‘Why are we here?’ the Watcher asked. ‘How did we get here?’
Shirkra grinned at him. ‘Mother has summoned us. Didn’t you hear her?’
Aranfal nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘One must come promptly when summoned by Mother.’ She tapped the side of her head. ‘It’s stupid to do anything else. Mother is very patient, you know, very patient, but it’s not good to test her, oh no, not good at all.’
The Watcher was afraid. He was Aran Fal.
‘Have you met Mother before, Aranfal, hmm?’
‘No. At least, not in her new guise.’
‘Ah. You knew her host.’ Shirkra giggled. ‘It will be so lovely to see you together! I love both of you so much!’
They walked through the door, and found themselves in a corridor. There were torches along the walls, burning in that strange flame of Strategist purple. As they went, a light grew before them, a tempest in the same colour.
The environment began to change. The corridor faded away, and the air became wet and cool. New sounds intermingled with the strange music: the movement of leaves in the breeze, a dappling of water on rocks, weird chirps and chirrups of animals.
‘Where are we?’ Aranfal asked. ‘It feels like we’ve gone outside. How can that be?’
Shirkra tutted. ‘Your questions are born of the Overland. We are not in the Overland, my Aranfal.’
Aranfal looked up and saw a bright moon, a perfectly smooth and circular body that radiated a cold intensity.
‘That was not here before,’ he said. ‘What is this place?’
‘A memory. Many memories. Woven together, made more beautiful than before, oh yes.’
They came to a garden. Aranfal saw a wide, dark pond up ahead, its surface a perfect reflection of that unnatural moon, its waters utterly still. Black plants surrounded the pond, tall things with dark, glossy leaves and pale, pink flowers. Animal sounds could be heard in the dark, but there was no sign of bird or beast.
Sitting on a rock and staring into the pond was the Strategist. Katrina Paprissi. The One. Mother. Always Mother, always call her Mother. She was dressed in her purple rags, her pale skin exposed to the moonlight, her black hair tied tightly back with an ivory pin. She held in her hands a long, thin, wooden instrument: the source of the strange music. It was a lament. It told a story of a time long gone, though no one sang along to it.
At her side was a mask: the face of a white rat.
Mother cast a glance in their direction, and removed the pipe from her lips. The music died slowly, echoing through the garden. The Strategist tilted her head very slightly, and placed the tip of her tongue on her upper lip, as if tasting something there.
Aranfal bowed to her.
‘The Machinery is broken,’ the Strategist said. Her words had hints of Katrina, but there was something more besides, as if several speakers were talking at once in voices from the past.
Aranfal hesitated. ‘Yes, Strategist.’
Mother did not seem to register his words. ‘The Machinery is broken. It must be. It Selected me, and gave me such powers. But Ruin has still not come. There is more work ahead of me.’ She sighed. ‘I must find what remains of the Machinery. I must shatter it into a million pieces. Only then will Ruin come.’ She placed the instrument to her lips once more, and music filled the garden. After a while she removed the pipe. ‘Ruin is waiting for me.’ She looked directly at Aranfal. Her gaze penetrated him. ‘Do you know who I am?’
‘Mother,’ Aranfal whispered.
The Strategist nodded. ‘I am Mother.’ She looked at Shirkra. ‘You sought to disobey your mother.’
Shirkra shook her head. ‘No. No. I would not have killed him. I think I would not have.’
‘You think, but you do not know. You are not the Mother of Chaos. That is the wrong name for you. You are a child of Chaos, and nothing more.’
Shirkra sighed. ‘I am a child. I am a child. I cannot tell what I will do.’
Mother called her daughter to her side, and made her sit on the rock. ‘You stayed with me during many long years. You are more than Chaos. You are … light.’
Shirkra grinned.
‘Torturer.’
Aranfal snapped to attention. Their eyes met again, and all the world was purple.
‘I am glad you have come.’ Something flickered in her eyes; for a moment, the Watcher saw himself standing before the gates of the See House, long ago. Before Aran Fal became Aranfal.
