Banner of Souls

by Liz Williams

Earth

  Yskatarina, gasping, was afloat in green phosphorescent water. Her head pounded and throbbed like a thunder-cloud. She thrashed and sank, kicked out, rose again. She had never been in deep water before. Through the mutable light she glimpsed a drifting shape, a white, terrified face: a woman, perhaps her own age or a little older. Yskatarina cried out to the woman.

  “Help me!”

  The woman’s mouth moved as Yskatarina herself spoke, but there was nothing more than an echo, and it was then that Yskatarina realized it was her own reflection.

  “We are in a room,” the Animus said, soaring overhead. He swooped, Yskatarina lunged and was lifted to the top of a flight of steps. Water lapped gently against her feet with the rock of the machine.

  The mirror filled one wall. Yskatarina’s face appeared spectral, a glistening green. The Animus flew in a slow circle. The room was vast, hangar-sized, paneled with rotten wood. Far above there was a cold crystal glitter as a chandelier caught the sea-light. But the water, though chill, had not been icy, and a warm breath of air made its way through the cracks in the splintered wood.

  “Where are we?”

  “I do not know,” the Animus said. “We fell a long way, down a chute—look. You can see the end of it up there.” As it folded its wings, Yskatarina saw that one edge was ragged, like a fraying sleeve. Droplets of black ichor starred the boards beneath their feet.

  “You’re hurt!” she said, filled with dismay.

  “It does not matter. Look there.”

  Yskatarina looked up and noticed a ragged hole in the paneled wall.

  “There is also a doorway,” the Animus said.

  The door itself had long gone. Now there was only a second hole in the wall.

  “Don’t leave me!” Yskatarina swallowed a lump of panic.

  “Do not worry.” The Animus’s eyes were luminous in the darkness. “There are stairs at the end.”

  Yskatarina clutched the Animus and was taken forward over chill, oily water. The place smelled stagnant, salty, and rank with weed and mold. Soon, however, her feet knocked against something solid.

  “I will hoist you up,” the Animus said. “You must feel your way up the stairs. There is a rail to your left. Hold on to it.”

  Groping, Yskatarina found the rail and the first step. She made her way shakily upward. The Animus followed. There was the sound of clicking talons on wet wood.

  “Be careful. Many of these steps are fragile.”

  Yskatarina kept close to the rail and climbed.

  “There is a door at the top,” the Animus said.

  “Is it closed?”

  “Yes. Perhaps locked, but I see no bolt.”

  The night-sight of those lamp-eyes must be sharp. To Yskatarina, even accustomed as she was to the gloom of Nightshade, the blackness was complete. She reached out and touched a door. She could find no handle, no lock. The door was firmly shut.

  “Wait,” the Animus said. “I will try.”

  Yskatarina felt the Animus’s body push past her, then a thud.

  “Are you breaking down the door?”

  “I am trying to do so,” the Animus said after a pause. Again the thud, the sound of rending wood, and a gleam of light.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I am unharmed. The door is open.”

  Yskatarina’s hand was taken in the Animus’s spiny grasp and it pulled her through into a passageway. She stood on thick carpet, patterned with crimson dragons. Mirrors lined the walls, reflecting ornamental sconces. Most were unlit, but two still burned with an antique glow. The discrepancy between this interior and the alien outside of the great shell was alarming, but now that she looked more closely, there were signs of connection. Thin struts of bone ran along the edges of some of the panels, fanning out to form skeletal networks, faint as the marks left by weed torn from the face of a rock.

  When she examined these patterns, Yskatarina could see that some of them were translucent; a white liquid fell and rose within. It was as though organic technology had grown across the surfaces of this older vessel, incorporating the structural integument of the ship into itself. Yskatarina’s head ached anew, the thought struck her that perhaps this was no more than some lingering dream, experienced on the verges of death. The Eldritch Realm seemed suddenly very close. She shivered.

  “If the lights are on, perhaps there is someone around,” Yskatarina whispered.

