Eventually Fisk and Livia emerged from the chamber where they’d taken their rest. Both seemed wan, dishevelled. Whatever labours of love and grief had passed between them in the night, they had left them nearly washed away and empty.
With very little preamble or discussion other than checking our Hellfire weapons, we followed Principia out of the arbour and through passageways back onto the slope about the valley where we had made landfall. In the mist-wreathed bay, the Typhon sat, guns shrouded. Figures moved there and for a long while Fisk stared at the warded box containing the daemon hand. His face was awful. In him anger, remorse, and a desperate fate warred.
On the other hand, Carnelia was bright and cheery, bouncing all about and asking questions of Principia.
‘Is your cloak made from dragons?’ Carnelia asked.
Prinicipia said, ‘We honour the creatures by using all they have to offer. Their scales and teeth and claws. The webbing of their wings. Their bones. Their muscles and sinew. From them we ingest their energy and grow strong.’
‘But your cloak,’ Carnelia said. ‘It’s very nice. It’s what? Dragon skin?’
Lina snorted. Even Sapientia smiled.
‘Yes, the webbing from wings,’ Principia said.
‘And your necklace. It’s very lovely,’ Carnelia said.
‘My thanks, little one,’ Principia said.
Around us, other vaettir moved, keeping us within their circle. Some of them seemed to be smiling, either from the incipient completion of the hunt that had begun the day before, or Carnelia’s questions, I couldn’t tell.
‘You wouldn’t have an extra cloak, would you?’ Carnelia asked. ‘I quite fancy one.’
Principia stopped. We had been following an ancient trail worn smooth into the rock of the mountainside by thousands of years of vaettir footsteps. The rift had drawn closer and at this height we could see more of Terra Umbra, what wasn’t cloaked in smoke and shadowed by clouds. It was a still day, as if the rift waited for us. Instead of the vaporous spew forming a wall as it was pushed downwind by the easterly sea breeze, it rose straight up to the heavens to pool there in a whorl of slowly turning clouds. The rift itself pulsed in shifting colours, as if expecting us.
The vaettir unhooked the intricately wrought bone brooch at her throat and unslung the cloak, passing it to Carnelia. Carnelia thanked Principia, gravely, and bowed. Then she brightened once more.
‘I have just the thing!’ Carnelia cried. From her small rucksack, she withdrew some scissors and busily began cutting at the dragon cloak. We took this opportunity to drink water and rest. In moments Carnelia had risen from the rock face where she worked and stood, twirling the cloak onto her back. ‘How do I look?’ she asked.
Fisk turned away, brooding. Livia, though, smiled and said, ‘You look lovely, sissy.’
‘Thank you, Livia,’ Carnelia said. And then, impishly, she dashed forward and gave her sister a kiss. ‘I love you.’
Livia laughed, holding her sister out at arm’s length, and looking at her with a puzzled expression. ‘What has got into you?’
‘I am just happy!’ Carnelia said. ‘I can’t explain it.’
‘Well, let us focus on the task at hand,’ Livia said. ‘Now is not the time for such exuberance.’
Carnelia bobbed her head up and down in acknowledgement. ‘Of course, sissy. I can see I’m irritating—’ She mouthed you-know-who and pointed at Fisk. Livia frowned, shaking her head.
But Carnelia had moved on. To Principia, she said, ‘Do you make all your own jewellery?’
By midday, we had risen high. Behind us, deep green forest climbed the mountains of Terra Umbra. We stood on a cliff above a wide stone canyon, as large as the Plaza del Monstruo in Passasuego or even the whole of the Breadbasket village. At its centre, the heart of the Emryal Rift.
‘The cloak of vapour is not as thick today, so we must be wary,’ Principia said. ‘I can sense at least one of the scaled ones moving below. It is possible there are more.’ She inclined her head, sensing. ‘This close to the Gullet, energies become confused.’ She grinned. ‘It is very exciting. The newly torn one will be outraged and want to exact revenge.’
