Mordew

by Alex Pheby

  Nathan moved Caretaker into position, creaking, and when he was far enough across, Cook began to mumble. Immediately the words were met on the page by a change – what had previously been undifferentiated text in dry ink became dotted with colour. Nathan leaned closer and now he could make out a match between the sounds Cook was uttering and the words on the page. As Cook spoke, the page filled. Caretaker glanced up at Cook, but his eyes were closed, and there was a concentrated and intense set to his usually bland features.

  When Nathan looked back down the page was almost full. There in the centre was one word, surrounded, and it seemed obvious that the others would be filled before this last one was spoken. Dashini would need him to read that word, but Caretaker’s eyes were too weak. He leaned in, closer. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve. He couldn’t read it. No matter how close he brought his face to the page, it was no good.

  Nathan looked up, to tell Dashini that he couldn’t read it, and there was Cook, the hand-axe raised above his head. Dashini brought it down with as much force as Cook’s thin, bare arms contained.

  ‘Rekka!’ he screamed.

  LXXXI

  Nathan screamed too. He was back in his room, alone, molten jelly over his face. From down the corridor came an almighty concussion as if the Manse had been hit by a landslide. He leapt for the door, sped out into the corridor, the ease with which he did this almost intoxicating after the cage of Caretaker’s decrepit body, but he had no time to appreciate it. He ran straight to the library.

  He threw open the door in time to see Cook bitten in two by a huge, spear-toothed monstrosity five times the size of man. It was a half-ape, half-rhino, beetle-carapaced thing as bottle green as the book was, with a mass of blazing red eyes, twenty of them at least, in a blunt wedge of a head. It stooped like a goring bull, gigantic arms, shoulders muscled, tearing the old man’s torso from his waist with no more effort than a man tears meat from a chop.

  It saw Nathan and roared, a furious, deep, guttural roar of rage that smashed what glass remained in the roof and belched a blackness that took the breath from Nathan’s throat. With its hind legs it smashed and pushed and launched itself through the room, sending the books flying, collapsing the shelves, causing the boards of the floor to splinter and rise, with one movement entirely destroying the integrity of the structure. When it landed it dragged with its enormous clawed hands and took the wall down, tore through the floor, propelling itself directly, it seemed, at Nathan.

  In the fraction of a second that it took for the creature to reach him, Nathan wanted the Master, but the Master was not there.

  The collapse of the floor caused the thing to lurch to the side and Nathan was knocked back as he collided not with its teeth but with its broad expanse of skull. It wheeled, but now the gill-men were there, swarming from everywhere – along the corridors, up through the floor from below, down through the broken glass of the roof, appearing from nowhere, seemingly – and they flung themselves at the creature, at its arms, at its legs, crawling across its back and into its mouth, hoping to choke it even as it bit them into pieces.

  Nathan turned and ran down the corridor.

  It followed him, chewing gill-men, swallowing them, spitting them out, ripping them to pieces with its arms, with the claws of its feet, killing them by crushing them into and through the walls, and as it came it destroyed the corridor around it. The more gill-men came, the more it killed. They were as nothing to it – pests, obstacles, barriers. It was Nathan it wanted and the gill-men, the plaster, the portraits, the rugs, the fabric of the Manse itself was torn apart as it came for him, and all the time it roared.

  Nathan passed his room and he halted. His hand went to the locket, but it was in his chest, impossible to remove. The book, then; perhaps that could lend him power as it had before.

  More gill-men came, blocking the corridor ten abreast, and Nathan darted into his room, took the book from the top of the wardrobe. The walls shuddered, once, twice, over and over. Nathan went to his window, opened it.

  The drop was impossible. The outside of the building trembled and then, in a moment, the brickwork slumped, one whole level seemingly dropping diagonally into the floor Nathan was on. Inside the room his own ceiling collapsed, and he was only saved from crushing by luck – two joists collided to form a pocket of space in which Nathan was already standing.

  Now he could see the room above, could reach it if he scrambled up the makeshift stair of collapsed masonry.

