he'd meant, but he supposed the answer served either way.

  He shook his aching head. “I can't believe I slept on the bar floor. Did you really have to carry me up here?”

  “Yes, and you do snore. I can tell you that for a fact.”

  “I—what?”

  “This is my room now, as well as yours. Where do you think I slept last night?”

  He stared at her, not sure exactly which part of this new development horrified him more.

  “Are you pulling my leg?”

  “Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. After all the drinking and the carousing…” She hesitated, studying him with her gracefully curved eyes. Her expression was one he hadn't seen before: almost wistful, almost wounded; almost a lot of things, but not quite. “You really don't remember?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then I guess, my friend, you'll never know.”

  “On the beach, on the brink of death, on the Divide, and on the cliff; on the boundary between one state and another—from the edge of things we see most clearly and lose ourselves most readily.”

  THE BOOK OF TOWERS, FRAGMENT 99

  Habryn Kail sat in his undergarments as the rest of his clothes dried by the fire. The night was deep and dark and as empty of the Change as the heart of the Aad had been. The shadow watching him from the far side of the fire was darker and emptier still.

  “You must have rescued me for a reason,” he said over the crackling flames.

  “We need your help,” said the Homunculus.

  “I've already helped you by stopping Pirelius from killing you. On that score, I figure we're even.”

  “Yes. We're asking, not demanding.”

  “For what, exactly?”

  The creature's eyes glittered. “Understanding. We must understand each other or all will end in disaster. That's obvious, now. We tried to do it alone and it didn't work. We were pursued and attacked and imprisoned, almost killed. If we die, everything will come undone. It will all have been for nothing. We need you to help keep us alive long enough to achieve what we came here for. Then you will be free. We will all be released.”

  Kail took several slow, measured breaths. The sense of tumbling and drowning in the flood returned, making him feel disoriented and nauseous. Then, he had thought he would die. He had been willing enough to accept his fate, under the circumstances, until two pairs of strong hands working in unison caught his wrists and hauled him to the surface, setting him on an entirely new path. Now, he thought he might just lose his grip on himself.

  The taste of spiderbush leaf was bitter in his mouth. The leaves took the edge off his appetite, but little else.

  “The place you're headed,” he said, “it must be in the Hanging Mountains. I've studied the maps of the plains between here and the foothills, and there's nothing else to speak of. The occasional Ruin, the odd struggling town. Laure is the last outpost until you hit the mountains, and there my knowledge ends.”

  “How far are they?”

  “Hundreds of kilometres. I don't know exactly. It depends on how far downstream we've been swept. By tomorrow morning, I'll be able to tell you.”

  The Homunculus slowly nodded. “It's a long way. But the mountains sound…plausible. There is a connection between our previous lives and this one.”

  “What sort of connection?”

  “That'll be hard to explain.”

  “Well, I'm not going anywhere until my clothes are dry.”

  “We mean that it will be hard for us as well as you. Much remains unclear in our own minds. It's been a long time since we last had to think of such things.”

  “How long?”

  “You tell us. When did the giant cities die? When did electricity stop working? When did the world end?”

  “No one knows for sure. ‘A thousand years ago’ is what the stories say, but that's like ‘once upon a time.’ People say it because they don't know for certain.”

  “However long it's been, that's how long we've been in the Void. We're only just beginning to remember parts of what happened. You'll have to be patient with us.”

  “But you will tell me?”

  “In return for helping us survive our journey, yes. We'll owe you that much, at least.”

  Kail thought of Eisak Marmion and his mission to destroy the unnatural interloper, for reasons he kept carefully to himself. He thought of Shilly insisting that the Homunculus deserved to live, and the promise he had made to her, to prevent the Homunculus from being killed out of hand. He thought of Highson Sparre, who had inadvertently given it a route back among the living. And he thought of himself, a tracker who had disobeyed orders and now had to work out where he stood. Everything had seemed so simple in the moments before the flood.

  One thing he was sure of was that few things deserved automatic obliteration. Nature was about coexistence, even among hunter and hunted. Predators could be avoided, just as he would avoid dangerous insects and snakes, and the need to flee kept prey vigorous and vital. He didn't know which class of being he belonged to at that moment, but he knew the world would be diminished if he chose to kill the Homunculus without understanding it first.

  If he even could kill it. The wound Pirelius had inflicted in its shoulder was gone, as though it had never existed.

  What would Lodo do? he wondered, as he had so often in his life.

  “All right,” he said, “I'll help you of my own free will. I'll guide you across the plains to the mountains and keep you out of trouble. It doesn't take me too far into the Interior, and I can manage well enough without the Change. In return you'll tell me about where you come from and why you're here. Does that sound fair to you?”