‘They’re that intelligent?’ Lina asked, resting her carbine over her shoulder and cocking her hip. It was such a pose of the Hardscrabble, I felt an intense longing to be back home.
‘Of course,’ Principia said. ‘Why would we waste our energies with anything less?’
‘Good point,’ Sapientia said. ‘There’s something to be said for that.’
‘Let’s not get to moralising,’ Carnelia said. ‘That’s my least favourite thing, ever.’
We threaded our way down a switchback trail, doing our best to keep our feet. On the canyon floor, the vaettir spread out. Principia gestured to one of her group who wore a bow, and the archer dashed off across the canyon floor and up the other side, scurrying up and out to disappear in the undergrowth there. Another took a position halfway up the switchback we had descended.
Off in the distance, muffled by rift-smoke, a screech came. Angry.
‘The torn one. It knows we’re here,’ Principia said.
‘You’ve called them torn before,’ Carnelia said to the vaettir, whom it seemed she considered a bosom friend from her tone. ‘Why?’
‘Once their wings are cut, they cannot fly,’ Principia said.
‘Would they be more challenging to hunt if they flew?’ Carnelia said.
A puzzled expression crossed Principia’s wide, noble features. Illva and Ellva had seemed very distant. Principia’s immediacy was refreshing. I had to wonder if it was the constant, eternal struggle here between vaettir and dragon. Maybe that was why the vaettir in the Hardscrabble were so vicious and mischievous. They had no opponent to constantly test their worth and, through conflict, calm and centre them. As if that was a fundamental flaw in their character – the need for conflict.
In that, they are not so different from man.
Principia said, ‘It is part of the hunt. They must be torn, so they can then be harvested.’
The walls of the canyon were wet and gleaming, and a palpable thrumming travelled through the stone of the floor up my legs to my torso. The rift light from the Gullet came in pulses. The screech of the dragon grew closer.
Fisk, his voice strained, said, ‘Come on. Closer.’
He pressed forward, into the heart of the canyon, nearer the rift.
A whistling came from overhead – an arrow – and it pinged off something behind us. We turned, startled. Panting, pluming great gouts of hot breath, the great wyrm gripped the side of the canyon wall, coiled. Another whizzing, and an arrow pinged off the rock face where the dragon had just been.
Now, in the light of day and the rift, the dragon’s movements could be seen. It flowed over rocks as a snake might flat land. It travelled as mercury, flashing iridescent and blue. It was down the canyon face in a flash and moving toward us.
Principia’s warriors moved into action. A swordsman leapt skyward, a full thirty feet in the air as the dragon passed where he had just stood. Another vaulted into a low arc, passing over the creature’s shoulders and lashing out with her sword; it echoed with a bright ringing clang! but did no visible damage.
The dragon whipped about and its gaze settled on us. It opened its great maw and for a moment I was overwhelmed by the size of the opening and the concentric rings of teeth all pointing down its throat. Gullet indeed.
Fisk had his carbine up and firing, billowing Hellfire. Levering round after round.
The dragon, suddenly experiencing disorienting pain and overwhelming noise, gave a startled grunt and refocused on Fisk. Its neck curled in on itself, it crouched low, ready to strike. It dashed forward. But Fisk moved, blindingly fast, though not of his own volition. Gynth had leapt up, snagging his arm, and pulled him out of the way of the dragon’s strike.
With its attention on Fisk, it did not witness Livia, Sumner, and Sapientia fanning out to its flanks. They let loose a b
arrage of Hellfire that surprised even me. I had both my six-guns out and firing.
The dragon wheeled about, like a maddened dog looking for its tormentors. Round upon round of Hellfire filled the air with brimstone and despair. The vaettir, overcome by the noise, had paused. But now, seeing their prey’s discomposure, they leapt into action.
One of the vaettir, wielding a poleaxe, whipped it across the dragon’s face, splitting the scales there and penetrating the skin, opening up a great gash that exposed the muscles and flesh beneath. Blood came in a heavy flow, spattering everything as the creature turned in an arc.
