Banner of Souls

by Liz Williams

  She splashed the cold water over her face and stood, scenting the air. She was now to the east of the Tower, perhaps a day’s walk. Taking a roundabout route through the canyons, she set off.

  The horned woman stepped out of nowhere. One moment, Dreams-of-War was walking through an empty canyon, the next, the woman was standing in front of her.

  It was immediately apparent to Dreams-of-War that she was not real, nor yet a hallucination, like the herd of gaezelles that she had encountered before. The woman was slightly transparent. Coiled horns grew up from her head, lending her a top-heavy appearance. Her feet, which resembled hooves, were small. She tapered to a point, like a jar. Dreams-of-War had seen her like before, on the stele that decorated the interior of the Memnos Tower: an ancient people, whose name had long since been forgotten.

  “You are from the past,” Dreams-of-War said. “Are you a ghost?”

  “I am Essa. I am a message,” the ram-horned woman said. “From a hundred years ago. I have been programmed into the soil. I have come to find you. It has not been easy.”

  “A hologram, then?”

  The ram-horned woman smiled. Her eyes, Dreams-of-War noted, were intensely blue, the color of the skies of Earth.

  “ ‘Ghost’ is better. I programmed myself in many permutations.”

  “Why do you appear to me now, then?” The armor had spoken of someone called Essa, she remembered now.

  “Because once we prepared for this day—the old Matriarch and I, and she whose armor you wore, and the twinned women Yri and Yra. We set things in motion. Some of us died, for a time. And now I am back, and learning. Haunt-tech is feeding back upon itself, sending information out and retrieving it from the tech in the land. It was through this I found out about your return and the hunt. Moreover, a ghost is running Memnos. Did you know this?”

  “I had noticed. How did that happen?”

  “The Matriarch had her reanimated. Once, she was my mistress, but now she is governed by Nightshade. She is Martian no longer, but the excissieres listen to her, because she holds the Matriarch’s phial. And the warriors obey her because she controls the excissieres.”

  Dreams-of-War snorted. “It’s time for some changes at Memnos.”

  “Come with me.” The ram-horned woman turned and began to walk. Warily, Dreams-of-War followed the woman along the canyon. She seemed to be solidifying, growing harder and sharper-edged with each step she took. Dreams-of-War wondered whether the programming was more detailed the farther one went into the rocks. It seemed likely. Even without the armor, she could sense the programming: a hum in the air, the flickering of the shadows. Lost technology: an ancient by-product of terraforming, perhaps nano-driven, in which the very soil could speak. It made her wonder how this might be used against the Matriarchy. And it was homegrown Martian, which gave her a little pride. Haunt-tech was not the only technology that could be useful.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To find my ship. And your armor.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Mars

  Lunae was awoken by the armor.

  “Someone approaches!” it said.

  Lunae sat upright, quivering. The kappa stirred. Knowledge-of-Pain was already on her feet and stepping across the smoldering fire to the armor, which flowed smoothly over her body. Next moment, an arrow-bolt shot past Lunae’s head and embedded itself in the side of the barge. Knowledge-of-Pain cursed. The kappa, moving with startling speed, grabbed Lunae by the hand and pulled her down the rampart to the towpath. Other bolts were coming through the dark, hissing into the waters of the canal. Something gave a mournful cry, rose from the depths, and sank once more. The kappa and Lunae sprang for the side of the barge and fell sprawling onto the deck. Then, keeping low, they made for the protection afforded by the other side of the cabin. No one was in sight.

  “Who are they?” the kappa gasped. “Is that the hunt?”

  “Knowledge-of-Pain said that they had no interest in us!”

  “But Knowledge-of-Pain is of Memnos,” the kappa muttered.

  “She’s been away for some time, evidently. I don’t know what to think,” Lunae said. A terrible squalling broke through the hissing darkness. Gripping the metal edging of the cabin, Lunae peered across the deck. The tow-beast was plunging at the end of its chain, causing the barge to rock up and down. A bolt stood out from a crack between the bone plates.