‘Shirkra,’ Mother said, looking away from the Watcher. ‘When was the last time we played a game? The game?’
Shirkra’s eyes narrowed. ‘You know when, Mother. Long ago. Before the Machinery.’
Mother nodded. ‘It is time for another.’
There was a long silence. Shirkra remained utterly still for a long while, before leaping to her feet.
‘Another game?’ she hissed. ‘We swore we would never play again. And we are busy!’
Mother nodded. She lifted her instrument to her lips again, and played a low, solemn tune. When it was finished, she raised her hand in the air. A ball of dark flame appeared there; Aranfal saw things in the darkness, memories that were not his own.
‘The Dust Queen demands it,’ Mother whispered.
She threw the flame to the ground, and it burst into the forms of three identical women.
They were hard to look upon, unnatural creatures, formed of a substance somewhere between sand and dust, fine and flowing and alive. They were tall and thin, their limbs weird and long, their eyes dark, the skin of their faces in constant flux, grey like the sand from which they had formed. They wore crowns upon their heads, made of glass, though even these seemed to change, flickering with a strange light. Their dresses shimmered in a thousand colours, dancing around them like cat’s tails.
Dust, dust, dust.
As Aranfal looked upon these women, a realisation dawned. These were not three women at all, but one, a singular creature. The Watcher had seen many strange things since the fall of Northern Blown, but here was something new. Here was something beyond even Mother. He was utterly insignificant as he stood before this thing of three parts. He felt compelled by her, madly attracted; he wanted to throw himself into her and become a particle, a speck of dust, flowing with her, within her, and she within him.
Mother coughed, and the women disappeared.
‘She has spoken to me in the night,’ Mother said. ‘She wants to play a game. A last game, before Ruin comes.’
Shirkra made a strange sound. A growl. ‘We cannot trust her. She betrayed us before. She helped Jandell build the Machinery. It is a trick.’
Mother sighed. ‘Her motivations cannot be understood. But we will play.’
Shirkra stomped a foot. ‘Mother! Why must we always dance to her tune? Say no! Tell her we don’t have time for games!’ She bent down, and touched the Strategist’s shoulder. ‘You could resist her, you know. Your powers are growing again.’
Mother smiled. ‘There is no resisting her. Not until Ruin comes. And Ruin will not come, until we find the Machinery. Do you understand?’
Shirkra shook her head. For a moment, she was nothing more than a child, her eyes wide and innocent. ‘What are the prizes?’ she whispered.
‘If we play with her, she says she will take us to the Machinery after the game: no matter who wins.’
‘It is a trick, Mother! She sees some advantage in this. It cannot be otherwise.’
Mother shrugged. ‘Either way, we will play the game. If we refuse, she could simply compel us. And how long would it take us to find the Machinery without her guidance? I do not want to wait on Ruin for a moment longer than is necessary. If we accept, she will take us to whatever remains of the Machinery, and I will bring Ruin. We will accept.’
‘Do you think she is telling the truth?’
Mother nodded. ‘I have known her for longer than almost any of us. We will play the game, and she will show us the Machinery. Why? That, I do not know. Perhaps she wants Ruin to come. Sh
e saw it, before any of us. They were her words, were they not? Ruin will come with the One.’
Aranfal gasped.
‘Ruin will destroy her,’ Shirkra said.
Mother narrowed her eyes in thought. ‘Yes. But I believe she knows that. I think she wants to die. I think she wishes to play a last game, before death comes.’
Shirkra threw herself down, and placed her head in her mother’s lap. ‘Very well,’ she said.
Mother stroked her daughter’s head. ‘I know this is a struggle for you,’ she said. ‘All of this – all that we have done, just to survive.’ She smiled. ‘You know where you have to go, now. You know whom you must seek.’
‘Yes, Mother.’
‘Take him with you,’ the Strategist said, pointing at Aranfal. ‘We should keep him safe. I think he will be useful to us in the game.’ She nodded to herself. ‘Yes. So useful. So safe.’
Shirkra grinned at Aranfal, and the Watcher sighed.