Feathered fletching sprouted like blossoms on the dragon’s back and haunch, and it cast its head up to screech and bellow at the sky.
That was a mistake.
Principia, her greatsword in both hands, launched herself forward, catching the great beast on his neck with her blade, cutting deep. She passed through the reach of the wyrm’s grasping claws, twisting her body so that it turned in the air and came down on her feet, ten paces beyond, unscratched. She lanced forward once more, moving blindingly fast and, leaping, left her sword quivering deep in the body of the dragon as she passed.
But that was not enough. The beast had strength still. We poured the rest of our Hellfire on it, and more arrows found their homes in its flesh. It became slower. Blood and drool spilled from its open mouth. It pawed feebly at us.
Finally, Principia leapt onto its back, her hand finding the hilt of her sword. It flashed out and fell again, once, twice. The dragon lay still.
‘Holy Hell,’ Sumner whispered. ‘I have never seen the like.’ He was a normally taciturn man and hoarded his words. This was exceptional.
‘Yes,’ Sapientia said. ‘And I doubt you ever see its like again.’
Principia instructed her warriors to begin breaking down the dragon, harvesting all of it, every part. One dashed into the forest above the canyon and returned with massive leaves with which they wrapped the heart and tongue and liver of the beast. Other vaettir made short work taking the fabric of the wings and used them to bind other bits. For any man or dvergar, most of the cuts and cutlets they removed from the dragon would be too much to lift – but for vaettir, it was a simple chore.
A silent joy fell upon them and they worked, all humming a tune that wove in and out, each vaettir with a different melody, forming a musical braided chain. It was a celebration, it was an exultation. For this breathless hanging moment, all of creation was focused here, on this fallen creature, on this movement of knife and flesh. Tomorrow they would rise again and find a wyrm and begin a hunt, as they were meant to do. But today, they found happiness. To rise and fall and rise again.
Our party watched in silence. Gynth stood silently, torn between worlds. It was a dreamlike reverie, the vaettir’s. The Emryal Rift beyond, pulsing and churning, casting off smoke.
Sapientia turned to Fisk. ‘We have come to the end, then.’
Fisk looked at her. He seemed smaller now. With every league, every mile, every step – for him, a diminution. The world had grown large and he had not grown to meet it. Livia took his hand.
‘I will not argue with you any more, my love,’ Livia said. There was pain in her tone and the words came with the thickness of great emotion held in check. ‘This is your fate,’ she said. ‘You were marked by Beleth and bore the Crimson Man and now it has come to this. The last reckoning.’ She came close and pressed her hands to either side of his face and kissed him through the tears that were now beginning to flow. ‘But come back to me, if at all possible. Take it into the rift and be done with it and return to me.’
‘You know that is not possible,’ Fisk said. ‘Once he rides me, he will not stop until he rides the world.’
‘You don’t know that!’ Livia’s voice cracked. ‘You don’t know!’
‘I do, my love,’ he said. ‘Remember me.’
There was a moment then when it seemed Livia would falter, that she would fall to her knees and weep uncontrollably, tear her hair and clothes. But she did not. She squared her shoulders like some beast of burden resigned to a yoke being settled upon its back. She wiped her eyes and then kissed him once more.
‘Go to your fate, then, my love,’ she said. ‘I will bear witness. We shall all bear witness.’
The vaettir pulled away, some of them already moving up and out of the canyon. Fisk fell to his knees in front of the warded box that contained the daemon hand. The hand of Isabelle Diegal, the daughter of a king who destroyed cities.
From around his neck, he withdrew a key on a chain and unlocked the box. He looked at it for a long while, his face abject and devoid of hope.
He opened the box.
It was empty.
THIRTY
I’ve Always Had A Terrible Habit
Of Getting Into Things I Shouldn’t Have.
LIVIA GAVE A low cry. Fisk looked like an axe-struck shoal auroch led to slaughter on Ia Terminalia, drunk and wreathed in laurels. He searched the box as if the hand was hidden there, and he simply could not perceive it.
