by Jay Lake
“There are many races here upon the Wall and in the Southern Earth,” Malgus said. “Different images of God’s will, perhaps. But if your angel spoke to you, he was not of the winged folk. Manlike though they are, and of some little intelligence, the fliers do not have the gift of speech. Their blessings lie elsewhere. As do their services.”
“Angels are what you make of them,” the Abbot said. “Up here in the sky, so close to the gears, we hear the voice of God every day when the track of the world thunders overhead. I have never seen a messenger of Heaven in the flesh, though there are signs aplenty of God’s will in the world.”
He leaned forward slightly, communicating a certain eagerness. “If you have truly seen an angel, you are blessed. You would be welcome and more than welcome to remain here in the Jade Temple. You would be a member of our community of spirit, and take part in the nightly Sacrament of Listening.”
“No,” said Hethor, blushing. He had no desire to live here in the thin, cold air among hairy men and walking statues. Even so, the invitation was a balm to him. Bassett had been home, however briefly. Before that, Master Bodean’s house. Here was another home, freely offered. It was tempting. “I must be free to move on. Gabriel’s message was a warning. The Mainspring of the world is running down. I must find the Key Perilous and wind it again.”
Hethor crossed his arms and set his lips, awaiting scorn and worse.
Malgus did not disappoint. The Englishman burst into laughter. “The Key Perilous? You’ve been reading too many penny dreadfuls, boy. Or drinking belowdecks with entirely the wrong sort of Spiritualists.”
Hethor cringed at the navigator’s words.
“Simeon.” The Jade Abbot’s voice was a warning.
“I’m sorry, boy,” Malgus said, his tone gentler now. “You were taken in by a mummer or a magic lantern show.”
“Perhaps,” the Jade Abbot said. “But there truly is a Key Perilous.”
Hethor stared at the Abbot, his humiliation forgotten as quickly as it had arrived. Malgus wheezed, as if he struggled to raise objections.
“It is real enough,” the Jade Abbot continued. “Though certainly legendary as well. When your Christ was broken on the wheel-and-gear of Roman punishment, He left you seven Great Relics. The Key Perilous is one of those.”
“Where is it?” asked Hethor.
“I do not know.” The Jade Abbot smiled. “But there are those who might. Christ’s word has never found favor in the Southern Earth. The Equatorial Wall blocks much besides the guns of Englishmen from crossing over. But the Relics did cross, centuries ago and more. There are wise men in the South who may well know where to find the Key Perilous.
“Whether your vision of Gabriel was false or true I have no way to say. But there is something wrong with our days of late. The gear has slipped, and the Wall shakes like a dog awakening from sleep. You are the first person to bring a theory to my ears that is neither sheer foolishness nor self-serving.”
The Jade Abbot gave Malgus a long look, then turned his small smile back to Hethor. “I feel free to say that Simeon would be pleased to escort you over the Wall and down the other side. There he can help you find and meet with these sages of the Southern Earth who might guide you further in your quest.”
Malgus choked on his water, setting his ceramic mug down as he sprayed the woven mat at his feet. “I have important work afoot in London and Damascus,” he cried. “My contacts in Boston bear fruit, and I—”
“Simeon,” the Jade Abbot said again in that quiet voice. “Other men and women will carry your standard a while. This is a chance unplanned for by any of us. We should bow to God’s will, even when His hand touches us unlooked for. Especially when you are fit to lead him across and down the other side, and you are here now. There is no coincidence in this world.”
“I will of course bow to your wishes,” Malgus said stiffly, “as you have heard my protests and judged them according to your wisdom. If we are to go this midnight, I must make preparations.” He stood. With a nod to Hethor, he stalked from the room.
“I have to believe this is the right thing,” Hethor said. “But it is so easy for me to doubt.” Was he ready for the Southern Earth? Going beyond the Wall was an irrevocable step.
“When the angel came to you in New Haven,” the Jade Abbot said, “did it give you a map, a compass, instructions to follow?”
“No. Just a warning.”
“So without knowing what the right thing was to do, you found your way here.”