  “The poor thing’s been hit,” the kappa said.

  “What’s happened to Knowledge-of-Pain? Do you think we should try and make a break for it? Swim across the canal? Are they even shooting at us?” She paused. “I could take us through time—but I just don’t know, kappa. What if this is my moment of failure?”

  “I do not know. As for swimming, the warrior said that there are creatures in the canal,” the kappa replied. “I might be successful, but you might not. There is nowhere else to go. We are trapped.”

  They could hear shouting, but could not distinguish the words. Lunae fretted, wondering whether she should take the risk and move them forward. Just an hour or so might be enough...But she thought of her future-self and the memory was enough to stop her. The barge continued to plunge, then the deck was doused in a sudden wave, drenching the kappa and Lunae. The prow of the barge veered sharply around, heading for the opposite bank of the canal.

  “The tow-beast’s gone in,” Lunae cried, spitting bitter water.

  From the bank came a cry of rage. Once more Lunae peered around the casing of the cabin, this time to see that they were already far from shore. The tow-beast was swimming as swiftly as an arrow, the chain stretched taut between the boat and its throat. A figure sprinted along the towpath, armor rippling. There was a hiss of arrows. Knowledge-of-Pain gave a sharp cry, but ran on.

  The kappa threw herself to the boards and shuffled to the side of the boat.

  “This is a war-arrow,” she called back. “Only warriors use these bows. And the tow-beast is heading downstream, toward the Memnos Tower.”

  Lunae stared at her in dismay. The barge sailed on, moving swiftly.

  Soon even the running form of Knowledge-of-Pain was no more than a distant shadow on the bank. The tow-beast arrowed through the oily waters of the canal like a fish, its lumbering land form forgotten. Occasionally its sinuous spine broke the water, the long tail rippling in sea-serpent configuration.

  “When will it stop?” the kappa asked at last, sitting disconsolately on the deck, with her back to the casing. “It has been swimming for more than two hours. Do you think it will ever stop? Or will it take us to the very pole?”

  “Perhaps when it’s light we’ll be able to swim for it,” Lunae said. She looked at the heaving black water and shuddered. “Maybe the creatures are nocturnal.”

  “Perhaps.” The kappa sounded doubtful.

  “The attackers will surely catch up to us at some point, too.” Lunae stood, hastily. “It’s heading for the bank.”

  The tow-beast was slowing as it changed direction, and now they could see that a lock was opening up ahead.

  “It’s taking us in,” Lunae said. The Tower of Memnos clawed upward, filling the sky. Smoke drifted against the brightness of the stars. The tow-beast clambered out of the water in a bulky mass of bones, to stand shuddering upon the bank. The barge sank slowly down, stretching the chain. In the side of the Tower, a gate swung open and figures poured forth.

  “Lunae,” the kappa’s voice was urgent. “We have to go.”

  Lunae nodded. They were now close enough to the sides of the lock to swing down over the side of the barge and cling to the rust-stained struts. Below, the barge sank, and then was gone through the lock gate. The tow-beast padded forward, where it was greeted with faint cries, like the voices of birds. Lunae and the kappa gripped the struts and turned their faces to the wall.

  “What if they see us?”

  “They will have to come looking,” the kappa said. The lock gate closed with a muffled clang. They were alone.

  They waite
d until the sounds of voices had disappeared, then clambered up the wall of the lock. A narrow ledge led up toward the Tower. There was no way back; the gates of the Tower were closed behind them. They were within the complex of Memnos.

  Lunae and the kappa sidled around the edges of the Tower. Voices floated down from the slit windows, but outside, all was silent. They ran behind a towering pyramid of barrels, then through a storeroom and out into a courtyard, covered by the shadows cast by the Tower itself. The kappa seized Lunae and drew her back behind the barrels, a hand over the girl’s mouth. They watched as a squadron of excissieres came by, weapons at the ready. The women’s faces were fierce and blank, wounds gliding over their skin. They looked like the walking slain. There were, perhaps, a dozen of them.