  He didn’t hesitate. He dived, reached, pulled his way up the bricks into the upper floor, barely reaching it before the walls of his own room were shattered and where he had been moments before were the dusty corpses of gill-men, the flank of the ravening beast, its short stub of a tail pounding on the ground, its rear legs kicking.

  The doorway above was collapsed, but a stretch of corridor, still intact, led off through a ragged hole. Nathan made for it, crawling on his belly as much as climbing, desperate simply to escape this thing, thoughtless with fear, writhing like a worm, the book between his teeth. If he could only get time to open it, some magic it possessed might save him.

  The beast began jumping, smashing its head on the ceiling above it, the gill-men nothing, Nathan its target.

  This stretch of corridor Nathan didn’t recognise – it was white-walled, empty of paintings – but there was no time for anything but flight. The beast surged up through the floor, gill-men dangling from it, their knives piercing its hide, knives driven at its eyes, but its hide was too thick, its eyes red diamonds. It shook itself, like a wet dog does after a walk in the rain, and the gill-men were dislodged, flying in every direction to land, crouched like frogs where they sprang at it again, tore at whatever could be torn. It galloped forwards and Nathan ran. His chest heaved with the lack of breath.

  There was Dashini in an open door at the end of the corridor. Nathan ran for her, but before he was halfway there he collided with the wall of glass, invisible except for the shimmer of magic. It knocked him off his feet and Nathan was sure he was done for.

  Dashini, on the other side of the glass, drew the Nathan Knife, gestured for Nathan to move aside. ‘Here, Rekka!’ she called. ‘Here, boy!’

  Rekka stopped in its tracks at the mention of its name. It lowered its head to the floor, readied itself to charge at Dashini now, red eyes burning in anger, gill-men like parasites all over it.

  Nathan scrambled to the side and Rekka made a thundering run that crumbled everything it met to dust. The floor beneath Nathan collapsed, and the beast lunged, the roof proving no obstacle to it, coming down with its hammer fists smashing on the glass in front of Dashini, the impact scattering stunned gill-men.

  Nathan fell, crashing into a room below, and above him Rekka clawed at the quarantine, kicked and punched at it, bit it, launched itself at it from whatever purchase it could find, destroying everything that surrounded it and sending coruscating rainbows across every surface of the glass.

  ‘You can’t get me!’ Dashini crowed, dancing ridiculously in front of the terrifying beast. She was tiny– an infant facing up to a berserk bull – but she did not seem intimidated in the least. This enraged Rekka even more, and it thrashed in fury and trembled as if it might burst into fire. Dashini’s side of the corridor was perfectly whole and intact, protected by the quarantine, but on Nathan’s side nothing was left untouched, everything fell to rubble, crashing around his ears. Dashini was surrounded by a hemisphere made clear by the absence of the clouds of dust the monster caused in its wake.

  Rekka lunged again and suddenly there was a crack like a glacier calving from an ice shelf and it bellowed in triumph, clawing at the break it had made in the glass, burying its face in it, chewing. When it fell, claws skittering on the surface of the glass, it surged back up, kicking off whatever foundations were still intact, smashing into the fault line.

  ‘Come on,’ Dashini cried. ‘You can do it!’ She stood back, held the knife high in a defensive stance as Rekka’s head breached the gla
ss. ‘Yes!’ In her voice was an almost frantic fervour. The thing’s head was stuck, but it tried to bite its summoner regardless, forcing itself through the gap, shredding itself but not caring. Its vicious teeth gnashed the air an arm’s length from where Dashini was standing.

  ‘Here we go,’ she shouted. The Nathan Knife flared black in her hand, and in one motion she drove it down, into Rekka’s skull, and looped it across, through the breach in the glass.

  Rekka stopped, stunned, the glass shattered, and Dashini hurled herself down at Nathan where he lay in the rubble-strewn remains of a room two levels below. ‘No time for rest. We’ve got to get out of here before it recovers.’

  LXXXII

  ‘What is that thing?’ The way ahead was blocked with bricks and the corpses of gill-men, so Nathan went down through a gap in the rubble that now made the floor.