“Yes. Through peril and happenstance.” And perfidy, he thought, but this did not seem the time to complain of his ill treatment at the hands of William of Ghent. For one, Hethor had never been certain what if any connection pertained between the sorcerer and Simeon Malgus.
“It seems to be a great happenstance indeed that you are here. Many hands must have touched your journey. A prayer shared across miles and days. Is this not true?”
Hethor nodded, thinking of Librarian Childress and the viceroy’s man Phelps and all the other people who’d helped him. Even Pryce Bodean had advanced his cause, in a peculiar way. It seemed odd that the petty, vengeful divinity student might have been working God’s will. Or perhaps they all followed some strange magic from beyond the Wall. Drawn forward by the Key Perilous, as it were. Even William? He wondered.
“Trust the divine,” the Jade Abbot said, “and you will be rewarded. You have not been wrong so far.”
“Many have died,” Hethor whispered, thinking of the earthquakes and the attacks. “Lost their lives so that I might reach this place.”
“The world winds down. This is the reason for your journey. So their lives would have been lost regardless of your passage, yes?”
“Perhaps.” Hethor felt miserable. “Probably.”
“The account does not lie with you. It was time for their souls to pass onward and follow the wheel once more.”
“Maybe. But I would not like to be the reason for their deaths.” Hethor paused to frame his thoughts. “Still … sir …”
“Yes?”
“The way Malgus laughed. It was not he who sent the savages to tear me from Bassett and carry me up here. He would not have troubled to do so.”
“No, I think not.”
“So it must have been you, right?”
There was a long, thoughtful silence. The Jade Abbot’s smile deepened. Finally he said, “You do the work of Heaven. Are not all the ranks of the celestial realm arrayed in support of your mission?”
“But the winged savages are not angels,” Hethor said.
“Indeed.” The Jade Abbot clapped his hands. “You need a bath, some sound sleep, and at your age, I would imagine another meal soon as well.”
The subject was clearly closed. Following his host’s lead, Hethor glanced at the Jade Abbot’s sparse tray. “You are not so old, sir, to live each day on three fruits and the thin air of this high place.”
The Jade Abbot laughed. “You may guess at my age, young man, but you will never arrive at the truth. Now go.”
In response to the summons, two of the saffron-robed hairy men took Hethor by hallways different from those he had entered through. These were more ordinary, with shelves to hold linens and little cabinets that smelled of fruit and wine. They left him soaking in a great wooden tub with long-handled brushes and three differently scented cakes of soap. Sleep took him there, lying in water stained with sheep’s blood and the dirt of the Wall, but Hethor was beyond caring.
MALGUS ROUSTED him out of the tub some hours later. Hethor was glad enough of that—the waters had cooled to a chill bath indeed. His muscles were cramping.
“Come on, then,” Malgus growled. “We’ll attend the Sacrament of Listening. We’re to set out immediately afterward. It’s a toilsome journey, with no time to be made up in case of error. Trust me, you don’t want to be caught out there.”
“Out where?”
“Among the gear teeth. From here, the only sensible crossing is up the brass
and right over. Believe you me, that’s dangerous business.”
The gears themselves. Hethor marveled at the thought, to see up close how God in His wisdom cut gears. He wondered what files one would use to shape the movements of an entire world.
“Quit smiling like a fool and get dressed.” Malgus shoved an odd, quilted suit at Hethor. “Wear this, and the boots I’ve brought you. It’s damned cold up there. The weather won’t be much better coming down the other side. Not till we’ve gotten to honest, horizontal African soil.”
Hethor took the garment. He rubbed the quilting between a thumb and forefinger. It was much lighter in weight than he might have expected from the look of it, and promised to be quite warm.
“Lieutenant … why did the Abbot send the winged savages for me?”
“Both of us,” said Malgus roughly. “And I couldn’t say. For the sake of the white bird, perhaps. He listens to different voices than you or I can hear.”
That wasn’t any better answer than Hethor could have given himself, but it was probably the only answer he would receive. On to more practical subjects, he thought. “When’s the Sacrament of Listening?”
