by D. P. Prior
He tossed the bag on the floor and moved to another plinth. This time, he touched something hard and round.
Using both hands, he scooped out three spheres of darkened glass. Placing them gently on the floor, he reached back inside and felt around until he had twenty of the things, some black, some bottle-green, and others purple.
His first thought was, what the shog was he going to do with so many of them?—smoke bombs, bangers, sleep globes—but then he clapped eyes on the bag he’d discarded. He picked it up and dropped a globe into it; then another. Odd thing was, there was no clink. He shook the bag, but it was empty. More warily now, he placed another globe inside. This time, with his fingers still on the globe, he felt it touch against the others. When he withdrew his hand, though, the bag was still empty. He gave it a shake. No sound, besides the ruffle of fabric. He upended it, but nothing fell out. When he opened it wide to look, he saw only the emptiness of the Void. Yet, when he put his hand back inside, he could feel the globes.
This had potential.
He folded the bag up and crammed it into his pocket. It took up no more room than Albert’s handkerchief. He pulled it out again, unfolded it, and reached inside.
Still there.
He removed a globe as solid and real as he was. He held it for a moment, considering. What if he could fill this bag with bullets, globes, all manner of equipment he might need in his line of work? Did it have a maximum capacity, or could he just go on filling it? How would he retrieve everything, though? Surely he could only reach so far inside. There had to be more to it; some way it was meant to be used that he’d not yet discovered. Still, even if it could just hold the twenty globes and some extra ammunition, it would come in handy.
He quickly put the rest of the globes inside.
From the other plinths, he withdrew cartridges of bullets, canned food, and a pair of goggles with a pliant band for securing them to the head. When he looked through the lenses, colors sharpened, edges came into focus, and something whirred and clicked as he shifted his field of vision.
No matter how much he placed in the bag, it remained empty. As he folded it and crammed it in his pocket, the thought struck him: no matter what he’d lost back in New Londdyr, with a bag like this, the possibilities were endless. Especially if he got into smuggling.
When he reached the control room, he wasn’t sure whether to be surprised or angry that Albert was already strapped into one of the half-egg chairs, sipping on cognac. Ekyls was in the seat beside him, rigid with wide-eyed fear.
Albert raised his glass. “Left the bottle in your quarters,” he said. “Had to break the seal. Surprised you hadn’t started it.”
“You’ve been in my quarters?” Because if you have, two can play at that game.
Albert took a sip and swilled his glass. “I assumed you were joking earlier. Did I do wrong?”
A long pause settled between them, but finally Shadrak said, “Do it again, and you’re dead.”
“You’re too kind,” Albert said, tipping his head back and draining the glass.
Shadrak bent over the control plinth and swiped symbols across the screen.
The plane ship had a memory of sorts; that much he’d worked out. You only needed to find the right images, and it would retrace previous journeys.
“So, where are you taking us?” Albert said.
Shadrak glanced from him to Ekyls.
The savage was sweating and shaking in his seat. If they didn’t get moving soon, the suspense would probably kill him. Either that, or the stench of shite from his britches would kill everyone else.
“Remember how last time you didn’t get to see a whole lot of Gandaw’s mountain?” Neither did Shadrak. He’d been wounded by the Thanatosian, and Albert had been charged with getting him back to New Londdyr.
“Oh…” Albert said.
The door slid open, and Bird stepped inside, leading Nameless by the hand. The dwarf pivoted his great helm to look around, but he passed no comment. Bird snapped his fingers twice, and two more chairs rose from the floor. Shogger knew the plane ship better than Shadrak did. He strapped Nameless into a seat and lay the axe across his lap. Then he settled himself into the other.
Albert’s look to Shadrak said, “Who the shog is that?”
Shadrak scowled and made the introductions. “Albert, Bird. Bird, Albert.” In response to Albert’s upturned palms, he said, “Bird’s some weirdo Nameless picked up on the road. Don’t worry, you’ll be quite safe. It ain’t like he can change shape and summon swarms of insects or nothing.”
“What?” Albert said, glancing from Bird to Shadrak.