  “Perhaps. But perhaps not—I would have thought that Prince Cataract would keep to less damaged levels, if there are such.” The Animus paused. “And I have heard of things.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Ghosts in the fortress, in the ruins... They spoke of specter-ships, deserted by passengers and crew. Plague boats, crewed by the rotting dead. Asylum craft, where the long-ago results of failed experiments were pushed out to sea, to drift over the horizon and away from guilt and shame.”

  Yskatarina did not know what to say. She had never heard the Animus speak in this manner and it alarmed her.

  “You did not tell me this,” she said. “You should have done so. If there is any trace of haunt-tech around the ruin—”

  The Animus blinked his black-lens gaze and the impression was dispelled. “We need to find a safer place,” he said.

  They made their way through silent passageways, mirror-lined, lit erratically by shattered sconces. Carpets were thick and moldering beneath their feet, emitting wisps and puffs of decay. The heads of carved dragons reared out from the walls, the gilding upon their teeth chipped and faded, their eyes wild and blank.

  “This is nothing more than a wreck,” Yskatarina murmured. “Is this the Dragon-King itself, or some other vessel that it has absorbed?”

  The Animus’s eyes gleamed in the dim light. “Something is still generating power. This is too old a ship to be running under its own; it must be drawing from the great machine.” The Animus broke off, and skittered down the corridor.

  More doors led into a further maze of passages. Here were signs, with arrows, clearly leading somewhere, but Yskatarina did not recognize the language.

  “What alphabet is that? Do you know?”

  “I do not.”

  They proceeded up a staircase, with a banister of ebony. Traces of varnish still remained beneath a coating of mildew. At the top of the curve of the stair stood another mirror: green with age, filmed with salt stain. Yskatarina watched herself and the Animus climb the stair. Her own face was still ghost-pale; her hair, drying now, fanned out like dark fire.

  The mirrored walls were deceptive. She kept glimpsing figures in the shadows, which darted away and proved to be herself or the Animus, their images flickering in the roll of the ship. But sometimes, she was not so certain. She felt eyes upon her that were not her own mirror-self, heard whispers.

  “Animus? I’m sure there’s someone close by.”

  “I see no one.”

  They reached the top of the staircase. Yskatarina looked back. The hallway below was empty.

  “Where now?”

  “If we can reach the deck,” the Animus said, “maybe we can find out where we are.”

  “If it’s safe,” Yskatarina said. The ship seemed huge, yet it plunged and rolled nonetheless. She wondered what kind of sea the Dragon-King sailed through, what kind of storm.

  “We will soon see,” the Animus replied.

  More passages lay ahead, in better repair than those below. At the end of the final corridor was a door. Yskatarina and the Animus looked at each other.

  “There are no signs,” the Animus said.

  “Open it.” Yskatarina wondered for a disquieting moment if it might lead beyond the ship. Would they open the door to find the howling, whirling interior of the Dragon-King? Or empty sea?

  The Animus stepped forward and tugged at the door. It swept open at once, to a blast of humidity and heat. Yskatarina gasped, welcoming the sudden warmth after the dankness of the lower levels. Within, all was wan and green, like the growing-cha
mber in the Grandmothers’ house.

  “Plants!” the Animus said. They went through. Yskatarina saw peppers on the vine, the sour blue pods called k’oan, the tendrils of oquii, and others that she did not recognize. The air smelled wet; a thick slime filled long tanks.

  “Hydroponics,” Yskatarina murmured. “These have been tended recently.” She touched a pruned spear of growth; picked up a pair of small black scissors in the shape of a crane’s beak. “But this is huge,” she added in wonder. “There are whole crops of vegetables.” Corn waved gently before her, as if in an unfelt breeze. Rows of outsized pak choi, each leaf a meter or more in diameter, formed a thick forest around the edges of the room. She looked down at the floor, which seemed to be formed of a semitransparent plastic, to see the faint green fronds of rice below.

  “Enough to feed a shipload.” Yskatarina glanced about her, seeking faces in the greenery. “Then where are they? Are they watching? We have seen no one.”

  “I do not know the answers to any of these questions.”