“Less than an hour. I’ve arranged for the rest of the equipment we shall need to be set aside by Heaven’s Ladder. Clean up your hair, boy, get dressed, and meet me in the Orchid Garden.”
“And where is the Orchid Garden?” There was no answer, as Malgus was already pushing his way out of the lavatorium door.
Hethor smiled. There was no reason for him to be happy, running from danger to danger, but for the first time he felt a sense of purpose. He was finally in control of his own destiny and the charter given him by the archangel Gabriel.
He pressed the clean, fresh-scented cloth of the quilted suit against his cheek. He’d never worn clothes so fine, for all that their quality and warmth bespoke a cold the like of which he’d never known before. The Key Perilous seemed once more within his reach. For good or ill, he had the guide who had been recommended to him so long ago back in New England.
“God meant you to help me, Simeon Malgus,” Hethor whispered. He began to dress himself.
MONKS KNELT on mats, a mix of hairy men and humans as Hethor understood his kind to be, though like the Jade Abbot some were of races strange to him. A few were of a much smaller kind, furtive and wispy, almost like he might have imagined the children of the hairy men to be. But their bodies were of the wrong shape for youths of that species, too slight of chest and face, and legs overlong. And they kept to themselves.
He saw no winged folk among the worshipers. Savage or otherwise.
The Jade Abbot knelt on a mat in the front row, though he was set no higher up or farther forward than his fellow monks. To one side, a serious young fellow with the red hair and ruddy skin of a Vinlander or Norseman rang a bell. Incense drifted across the Orchid Garden. The flowers gleamed dimly in the pale glow of the rising moon. Hethor could see the pale, fleshy blossoms hanging among dark trees themselves twisted by wind and careful pruning. A drifting mist lent a jeweled cast to each flower so that the whole garden became a work of beauty.
At the head of the garden, where the land sloped upward, the brass cliff of the gears erupted from the soil to rise skyward. It was smooth as any fresh-hammered sheet for all that the Wall went on to the east and west as far as Hethor could see. The metal shot straight up from him as if it were the edge of the world.
Which, in a sense, it was.
A wooden scaffold clung to the brass cliff. A steep stairway wound back and forth across the frames. That would be Heaven’s Ladder, Hethor thought. He wondered how his legs would handle the climb, especially with the rapid hike across the breadth of the gear teeth that must follow.
The bell rang again even as a low rumble echoed from the east. The monks chanted in a vibrating language more an answer to the rumbling of God’s gears than like any words Hethor had ever heard. The rumbling grew, the noise broadening and deepening into a echoing version of the clatter of the world that Hethor had sometimes heard far down below on the surface of the Earth.
The noise bloomed louder and louder. He began to feel it in the bones of his face, in his wrists and ankles, within his chest. The rumble became so much the dominant force in Hethor’s senses that it passed out of the realm of sound, the way the pain of his lashing had surpassed his sense of self, or the way the great storms buffeting Bassett had become forces of their own, exempt from the rules of rain and wind.
Even though those around him knelt in prayer, Hethor stared upward. He saw far-distant teeth flash in sunlight, the Earth’s orbital track approaching like a falling tower of brass. He screamed to balance the pressure in his ears, his head squeezed to nothing by the divine force of the passing of midnight, ready to throw himself from the distant cliff in a final, plunging sacrament of his own. How could any man face such absolute proof of God’s hand in His universe and remain sane and whole?
Then it was gone, the noise and pressure and pain. Blood trickled from his ears and nose. The Norseman still rang the bell, the monks still chanted, but Hethor felt like his body had been riven apart by the sounds of passage and reformed anew.
Malgus touched his arm. “Are you well, boy? Not everyone can appreciate this particular rite.”
“I have survived.” Hethor realized he was shouting over the echoes inside his head.
“They’re at prayer a while longer here,” Malgus told him, “but we must be swiftly on our way.”
Hethor stumbled behind Malgus to the base of Heaven’s Ladder. There, two small packs lay, along with some leather water bags. “I think I expected more equipment.”
“Light and fast,” Malgus said. “None of this will be needful on the other side.” He tugged something out of one pack—it was a pair of small wedges, with buckles and straps. “When we get up top, you’ll need to put these on your boots. There’s buckles and straps for them.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see. I’ll go first. That way if you fall, you won’t hurt me.”