Ekyls let out a low growl and curled his hands into claws.
Nameless started to struggle against his straps. Bird reached over and tried to calm him with a touch on the shoulder.
“What’s this?” Nameless said. “What’s going on?”
“Don’t you remember?” Shadrak said. “Dinner time at the Perfect Peak.”
“Must’ve slipped my mind,” Nameless said. “But what’s with the straps? Did I do something wrong?”
“Ton of things,” Shadrak said. “None of them recent.”
He swiped the symbols toward the bottom of the screen, and the air grew heavy. The chamber distorted and then started to ghost out of view.
Ekyls let out a wild and howling scream.
Albert chuckled.
“Oh, my bristling—” Nameless started, but his words were cut off by a violent heave and a gurgling rush. He coughed and spat and cursed. “My helm! I’ve puked in my shogging helm!”
GAUNTLETS, ARMOR, SHIELD
Nameless was still spluttering and coughing when they arrived. The noise was a sodding distraction. More than that, it was cudgel up the arse.
Shadrak swiped a couple of symbols till the screen flickered and revealed what was outside. Darkness, mostly. A huge sea of it. The plane ship must have set down in the shadow of the Perfect Peak.
He turned at the sound of restraints snapping open.
Albert was first out of his seat, which sank back down through the floor.
“That sand?” the poisoner said, squinting at the screen.
“Bone,” Bird said.
Ekyls growled and thrashed against his restraints. He was red with strain as his growling turned into a shrill scream, and he began to hammer the seat with his fists.
Shadrak would have left him to it, till steam came out his ears and his head exploded. That would’ve been worth seeing, but then Albert went and ruined it, going to Ekyls’ aid like a doting mother.
Bird released himself then helped Nameless up.
The dwarf tipped his head back then flung it forward, sending a torrent of vomit through the eye-slit of his helm.
Shadrak stiffened. He shogging hated puke. Moments later, beads of liquid silver began to emerge from the floor. They oozed over the mess Nameless had made, and when they dispersed, the vomit was gone.
“Now, that’s the kind of magic I could learn to live with,” Nameless said. “Could’ve used it back home after a night at Bucknard’s Beer Hall. One thing I can’t stand is a puke-stained floor. Especially when it’s my own puke. Even my burps stink like the Demiurgos’s farts since I’ve been tube-fed. Still, can’t complain. It’s not half as bad as the flatulence I got from those raw egg protein drinks Rugbeard used to sell before he left Arx Gravis.” He dipped his head for a moment in silence, remembering.
Shadrak scoffed quietly to himself. Way he saw it, Rugbeard had been a drunken sot. Probably would’ve survived the silver sphere’s death-ray, if all the alcohol in his blood hadn’t ignited.
“All I need now is a bucket of water,” Nameless said. “To fill this shogging helm with and swill it around.”
“Here, let me,” Bird said. He placed a palm over the eye-slit. Two of his fingers slid free of his hand and slithered inside the great helm. “They’ll eat what’s left.”
Shadrak swallowed down bile. He could have sworn it was Bird’s tw
o fingers that had broken free, but when he looked again, they were all still there.
Bird caught him staring and gave a tight smile.
“What do I do with them once they’ve finished?” Nameless said.
“I expect they’ll crawl in your ears and set to work on your brain,” Albert said. “Though, that won’t keep them sated for long.”
“Laddie,” Nameless said, “you’re not only a wit, but you’ve got guts joshing with me like that.”
Albert took a wary step back.
“A lot of guts.” Nameless jabbed Albert in the belly with the haft of his axe.
“Hilarious,” Albert said, and for a split second, Shadrak saw that calculating look flit across his face. Probably, no one else noticed. Albert was too good for that. The poisoner turned on his most infectious smile and gave a good-natured laugh.
Nameless laughed along with him, a deep belly rumble that was suddenly cut off when the slug-things oozed back out of the eye-slit and plopped to the floor like bloated sausages.
Ekyls hissed and raised his hatchet.
Albert whipped out his handkerchief and covered his mouth.