From behind him, Carnelia said, ‘I’ve always had a terrible habit of getting into things I shouldn’t have.’
Fisk rose to his feet in a flash, turning. Livia lurched forward, as if she couldn’t operate her body properly.
Carnelia stood holding the daemon hand by its silver chain. It turned slowly on its hasp. Her face was flushed, but a sly grin was plainly visible. Her new dragoncloak billowed out around her, and her other hand rested on the jian given to her by Sun Huáng. Behind her, the rift shifted colour to a deep crimson. Vapours poured off it, some smelling of elements and spices from unknown and impenetrable worlds.
‘Sissy, what are you—’ Livia began.
‘No!’ Carnelia said. ‘Don’t even start. All this idiotic talk of fate and destiny. It would’ve driven Tata mad. It almost did me.’
‘Carnelia,’ Fisk said, taking a step forward. ‘Stop. You don’t know what you’re doing.’
‘Yes, I do,’ Carnelia said, raising the daemon hand. ‘I’m choosing my own fate. And I’m choosing yours.’
The chain slipped over her head and the hand fell to end up on her chest. From the rift, light and energy poured out. A gleeful and malicious grin spread like oil upon the surface of her face. Her eyes became dark and smoke began to pour from them, deep holes to some inner furnace. Shimmering air all around her, warping. Above her a crown appeared, distending, conjured from the air and fashioned of noxious fumes. In her left hand, a seething amalgam of darkness. A sceptre.
Her right hand fell on the hilt of her sword. She drew it with a slow motion. It seemed two blades at once – the jian and a blade of smoke. She raised it on high. In my mind’s eye, I recalled Agrippina smiting the earth of the caldera and promising to drown the world in blood. That time was nigh.
But then, the Crimson Man paused, and he looked at his hand, the one that held real steel, and not just phantoms and conjured smoke.
The crown lost cohesion. The sceptre disappeared.
For an instant, Carnelia stood before us, once more.
‘Oh, fucking Hell,’ she said.
She turned and strode into the mouth of the rift.
A percussive wave of air pushed us backward from the Emryal Rift, rocking us on our feet. Streamers of light issued from the opening as we backed away, toward the canyon wall. The cut between worlds – all worlds, maybe – throbbed, swelling. Its whorls and substance turned like some terrible whirlwind, shifting around an inconstant axis, its centre fluctuating. Vaettir screeched. Howls came down from the mountains around us – the dragons sensing some great change come upon their world.
It was a gargantuan shadowplay, swelling. In the swirling mists stood a crimson figure with a crown and sword, radiating malice and outraged impotence. Facing him, a small figure, but growing larger, rising up to meet him.
His sword fell, and the glee with which he swung was hideous to behold. Here was a thing of infinite cruelty, here was a thing o
f titanic desires. And now, it was caught in the throat of the world and there was but one way to vent its rage.
Carnelia.
She moved, dancing. Her motions silken. And it was hard to discern that they were even motions at all, as within the rift there was no real space. It was the nexus of all spaces, and indifferent to physical form. It was as if what occurred there, in the cut, my mind perceived somehow and made it understandable, comprehensible. Because the horrors contained within would consume the world. Snuff out my conscience like a candle.
But Carnelia! She moved. With every blow the Crimson Man made, she flowed around it. It was joyous, it was merry – and in some ways, it was more vaettir than vaettir, more graceful and centred than I could imagine Sun Huáng ever being. She yielded to every offence, recursive and rebounding.
They swelled and grew. Shadows moving back and forth. The crimson rift light turned white and blinding.
And then it was gone.
We stood blinking in the smoking ruins of the canyon, a great smear of dragon’s blood before us. Wind coursed through the canyon, dragging away the smoke and revealing the crumbling rock wall beyond that had once been occluded by vapours. And beyond, the mountains rising up into the sky. A wedge of blue there, above. The jagged trees outlining a ridge. Snarls of deadfall, ferns and brush. Snow on the peaks.
Infernal Machines Page 33