  “We need to know about your world, too,” the Homunculus responded. “There's a lot we don't understand.”

  “We'll teach each other.” Kail wondered if he should go around the fire to shake the creature's hands. It made no move to come to him, so he stayed where he was. “There's something else I need from you, if we're to cooperate.”

  “And that is?”

  “Your names.”

  The dark figure didn't move for a long moment. Although the features of the physical vessel were shadowed, he sensed a fierce internal struggle taking place between the minds it contained. Its
posture was rigid. Its skin shivered from more than just the shifting of the firelight.

  Then it relaxed. “I am Hadrian Castillo,” it said.

  “And I am Seth Castillo,” said a second voice, one similar to the first but not identical.

  Kail waited a moment, but nothing else was forthcoming.

  “My name is Habryn Kail,” he said, “and I guess we have a deal.”

  The twins nodded, then froze again.

  They said nothing more that night. When his clothes were dry, Kail put them back on and lay down by the fading flames. The fragment of the Change-sink, secure in a pouch normally reserved for coins, dug into his side, and he adjusted it to a more comfortable position. He was exhausted from his trials in the Aad and the Divide, and hungry, too, despite the spiderbush he had found growing on the edge of the flood-filled canyon. Foraging in earnest would have to wait until morning. He needed to take what rest he could before they set out on their long journey.

  The Homunculus watched him, sleepless and silent beyond the fire. Its thoughts were unknown to him. When he slept, he dreamed of those four gleaming eyes staring at him all night long, and he shifted uneasily on the cold, hard ground.

  The time has come. It has always been. You are there. We are there with you.

  You weren't there! You couldn't possibly know! We are alone!

  The stone shadows knew. That much was obvious. They used words the twins hadn't heard for eons, words that had presaged the death of one of them and the end for everyone.

  Tiden har kommit. The time has come.

  In that moment, the twins understood that they couldn't walk through the world like a ghost any longer. It might feel nebulous and strange to them, but it was powerfully real. For all that they might want to rush headlong to their fate, those around them might have different ideas. They needed to see things more clearly, lest they lose their way.

  The time for thinking is over. If you won't kill it, I will!

  So much violence. So much anger.

  You! You have destroyed me!

  All directed away from the thing that really mattered…

  You must have rescued me for a reason.

  The fire crackled and popped like a living creature. It was the first truly vivid thing the twins had seen since entering the world. Its manifold golds and crimsons blended in a superb alchemical mix that told them they had made the right decision. They were connecting, slowly but surely. They had taken a step that was at least as important as any physical journey.

  It's the right thing to do, said Hadrian. You know it as well as I.

  Yes, but I'm the one who remembers dying, Seth replied. That's what we're risking now.

  Have to risk all to gain all.

  There's no “all” for us. I know that as well as you do.

  They looked out at the world through their strange, alien skin. New puzzlements greeted them. They could see the stars now, but they looked wrong, somehow—brighter and sparser, as though there were fewer of them, and closer to the Earth than they remembered. The horizon was less distinct, although that could have been the immensity of the desert around them, confusing their eyes. Sunrises and sunsets looked strange.

  The precise nature of the world eluded them still. Where did the Change fit in? What happened after death with the First and Second Realms so closely aligned? Who was the Goddess?

  Instead of answers, the questions raised names from the distant past. Kybele. Agatha. Barbelo. Simapesiel. Ana. Meg. Horva. Ellis.

  Yod.

  As the strange stars slid westward across the sky, the twins thought they saw something fly overhead, like a distant golden bird, catching the light of an invisible sun. It reminded them of someone or something they had once known. Another name: Pukje. Another voice from the past…

  Would you believe me if I told you it was a dragon?

  A real dragon?

  Is there any other sort?

  The golden speck circled once, then angled off to meet the darkness looming in the northeast, urging them to hurry.

  To be continued in

  The Hanging Mountains

  Books of the Cataclysm: Three

  Alcaide—The position of Alcaide is equivalent to grand chancellor or highest judge of the Strand, and is currently held by Dragan Braham.

  Book of Towers—A collection of tales and commentaries concerning the Cataclysm and related matters, gathered down the centuries. It contains legends and fables from the times before and immediately after the Cataclysm, and maps of the changing world. Scholars invariably disagree over what is real and what is imagined. The argument will no doubt rage for centuries to come.

  Broken Lands—Regions of fractured landscape left over from the Cataclysm. Such regions are scattered apparently at random across the world, but may be subtly connected. One of the five great ancient cities moves between various Broken Lands, changing location every few years. The relocation has never been witnessed by human eyes.