Bird scooped them up and rolled them about in his hands until they vanished.
“Finished?” Shadrak said.
Bird nodded.
“Good, then let’s go.”
***
A small man was waiting for them outside the plane ship. Small, but no smaller than Shadrak—or Bird, for that matter. If Shadrak didn’t know better, he’d have said it was a conspiracy.
What struck him about the man wasn’t so much his glistening black hair, perfectly cropped and not a strand out of place; nor was it his pressed gray tunic and trousers. It was the way he betrayed no surprise at them stepping out of thin air.
Albert hovered at Shadrak’s shoulder, breath thick with garlic and onions. Ekyls lurked behind him, muscles so bunched it looked like he had no neck. Nameless was fussing with his helm, slapping it on the side to make sure Bird’s slug things hadn’t left anything inside.
Bird glided across the bleached sand of the Dead Lands, cloak of feathers ruffled by the skirling wind. He clasped hands with the little man, and Shadrak didn’t miss the subtle pressing of Bird’s thumb to the other’s knuckle, the reciprocal tap of the little man’s pinky. Secret handshakes were second nature to a Sicarii, but neither of them struck him as an assassin.
“See that?” Albert whispered.
“Yeah, I saw it.” Shadrak fanned the air in front of his face.
Albert took the hint and stepped back, breathing into his cupped palm and sniffing at his own breath.
Nameless trudged past, boots leaving deep imprints in the white dust. “Mephesch,” he said to the little man. “You were expecting us?”
“Not exactly. The Perfect Peak got overexcited at the approach of the plane ship. Flashing lights, sirens, that sort of thing. His Grandiosity was not best pleased. Right in the middle of calibrating a portal, he was, when the alarms went off. Stood up too quickly. Banged his head on the underside of the console. No hair to buffer it, either.”
“Oh dear,” Nameless said. “Shame. Wish I’d been there to see it. So, Mephesch, Bird here tells me it’s time. I take it you’re in on this plan to destroy the black axe?”
Mephesch nodded. “Lore has been procured from the homunculi still loyal to the Demiurgos, but that does not mean it will be easy.”
“Nothing worth doing ever is,” Nameless said.
“And these others are?”
“The dandy fellow in the suit’s Albert, and the angry savage is…” Nameless looked to Shadrak. “I had it earlier. Help me out, laddie.”
“Ekyls,” Shadrak said. “And I’m—”
“I know who you are.” Mephesch’s eyes were shiny black pebbles, but pinpricks of silver light danced across their surface. “But do you know?” He flicked a look at Bird, who shook his head.
“Homunculi!” Nameless said, slapping Mephesch on the back. “Last time I saw so many together was in Gehenna. Shifty shoggers, eh, Shadrak? Always telling you one thing then doing another.”
Did he know? Did he know what the Archon had told Shadrak to do?
Nameless clamped a hand on his shoulder, squeezed so hard Shadrak had to grit his teeth to stop himself stabbing the dwarf on instinct.
“Present company excepted,” Nameless said. “Come on, lads. Who’s for a tour of the inside of Sektis Gandaw’s mountain?”
Mephesch guided them to a large black disk that stood out from the sand. Flecks of green glinted on its surface.
Albert whistled. “That’s enough scarolite to buy a mansion in New Londdyr.”
“Step on, if you please,” Mephesch said.
Ekyls hissed and pulled back.
“Don’t be such a baby,” Albert said.
The savage’s eyes flashed dangerously, but he relented under Albert’s expectant stare.
Mephesch tapped a vambrace on his forearm. The disk shuddered, then sunk below the ground.
Shadrak bit down the queasiness in his stomach. He tugged his cloak tight and retreated into the darkness of the hood. His shoulder throbbed, as if it remembered the impact of the Thanatosian’s bullet.
Nameless was humming a jaunty tune from within his great helm. Bird looked equally at home. Ekyls backed up against Albert, eyes wide, fingers gripping his hatchet so hard, the knuckles looked like nubs of protruding bone.