Chapter Three
‘I am dead,’ Brightling said.
She was sitting on the deck of Jandell’s ship, legs crossed, smoking her pipe, and staring out at the bleak grey waters of the world beyond the Plateau. From time to time she picked at a bowl of dates, or sipped at a glass bottle of some red spirit the Operator had procured. He stood beside her, his head bowed.
‘That is a strange thing to say,’ Jandell said. ‘I can see you, sitting there, breathing in smoke, eating and drinking, and talking to me, telling me that you are dead.’
Brightling flicked a date into her dead mouth. ‘Whatever I thought I was is now gone forever.’ She nodded. ‘We all believe we know who we are. We look in the mirror, and think the truth stares back at us. It is a lie, though; it can be changed. I saw it happen in the past. I made it happen. A new creature, in the original shell. Aran Fal becomes Aranfal.’
She sucked on her pipe, and exhaled a dancing circle.
‘But the Machinery saw the real truth. It looked beyond the mirror. It knew who we really were.’
Jandell grunted. ‘Aran Fal and Aranfal. Those names sound almost the same.’
‘The two men are very different.’
The Operator nodded. ‘And what about you? Who is the real Brightling?’
She looked up at him. He had grown younger on their journey, at least in appearance: black hair now fell from his skull; the lines in his face had faded away, and there was a new light in his eyes. But he still wore that terrible cloak, and the faces within glared at her, smiled at her, licked their lips and laughed at her.
‘I was made for the Machinery, and now it is gone.’
‘You were the greatest person on the Plateau.’
Brightling shrugged. The greatest person on the Plateau. She thought of all the things she had done in her efforts to impress the Machinery and wreck the hopes of others. She thought of Canning, of the humiliations she had poured on him. It had all seemed so clear, once: so fair. The Operator loved her; he had told her so himself. She could do anything with his backing. She could ruin her enemies, in their own minds, and in the eye of the Machinery. She could expose them. She could stage plays to display their weaknesses to Overland and Underland alike. That world she believed in was at an end. The Strategist was broken, the Tacticians were broken, and the Machinery was broken. All of it, all of it, all of it, was always going to break.
She shrugged. ‘It didn’t matter. I was supposed to be a Watcher, but I was blind. I blinded myself. I didn’t see what was happening to the Machinery.’
Jandell laughed. ‘That guilt is mine, not yours. I created it. I spoke with it. I turned my eyes from the truth.’
‘The truth of Katrina Paprissi. But that was my error, more than yours, Operator.’
‘She was important to you,’ he said. ‘She was a daughter to you.’
Brightling turned once more to the waters.
**
It had been months since Brightling had joined Jandell on his ship, in the far North of the Plateau. She had never been on one before, yet even she could tell it was no ordinary vessel. When she looked out upon the waves she could see them rolling wildly, slamming and whirling in a great grey storm. But this had no impact upon the black ship, which seemed to float above the water, ignoring all its motions.
In the mornings, she would see him on deck, his cloak blowing in the wind, the faces wailing in their prison.
He had told her, in the beginning, where they were going: to the home of Squatstout, the little creature who had followed Aranfal around the Overland, all that time ago. But he said nothing more about it; he only stared at the ocean.
The ship had no crew.
**
They spent their evenings in the galley, a kind of kitchen below deck. He would speak to her, as she ate the food he conjured from only he knew where. He told her of strange things, of cities long gone and wars among the Operators. He told her of dreams that lasted millennia, of the birth of stars and the fall of civilisations.
When she thought back on these conversations, the memories turned to dust.
‘You are happy now, Operator,’ she said one evening. They sat opposite one another at a rough-hewn table. He watched her, with a smile, as she plucked at fruit and cheese.
‘I am not happy,’ he said after a moment. ‘I am … relieved. A weight has been lifted from me. I no longer hide from the truth.’
‘Ruin will come with the One.’
Jandell closed his eyes.
‘Prophecies are strange things, and this one was spoken by the strangest of all creatures. Who knows the truth of it? Who knows when Ruin will come, and what it will mean to us all? Perhaps she does not know herself.’