  ‘The ur-demon Rekka,’ Dashini said, ‘It’s a bit of a menace, really, but needs must. This way.’ Dashini looked up at the ceiling. ‘These floors are all the same, so the library should be above us somewhere. We don’t have much time; Rekka could wake at any moment. Then it’ll hunt us down. Kill us.’

  There was an area where the roof had collapsed, just ahead.

  ‘Can we kill it?’

  ‘Kill a demon? Good gracious, no. Eventually, perhaps, with help, but to all intents and purposes it’s immortal, unstoppable. It won’t rest until its summoners are dead, at which point it will return to the realm it was summoned from and continue whatever it is that demons do there.’

  Through the ceiling there was light. ‘Help me up,’ Dashini said. Nathan linked his hands and she clambered up him. ‘This is the way. Come on!’ She reached out her hand and pulled him up through the remains of the ceiling.

  When Nathan was up, he stopped. ‘So why did you summon it?’

  Dashini smiled, picked a piece of brickwork from between the feathers that made her hair. ‘Who else was going to break the quarantine? I couldn’t. You can’t, not with the Interdicting Finger.’ She jabbed at his chest. ‘I saw the chance, and I took it. The consequences are… for another time.’

  ‘And Caretaker? Cook?’

  Dashini put her hand on Nathan’s shoulder. ‘Sacrifices, Nathan, must be made. I’ll make it up to them, I promise.’ Nathan was about to object, but Dashini put her finger on his lips. ‘We don’t have time to chat. Listen.’

  Nathan didn’t have to listen; he could feel the pounding beneath his feet.

  ‘Quickly. We need to find the Manual.’

  LXXXIII

  ‘Where is it?’

  The library was in chaos. It was barely recognisable as the room Nathan had studied in; it was barely recognisable as a room at all. The walls, ceiling and floor were now a pile of half-bricks and plaster dust, strewn with planks of wood and hundreds of books. Dashini was taking every book she saw and, after a glance, flinging it away.

  Rekka roared, the sound very near and approaching quickly. Nathan felt at his chest, felt for the Itch, but there was nothing, absolutely nothing besides the dull weight of the locket.

  ‘There’s no time, Nathan.’ She urged him over, grabbed him, and Rekka smashed through the remaining wall, shook its head. Dashini took the Nathan Knife, pulled Nathan as close as she could. ‘Sorry,’ she said, and she drew the knife across Nathan’s buttock. He yelped and the black fire blazed out from the knife hilt, knocking Rekka back the way it had come, burning whatever remained of the library: books, bricks, rubble reduced immediately to dust. They fell into the gap the fire made and Dashini pulled the knife out, dousing the flames.

  ‘Sacrifices. I’m sorry.’

  Nathan lay, clutching his wound. ‘There,’ he cried – a small pile of books, unharmed by the fire, protected by their own magic.

  Dashini dived across, grabbed at them as Rekka flew at her.

  Nathan stood, put himself between Dashini and the demon. Rekka saw him. It bellowed, opened its mouth to consume him. Behind its teeth there was a turmoil of blackness and hatred, bile and burning, murder and rage. Nathan put his hand to his heart, clutched for the locket as if he could pull it out, return the Itch, Spark this thing inside out.

  Then it disappeared.

  Nathan thought perhaps that he had done it, that the Spark had scoured this thing from the surface of the world, but then, as swarms of gill-men surged into the space where Rekka had been, Dashini took Nathan by the shoulder, turned him, chanted words from the book, and he and she too disappeared, leaving nothing for the gill-men to attack except each other.

  ‘The Manual of Spatio-Temporal Manipulation. We can’t kill Rekka, but we can put it somewhere else – in this case, a thousand miles beneath us. No doubt it will smash its way through, in time, but hopefully we’ll have formulated a new strategy by then.’

  Nathan was hardly listening. In the Underneath, in rows all around them, in lines disappearing off into the dark, were boys, slum boys possibly, in troughs dug into the ground and filled with the Living Mud. Some of the boys protruded by their heads, some by their feet, others were on their sides, so that the shoulders to the hips were visible, but everything else was under the Mud.

  ‘The Master’s barrier around the Manse prevents us from displacing very far left, right and up, but seemingly he didn’t consider down. Not much use to us, though – we can’t escape this way.’