After dropping through blackness for a minute or so, the disk steadied, then sped off horizontally. Blue light streaked past. There was a whirr and a click as the streaks separated out into spaced dashes, and then they started to climb.
An aperture opened above them. The disk brought them through it and settled into the floor of a vast chamber.
Banks of screens, like those in the plane ship, only much bigger, wound their way up to the ceiling in ever-decreasing circles. Scarolite walls tapered to a point high above, forming the inside of an enormous cone.
Mephesch led them across the circular floor space to a hairline rectangle in the wall, which slid open as they drew near.
The room beyond was a colossal cube of scarolite. On the far side stood an arch made from blocks of the same dark ore.
Aristodeus was on his back beneath it, staring up at the keystone through tinted goggles. Teams of homunculi dashed about all over the place.
“Shit!” Aristodeus cried, as blue sparks showered from the underside of the arch.
The homunculi all froze. They exchanged looks that were hard to read. Worry, maybe. Or perhaps mirth.
The spark shower reversed its course and disappeared back into the keystone.
“Eureka!” Aristodeus sat up and slapped the block to his right. It answered with a low hum and a soft amber pulse. “How’s it look your end, Jezeel?” he asked a perfectly bald homunculus—a woman that Shadrak at first took to be naked and silver-skinned, till he looked again and realized she was wearing a very tight-fitting outfit of some shiny material.
“Calibrated, Techno… sir,” she replied.
“Aristodeus,” the philosopher said. “How many times?” He threw up his hands, shook his head, then reached inside his toga.
“Signal’s good from Londdyr,” a homunculus said, holding up a sleek gray slate, as if that proved his point. He had a beard so red it looked like his throat had been ripped out.
Aristodeus popped a pipe in his mouth, fished about in his pocket, and produced a box of matches. “Good,” he mumbled about the stem. “Then we’re ready to…”
He spun round and glared at Mephesch. His eyes widened as they took in Shadrak, Albert, and Ekyls, before coming to rest on Nameless.
Aristodeus broke his match as he struck it against the side of the box. “Can’t you see I’m busy?” The second match took. He lit his pipe and drew on it till he had it smoldering.
“The black axe, laddie,” Nameless said. “Bird here told me it’s time.”
Aristodeus glanced from Mephesch to Bird to S
hadrak. “You brought the plane ship?”
Mephesch nodded. Bird cocked his head. Shadrak narrowed his eyes.
“Just don’t forget, I’m sticking my neck out for you,” Aristodeus said to Nameless. “There are some very powerful people who don’t see your worth as I do.”
You don’t say, Shadrak thought.
“Mephesch,” Aristodeus said, “I can’t deal with this right now. I promised the Ipsissimus I’d have the Urddynoor link up and running yesterday. Take them back through to the control room. Offer them a drink or something: champagne or wine. A snifter of cognac.”
“Cognac?” Albert said, almost beating Mephesch out of the room.
Nameless and Bird followed, but when Shadrak reached the door, it slid shut in his face. Brilliant light flashed, and he threw up a hand to cover his eyes.
“Not now!” Aristodeus yelled, jabbing his pipe at the vortex of white fire in front of the door. He scrunched his eyes shut and sucked in a sharp breath. When he opened them again, his face was taut with frustration. “Why does no one understand the concept of being too busy?”
The Archon coalesced into view, flames suppurating from the cowl of his robe. “So, now you have your plane ship.”
“I do.” Aristodeus chewed on his pipe. He wagged two fingers at the homunculi standing around gawping, and they immediately got back to checking the arch and tapping away at their rectangular slates.
“You have already taken too many chances, philosopher,” the Archon said. “You must desist.”
“But this could free Nameless from the black axe,” Aristodeus said. “We could remove the helm, bring him back onside.”
The Archon drifted around the room, the hem of his robe a few inches above the floor. “You are too personally invested, Aristodeus. My brother’s deceptions held sway long before you fell prey to them. They have always been there, behind Sektis Gandaw, behind the Lich Lord, behind the black axe and the butchery at Arx Gravis.”
“And he must be stopped,” Aristodeus said. “Before the next evil arises in response to his beguilement.”