  Yskatarina pushed aside the veils of vines. At the far end of the chamber, she found a series of pods. The place reminded her of Elaki’s laboratory. It was not a happy memory. She half-expected Isti to scuttle out from behind the fronds.

  “Growing-skins.” The Animus leaned forward and sniffed. Yskatarina saw the lenses flutter. “This is nothing human.”

  Yskatarina stared at the skins, which pulsed with a veiny beat. “Then what’s in there?”

  Gently, the Animus prodded one of the skins. Something prickled against the surface from within.

  “It smells of insect. This one—” The Animus’s mandibles twitched. “Perhaps reptile.”

  “It’s more than two feet long.” Yskatarina took a careful step back. “I suggest we leave well enough alone. Let’s see what else we can find.”

  She pushed the door at the far end of the chamber, but it was locked. Yskatarina and the Animus pulled and tugged, to no avail.

  “We’ll have to go out the way we came in,” the Animus said. They returned to the other end of the chamber. But here, too, the door was tightly closed.

  “This was not locked when we entered,” the Animus said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I am certain.” The Animus pulled harder. He emitted a thin whistle of concern. “Perhaps the ceiling has panels? Or the floor?”

  They searched the chamber, but there was no sign of any access: no hatches or entryways. The chamber was entirely sealed. At last Yskatarina and the Animus stood in the center of the room, surrounded by the drip of water and the smell of growth.

  There was a rustle from the far end of the chamber, a soft splitting sound like a ripe fruit falling to the floor.

  “What was that?”

  Together they walked toward the source of the sound. It came again, a wet, heavy noise. When they reached the end of the chamber, Yskatarina saw that two of the growing-skins were dangling limp and empty on the growing-racks. There was a pungent organic odor that made her eyes water.

  “Something has hatched,” the Animus said softly.

  “A child?”

  “A child would not be able to move from the skin. Someone would have to be here to help it.” The Animus paused. “That is, if it was a human child.”

  Greenery rustled from two separate directions. In the midst of the growing corn, something hissed and was answered.

  “Where are they?” Yskatarina whispered.

  “I can smell them,” the Animus said. His mandibles fluttered once more. “They are half-human.”

  Yskatarina eyed it askance. “What’s the other half?”

  “I cannot tell. But it smells of predator.”

  “They are only just out of the skin. How dangerous can they be?”

  Something darted through the greenery at Yskatarina’s feet. She glimpsed a small, pale shape.

  “It’s probably frightened.”

  “Don’t go near it.” The Animus’s claw seized Yskatarina by the arm and propelled her toward the doors at the other end of the chamber. There was a scuttling among the vines. They had almost reached the doors when the vines shook and trembled. Two things spilled out of the tendrils, crawling swiftly between Yskatarina, the Animus, and the doors. Human children, very small, with round black eyes and the jaws of a snake. Soft, gristly mouthparts opened and closed. Yskatarina could see the long fangs within. A fleshy tongue flickered between the needle teeth. The small hands, plastered flat to the floor, were webbed, but the infants had no legs or feet, only tapering pale tails.

  The infants hissed, a noise more reminiscent of a rasping saw than a serpent. They shuffled forward with alarming speed; Yskatarina and the Animus leaped back. Beads of something clear and sticky oozed down the curve of the needle teeth.

  “They are hungry,” the Animus said.

  An infant bolted forward and struck out at the Animus. Yskatarina shouted a warning. The Animus reached down and snatched the infant up by the tail. The tail parted company from the infant’s body with a damp snap. The infant fell to the floor and hid under a growing-tank, squeaking and hissing. The Animus flung the slimy tail across the room. The second infant’s teeth met in the plastic of Yskatarina’s calf. She shouted, striking down at the infant in revulsion. The Animus forced a claw into the infant’s mouth, behind the fangs, and pulled it away. He hurled the infant across the growing-chamber. The snake-child hit the wall with a sound like a sand-filled sack, and its skull shattered. It slid to the floor, with a greenish ichor leaking from its deflating head.