  Lunae crouched down behind the barrels.

  “We can’t stay here. They’ll find us. Maybe this was how I was captured.”

  The kappa gave her a little shake. “That was a different time line. Your future-self said so. What is to come, is not set in stone.”

  “Even so.”

  “Let’s see what we can find.”

  They made their way around the perimeter of the courtyard, keeping to the shadows. More excissieres ran by: a pair, this time, wearing black armor. Their faces were set in a snarl.

  “They all look so angry,” Lunae whispered.

  “Martians are always angry,” the kappa replied. “All the time.”

  “I can hear something.” Lunae stopped.

  “What is it?”

  There was an itching inside her mind, a prickle of Eldritch energy. Lunae shook her head, trying to clear it.

  “Lunae? Are you all right?”

  “Something’s calling to me.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Look!”

  There was a ghost standing before them. She could see the barrels through its body. It wore a familiar armor. Half of its face was missing.

  “Embar Khair! The armor must be close by.”

  The ghost raised a mailed hand and beckoned, then drifted backward across the courtyard. Lunae and the kappa followed, around a corner into a great open space.

  A ship rested on a landing pad, raised some distance from the Martian earth. From this distance, it looked like a scorpion, crouching above the red soil, tail curved above its spine, all dark glitter and menace. Lunae supposed that it could have been beautiful, but it was too ancient, too alien, for her to feel anything but afraid. The ghost of Embar Khair gestured: come.

  Then the ship itself moved and the ghost began to fade. Lunae blinked and drew back. There was a creeping glide across the surface of the ship, as though the skin of the ship had begun to crawl. Lunae felt her own spine shiver in response. A single droplet, green and glistening, fell to the dusty earth. Lunae and the kappa backed away. The droplet elongated, became a writhing serpent that angled itself through the dust, so swiftly that she barely had time to dodge out of the way. The kappa cried out. And then the snake was upon Lunae, rising out of the dust, neck arched, eyeless and striking. She gave a muffled cry, but the snake struck her wrist as gently as a drop of rain. A moment later, her hand was coated in a jade glove. She looked down at a dissociated fragment of armor.

  The hand pulled at her skin, gripping it, tugging. It was trying to draw her in the direction of the ship, and at first she resisted. But the hand reached out, raising Lunae’s arm, the fingers pointed and quivering. She took a reluctant step forward. The kappa tried to drag her back, but the pull of the ship was as strong as a magnet. The skin of the ship shivered, rippling like grass in the wind. Lunae took another step, led by the insistent hand. The tail of the ship sprang into life, hammering down into the earth like a pile-driver. Lunae dodged, ducked, tried to turn and run, but the hand exerted a magnetic pressure upon her, drawing her forward. Again the tail struck out, pounding down into the dirt.

  “Kappa! Run!”

  The ground shook. A column of dust rose up, obscuring the moving skin of the ship. Lunae doubled up over the unnatural hand, coughing and choking, but then something was rising out of the dust: a pillar with a half-formed head at its summit. It bowed over her, embedding her in a watery coolness. She felt another consciousness slide over her own, just as the armor encased her.

  Winterstrike

  CHAPTER 1

  Mars

  The armor of Embar Khair, carrying Lunae with it, marched toward the ship.

  “Wait!” Lunae cried. “Turn back! It’s attacking us. It—” but the armor paid no attention to its passenger. It strode onward. The scorpion-sting of the ship once more quivered and plunged, sending shivers and reverberations throughout the armor’s shell.

  “Kappa!” But she was unable to look back. The armor moved swiftly, diving and twisting through the cloud of dust. Lunae felt shock waves travel across her joints. She did not like being at the mercy of the armor. Its strength was horrifying; the shell moved with forces that seemed far beyond what the human body could normally bear. She remembered its weight from the moment when it had imprinted upon her. Yet Dreams-of-War had welcomed it. Were Martians so different? The armor was bearing her beneath the body of the ship, reaching up to run a hand across the slick surface.