  Cataclysm—The catastrophe that marked the beginning of the world as understood by Sky Warden and Stone Mage, and other chroniclers of human events. The cause of the Cataclysm, along with knowledge of the times that preceded it, is lost. Much has been said about it, and such stories, along with speculation concerning their veracity, have been collected in the multiauthor account known as The Book of Towers.

  Conclave—The term used to refer to the Sky Warden community as a whole. The Conclave maintains a strict hierarchical structure within itself, dominated by three family lines: Air, Cloud, and Water.

  Divide—A vast, jagged, human-made canyon that separates the Interior from the Strand. Its origins stretch back to the days shortly after the Cataclysm, when the world was rife with the Change and the chaos it brought. Some say it was created to keep Stone Mage and Sky Warden teachings separate, others that it served as a repository for the new and dangerous creatures that walked the Earth. Whatever purpose it serves, bridges cross it at only two points, Tintenbar and the Lookout, and both are heavily charmed against hostile use of the Change.

  Fundelry—A small but locally important fishing village on the section of the Strand known as Gooron.

  Ghost—The common name for the bodiless minds imprisoned in the Haunted City. On two occasions in recent times, a ghost or ghosts contacted human residents of the island and used them to facilitate a bid for freedom. On both occasions, the ghosts turned on their liberators, with lethal results.

  Golem—When a Change-worker overexerts themselves, they run the risk of vanishing into the Void Beneath and becoming the opposite of a ghost: a body without a mind. Such empty bodies can be inhabited by golems, fleshless minds with a hunger for experience. Such inhabitation is invariably fatal in the end, for the golem's human host.

  Haunted City—The capital of the Strand. A mysterious place, which humans inhabit only by default, its crystalline towers are cages for ancient ghosts who seek forever to escape.

  Interior—The vast inland state to the north of the Divide, dominated by large, underground cities and people with light-coloured skin.

  Keep—A prestigious school for Stone Mages situated in a cliff-face retreat connected to the city of Ulum by a space-bending Way. The Van Haasteren family, with their hereditary recall, has administered the school for generations. The current principal is the ninth in the line.

  Man'kin—One of the many castes of intelligent beings to walk the world since the Cataclysm. Animated, self-aware statues with an ability to see all times as one, the man'kin have occasionally been tricked into acting as advisers for their human “masters.” Rogue man'kin are feared everywhere, as their strength and indifference to human affairs make them capricious and formidable foes.

  Nine Stars—The ancient, arcane city deep in the desert of the Interior where the Stone Mage Conclave meets every full moon to make decisions and cast judgments.

  Novitiate—The training ground for those with talent in the Strand. It is situated on the same island as the Haunted City and currently
overseen by Master Warden Risa Atilde.

  Ruin—A location, usually rich or poor in the Change to some notable degree, with close ties to the past. These may include cities, isolated buildings, mine shafts, roads, harbours, and other relics of ancient civilisation. They are often places of great danger, to be approached with caution.

  Selection—The process by which those with innate talent or strong Change-sensitivity are discovered in the Strand. Selectors visit every village at least once a year, testing candidates and taking the successful to attend the Novitiate in the Haunted City.

  Sky Warden—Those trained in the Change who rule the Strand. They traditionally wear blue robes and crystal torcs. Their charms often involve feathers and wood, and have efficacy over water and air. They claim to draw their powers from the deep reservoirs of the open ocean, so they are most puissant near the coast.

  Stone Mage—Those trained in the Change who rule the Interior. They traditionally wear red robes and tattoo signs of rank on their skin. Their charms often involve stone and metal, and are effective over fire and earth. They claim to draw their powers from the red heart of the desert, near the site of the ancient city known as the Nine Stars.

  Strand—The nation known as the Strand encompasses one vast stretch of uninterrupted coastline along which are scattered numerous villages. Each village is run by a group of ten elected Alders, who in turn elect a Mayor. The Mayors then elect Regional Governors who meet once every four years in the Haunted City with representatives of the Sky Wardens to discuss governance of their nation. The highest rank obtainable in the Strand is the Alcaide, closely followed by the Syndic.

  Surveyor—A member of the multidisciplinary and bipartisan corps dedicated to research and exploration of the historically active sites known as Ruins. To be a Surveyor is to be regarded as both supremely talented and foolhardy, and perhaps a little reckless.

  Syndic—The Syndic is the Alcaide's chief administrator, a position currently held by Nu Zanshin, aunt of Highson Sparre and great-aunt of Sal Hrvati.