  Iron platforms ran between the troughs, and every few yards there was a vat from which pipes ran. In the distance was a constant beating concussion – not the frantic tearing bash of Rekka, but the endless workings of machines.

  Dashini sat cross-legged and consulted the Manual. ‘If we can’t go out by magic, we’ll need to think of something else. At least the gill-men are busy upstairs. Gives us time to think.’

  Nathan knelt beside the nearest trough, wiped the Mud from the face of one of the boys. It was no-one he recognised, but his skin was warm. He didn’t wake when touched, not even when Nathan raised his eyelids with a thumb, but he was alive. ‘What is this place, Dashini?’

  She looked up from the book, glanced around. ‘Some kind of processor facility? A convertor? Boys and Living Mud in one end, gill-men and Bellowses out the other? I’m guessing. This isn’t the way we do things in Malarkoi.’

  Nathan shook his head. ‘Can we free them?’

  Dashini wrinkled her nose. ‘What do you mean? Free them from their earthly bonds?’

  ‘No! Let them go free.’

  Dashini snorted. ‘What? Back to the slums? I think they’re probably better off in here. Look, Nathan, we’re not out of the woods yet. The quarantine is down, but there’s only one way out of here – through the Master’s antechamber – and that is booby-trapped.’

  She meant the white room, the one laced with lines that didn’t trouble the light and which would slice them like an egg in a slicer. ‘I can get us through there. I can see the traps.’

  Dashini shook her head. ‘You could see the traps before the Master put that inhibitor in your chest. Not now.’

  ‘What about the book?’ Nathan took his magic book from where he had secreted it in the waistband of his trousers. ‘That always fed the Spark.’

  Dashini came over, and Nathan passed it to her. As she ran her fingers over the cover, patted it, Nathan winced. ‘That is a very beautiful piece of work, with many functions, but it will only enhance what is already there. Catalysis is useless without a reaction to catalyse.’

  She handed the book back to him, but he shook his head. ‘Can you hold it for me? I think it controls me, sometimes.’

  Dashini nodded. ‘There is something else that might work…’

  ‘Will it need a sacrifice?’ Nathan saw in his mind the axe, felt it split Caretaker’s skull.

  ‘There’s always a sacrifice,’ Dashini said.

  LXXXIV

  ‘Children,’ said the gill-man, ‘why are you here? You are forbidden from venturing to this place. And you, she-thing, are subject to quarantine.’

  Its gills were wide,
outraged. Down here, amongst the vats, it was possible that the alarm had never been raised, that this thing was solely charged with the protection of the Underneath. Was it unaware of the destruction in the upper floors? Dashini removed her hand from Nathan’s. ‘It’s a bit late for all that, don’t you think?’

  The gill-man shook its head. ‘It is never too late – the Master forbids you from wandering below either late or early. Your taint: it appals, it burns, it interferes with the delicate experiments.’

  ‘Do you think I give a damn?’ Dashini held the Nathan Knife up so that the gill-man could see it. ‘Show us where he keeps it.’

  The gill-man retreated, but only fractionally, and turned its head, almost imperceptibly. Whatever it was Dashini was asking about, the gill-man was anxious to keep it secret. ‘Where whom keeps what? Return to your quarters, or we will return you there against your will.’ The gill-man tensed, and there was in the air a thickness that ached suddenly in Nathan’s head. ‘I have called others.’

  ‘They won’t come.’ Dashini walked towards it. ‘They are busy with more pressing duties. Duties you should attend to yourself.’

  The gill-man looked behind, and if it was hoping to see reinforcements, they did not come. ‘What duties? My duties are clear.’

  ‘Where does he keep it?’

  ‘Silence! Every waft of your breath sours the air, and your oestrus is utterly intolerable.’

  ‘Take us to the corpse,’ Dashini shouted, undaunted, and the gill-man looked, involuntarily, towards a heavy steel door in the far wall. Before it could look back, or even realise its mistake, the Nathan Knife was in its heart and Dashini was halfway to the door.

  Behind it was dark. Water dripped, and the smell of earth was strong. Dashini raised the Nathan Knife, but the black fire it cast shed no light.