  “Ship! Be still. There is no danger,” said the disembodied voice.

  “What are you doing?”

  The armor did not reply, but she could hear Embar Khair talking to itself, or perhaps to a throng of others, inside the armor’s helmet.

  The babel grew, a hissing susurrus of inner sound, like the waves on some distant shore. There was a wet click. The side of the ship peeled back, revealing a walkway.

  “Upward!” Embar Khair said inside Lunae’s mind. It marched her up the walkway and into the ship.

  Within, it was dark and quiet. Skeleton-ribs lined each wall, curving inward. The armor had to duck as they moved forward.

  “Wait,” Lunae said, desperate. “What are you doing? My nurse is back there, she—”

  “The duty of my former occupant was to protect you. That duty remains. She who stole me is absent. The ship prefers a living pilot.”

  “But where are we going? We cannot leave the kappa!”

  “To find she who owns me, where else?” The armor evinced a distant surprise.

  “You mean, Dreams-of-War?”

  The armor said nothing. It raised a hand and beckoned. Struts angled down from the ceiling, sealing the armor in a standing web.

  “Prepare yourself.”

  For what? Lunae was about to ask, but in the next moment, she was suddenly and horribly aware of the mind of the ship. It touched her mind—sly and sidling, somehow harsh and spined, like the scorpion discovered, too late, in the toe of a shoe. It felt ancient, powerful, and perverse. She could not withstand it. She thought of the kappa in despair.

  “Tell it to lift.”

  Lunae would have disobeyed, but the thought of lifting was enough. The ship swayed on its struts. She could feel the dust rising up around it, was aware of cold air. Then they were up and soaring through the Martian sky.

  Voices whispered inside Lunae’s head: the ship, the armor—it was hard to differentiate them after a while. Linked to the ship, she could see several dimensions at once: the wheeling heavens above, the Martian terrain below, fed back to her with a bewildering onrush of information. Gradually, she realized that the ship spoke in different tongues, some in languages that she could not understand. She did not think that all the voices were even female.

  “Who are these people?” she asked aloud, when the whispers of conflicting advice became too great to heed. It reminded her disquietingly of Sek’s boat.

  “They are the pilots of past ships,” the armor said. “Those who flew spacecraft in and out of Nightshade. They were brought back from the Eldritch Realm to provide the knowledge base of this craft. A mass of downloaded souls.”

  And what, Lunae could not help but wonder, had the ship in mind for her? She longed for Dreams-of-War.

  “The one
who wore you,” she said to the armor. “You said you could find her.”

  “The ship is scanning the land, even now, for the signature of her being. It will not be long.”

  “She is still alive, isn’t she?”

  “I would know if she were not,” the armor said, with such confidence that Lunae had to believe it. But what about the poor kappa? She thought with horror of the excissieres. The ship swooped downward, crossing a ragged lip of rock. The plains lay before them, rolling to the edge of the world and a rising moon.

  “She is near,” the armor said, very softly.

  The landscape scrolled out before Lunae’s linked gaze. She saw a chasm between the rocks, sharply black in the dying sunlight. A tall, pale figure stood at the entrance, and there was something beside it, something flickering and insubstantial.

  “What is that?” Lunae asked.

  “A ghost.”

  The ship flew downward, alighting in a puff of dust. Lunae was at the door and opening it before the ship had settled, then was out and running. And as she did so, she saw that the ghost was Essa.

  “Lunae!” Dreams-of-War strode forward, held out her hands, let them fall before Lunae could fling her arms around her. “You’re alive.” She sounded astonished. “I’m— relieved.”

  “Guardian,” Lunae said. “So am I.” She stared in horror at the lacerated wounds that covered her guardian’s body. Few places remained unbruised or untorn.

  “What happened to you?”

  “Little of note.” Dreams-of-War gave her a razor-edged grin. “Where is the kappa?”

  “At the Memnos Tower.” Lunae felt her smile fade. “The ship brought me here.” She turned to Essa. “I didn’t expect to see you.”