‘Who is this woman? Shirkra?’
Jandell smiled. ‘No. Shirkra is nothing but madness: twisted and deformed. The one who made the Promise …’ He stood from the table and walked to a shelf on the wall, where there was a small wooden box. He opened it, lifted something out, and returned to the table, placing the item between them. It was a statue, perhaps as tall as Brightling’s hand, depicting three women: identical creatures, wearing crowns of glass and dresses as white as ivory.
‘The Dust Queen,’ Jandell said. ‘Oldest of us all. I could not have made the Machinery without her. She looked into it, when we had finished, and she saw those words: Ruin will come with the One.’
‘Who is she?’ Brightling asked. She stared at the statue, and for the briefest of moments, the edges of the figures seemed to fall away, as if they were formed of dust. ‘Where is she now?’
‘I do not know.’ Jandell took the statue back to its box, and returned to the table. ‘I wish I did, now that …’ He let the sentence die.
In a swift movement he snatched up a fork and pronged a grape, thrusting it at Brightling, like a child trying to please a favoured aunt. The Watcher plucked it from the blade, and crushed it in her mouth.
‘This food is very old, so old,’ said Jandell.
‘It can’t be. It’s delicious.’
‘It is only as old as the memory itself, which is as fresh to me now as when it was made, back then, so long ago.’
‘The food is a memory?’ She lit her pipe and blew a ring of smoke into the air. The Operator watched it dance. ‘How can I taste a memory?’
Jandell laughed again. ‘Why shouldn’t a memory be real? Memories are what we live for, my family and I. Memories are our power. We can bring a memory back to life; we can twist different ones together, to create something else. It is our … magic. Yes, that is what they called it once.’
He put out his hand, and opened his palm. In the middle of it was a small flame, a flickering tongue of red fire.
‘What is this?’ she whispered.
Jandell laughed. ‘This is nothing. This is just a little trinket.’ He leaned towards her. ‘Touch it.’
Brightling hesitated. ‘It will burn me.’
Jandell shook his head, and she did not hesitate again. She plunged her hand into the fire, and felt only coldness.<
br />
‘What kind of flame is this?’
Jandell smiled. ‘A thing of memory.’
‘You remember a cold fire?’
He shook his head. ‘No. There is more than one memory at work here. My people can mix them together like paints on a palette. And they are not my memories; they are the memories of humanity. There is no Jandell, in truth. I was born in the pool of human memory that you call the Underland, long, long ago. My family and I are creatures of memory.’
As Brightling looked upon the flame, without thinking, she shifted her hands underneath her cloak, and felt it: her mask. An image appeared in her mind’s eye. She was a young Watcher, sitting at her desk. The Operator appeared behind her, and she did not react. It was as if this was simply to be expected. She turned to him, and he handed her something: her mask.
She felt it, now, and she lifted it out. It had taken the form of an old man, his features flashing with anger. Without knowing why she did it, Brightling put the mask on her face, for the first time in an age. Wearing it was painful; she could feel it weighing on her, tugging at the core of her being. She turned to Jandell, and for a moment he looked like his old self, ancient and weak. The flame spluttered in his hand, and suddenly went out. He lifted his other hand to his eyes, and she realised he was in pain.
She snatched the mask from her face and placed it on the table. Jandell was young again, though his palm was still empty. He gave her a weak smile. I have hurt him. The mask has hurt him.
‘What is this thing?’ Brightling whispered. She looked at her mask, which had formed into the face of a young woman, placid and plain.
‘Memories are what we live for,’ Jandell said, ‘because memories are life itself.’ He nodded at the dark mask. ‘That is the opposite of life. It is all that remains of our old enemy: a thing called the Absence. A creature that wished only to destroy memory, and all of memory’s children, and life itself. The masks your Watchers wear are formed of the Old Place, and give them a little sliver of its power: the power of memory. Your mask senses memories, but only to destroy them.’
‘When I have worn it, sometimes … I have felt I could strip out a person’s soul.’
The Strategist Page 3