  CHAPTER 7

  Earth

  Dreams-of-War stood before the cabin’s antiscribe, together with the kappa. Lunae hovered around them, peering over their shoulders at the flickering screen. Her guardian and the nurse were ignoring her presence, and it irked her.

  “Is there any news?” Lunae asked.

  “The main network speaks only of a fire. It suggests a domestic accident at Cloud Terrace.”

  “That is foolish,” Dreams-of-War snapped. “Anyone watching will have seen that it was ire-palm.”

  “The network news comes from the Ruling Council of Fragrant Harbor,” the kappa said, “and in this instance, the Council will do as it is instructed by Memnos. Even those who saw the destruction will get the message. It may be of advantage. Whoever set the blaze intended no trace to remain. Perhaps whoever set it will assume that we, too, are dead.”

  “But who is that?” Lunae asked. “The Kami?”

  “Or the Grandmothers themselves?” the kappa suggested. Lunae stared at her. The nurse had dropped the fluttering, flustered demeanor that seemed to form her protective persona. Lunae barely recognized her.

  “The Grandmothers? That’s a thought,” Dreams-of-War mused.

  “They knew we were safely away. They have connections. Someone would have had to have helped them leave the mansion.”

  “And then set the fire,” Dreams-of-War said. “But if that is the case, I feel it is likely that the Grandmothers would contact us. And they have not done so.”

  “Not yet.” The kappa stared back at the antiscribe.

  “And neither has anyone else. I placed a Chain missive to Memnos soon after we boarded. That is now a day ago and I have heard nothing. Silence from Memnos is not a good thing. I feel as though we have been cast adrift on the tides.” Dreams-of-War spoke angrily. “I have been told little enough by the Grandmothers as it is—only that we are to travel north and seek sanctuary. I was expecting more information. As usual, I did not get it.”

  “Do not worry, warrior. You know that we are heading for the Fire Islands, for the protection of my people. Once we are within the sea-space of the kappa, things will be different.”

  But from the look that Dreams-of-War bestowed upon her, Lunae thought the Martian was not reassured.

  CHAPTER 8

  Earth

  Finally, Yskatarina and the Animus managed to force open the door. Had Yskatarina’s hands been flesh, they would surely hav
e bled. The Animus’s tough claws were scuffed and dulled. The tailless snake-child had retreated to the far end of the room, where it sat nursing the stump of its wound and staring at them with unblinking, reptilian resentment. Yskatarina kept glancing over her shoulder, but there was no sign of movement from within any of the remaining growing-skins.

  “Do you think it was deliberate?” she asked the Animus in an undertone, as they worked on the door. “That someone locked us in with these things?”

  “Two grown beings, against babies?” the Animus mused.

  “There is a cruel kind of whimsy about it. I think someone is watching us. I think someone is bored.”

  The frame of the door gave way with a wrenching of wood, releasing a shower of beetles that scattered around Yskatarina’s feet. Pale light flooded through into the growing-room.

  The Animus glided past her and stopped. Something was standing in the passage.

  It was another of the snake-children, but this one was older. It was the height of the Animus. It wore a long gray shift, hiding the tail on which it balanced. It regarded them gravely, from eyes like obsidian marbles, its small hands clasped before it. The protruding mouthparts worked in silent rhythm.

  “I have come to take you to Prince Cataract,” it said. Its voice was sibilant and hoarse, as if infrequently used.

  “He knows we are here?” the Animus asked.

  “Of course.”

  “We were locked in there,” Yskatarina said, voice rising. She pointed to the growing-chamber. “Your siblings attacked us. Why?”

  “They hatched. Yes, you were locked in.”

  “One of your siblings is dead,” Yskatarina said.

  “No matter,” the snake-child said, serene. “It will provide food for the others when they hatch. And more can be grown. Come with me.”

  Yskatarina and the Animus followed it down corridors, until it came to a door. She saw a thick, split tongue flicker out, leaving a film of saliva across a complex lock.

  The door opened. They stepped through into a high, narrow room. Portholes, just beneath the ceiling, let in a stormy sliver of moonlight. Yskatarina’s feet ticked against metal.