THE CLIMB was hellish, if only for its height. Hethor guessed they ascended almost two miles of stairs. The scaffolding grew lighter, thinner, more delicate, until the last part of the upward journey was made on springy bamboo ladders of a single pole, with small points of wood pounded into them for hand- and footholds. These were lashed end-to-end. Hethor could not see how the ladders kept their balance under his weight and Malgus’.
His quilted suit grew hot under the strain, sweat pooling across his back and down his limbs. Even the light pack became a leaden weight. His arms were wooden blocks that banged against his side as he climbed, bruising his chest with his own elbows.
There was no more ladder, but rather a narrow vee cut into the brass. Malgus, climbing ahead of Hethor, slipped perhaps two yards inward. He now braced his back against the vee to strap the wedges from his pack to his boots.
“Ah,” said Hethor. The wedges were what would allow them to walk at a reasonable pace across the bottom of the vee. He pulled himself after Simeon, dreadfully glad to be off the ladder, and studied the bottom of the cut as his nerve-dead arms fought his efforts to open his pack and extract his own wedges.
“This gear is wrought as fine as any handwork,” Hethor told Malgus. “If I had a glass and a micrometer, I’d wager it narrows down to the limit of my vision.”
“This is God’s work, boy,” Malgus said. “What do you expect? Sloppy shortcuts?”
Given some of the rest of Creation, such as Pryce Bodean, Hethor wasn’t sure how to answer that. He settled for strapping on the wedges. They resembled the heels of a woman’s fancy dress shoe, except that the angle ran from left to right, or vice versa, rather than front to back, so the soles were on a severe bias.
Wedges strapped on, Hethor tried to stand. He immediately slipped. His left leg plunged down into the vee until the wedge on his boot jammed into place.
“People have broken legs doing that,” Malgus said dryly. “I wouldn’t fancy a climb back
down the other side with such an injury. Watch me.” Facing away from Hethor, Malgus used his hands and the main strength of his arms to balance himself in the vee, settled his feet carefully, then walked a few steps away in a gliding motion more similar to ice skating than any normal land-bound gait.
Hethor imitated Malgus’ movements. That got him settled on the wedges, whereupon he stumbled forward. He thought of skating on the Quinnipiac River in winter, and tried to smooth out his footwork accordingly.
“Not bad,” Malgus said grudgingly. “Before we set out, a quick stop for food and water.”
“How long?” Hethor asked. “How far?”
“Twenty miles edge to edge. A hard hike at the pace forced by these shoes, before midnight next, but we’ll make it.” Malgus took a long drink from his water skin, then slung it over his shoulder. “Unless you’d like to turn back?”
“I didn’t come here just to go home again,” Hethor said with a twinge. There was no home to go to. He was a failed apprentice in Connecticut, under order of imprisonment in Massachusetts, and absent without leave from the Royal Navy. Southern Earth could only be an improvement. “Onward, sir. Onward.”
WALKING WAS miserable work. Hethor’s ankles kept wanting to roll inward from the slope of the vee, threatening at any moment to sprain or strain. Which would be deadly if they could not make their way back before the next meshing of the Earth’s gear with its orbital track.
Even keeping his hands on the walls of the vee for balance was troublesome. The brass was cold, like a great metal glacier. The chill seeped through the quilted suit. Hands palm down on the metal, even through gloves, seemed to multiply the cooling effect. Hands away from the metal resulted in him slipping all the more, losing his balance or the position of his feet.
Malgus slowly pulled ahead. “I’m not waiting for you, boy,” he called back. “If you fall too far behind, we’ll meet on the other side. If you make it.”
Hethor struggled on, ignoring Malgus’ words. It only made sense. If he, Hethor, failed in his crossing, there was no need for them both to be ground between the gears as a result. Arriving ahead of Hethor, Malgus could clear the way on the far side of the gear. Nonetheless, Hethor felt obscurely betrayed by the sense of abandonment, disappointed in some way that seemed illogical even to him.
