by Dan Rabarts
Araxtheon spared him a withering glance. He cranked another lever, and from a different section of the engine a lip of parchment appeared. With every crank of the lever, the parchment pushed further out, and Akmenos was shocked to see the same confounding array of gibberish inked on the sheet, though surely no-one could fit inside the wall to have written it. Unless maybe there were goblins in there, or fairies. When the parchment fed blank from the machine, Araxtheon drew a small knife and sliced it clear, holding it gingerly so as not to smudge the wet ink. “This will require more tea.”
In the kitchen, Araxtheon laid the parchment on the table and went to the kettle. Akmenos stood awkwardly near the door while Cordax studied the sheet intently. With a fresh mug of tea in hand, Araxtheon sat beside her and gestured at the inscrutable text. “That’s the Jawing Peaks, and the Abyssal Ravine. Must be.”
“Could be,” Cordax mused. “But it didn’t originate here, so how can it be specific to the Aetheric?”
Araxtheon shrugged. “It’s led him here. Whoever made it had to know this is where he’d end up, eventually.”
“You know,” Akmenos said, wringing his hands, “I am in the room.”
Araxtheon shook his head. “You know where it’s pointing.”
Cordax frowned. “Not the Rip?”
“Yes.” Araxtheon pushed back from the table. “The Rip.”
“The Rip?” Akmenos repeated. “Sounds dangerous.”
“I’m not taking the Gorgon there. Not for him.”
Cordax grew quiet, the uncomfortable silence stretching on longer than Akmenos could bear.
“What is it?” he burst out at last. “What’s the Rip? Why would we even want to go there?”
“Kamenos,” Cordax said, her voice low and serious, “how deeply do you desire the Holy Flame? To become a servant of justice and righteousness, a light to banish the darkness from the world? Is that your wish?”
Akmenos hesitated. He wanted to lose the blasted scroll case, so people would stop trying to kill him. But that wasn’t the answer Cordax sought. Cordax wanted a hero. Someone who would go where a lesser fellow, like Araxtheon, refused. Sensing his advantage, he ploughed ahead. “Yes. Yes, I do.”
“Will you take us as close as you can to the Rip?” Cordax asked Araxtheon.
The hornung buried his face in his hands and inhaled slowly. “Cordax, don’t. It’s not worth it.”
“He came here by the Will of the Flame. It’s our duty to send him forth.”
“You’ll be killed.”
Cordax’s eyes flared. “I appreciate your confidence.”
Araxtheon held up his hands. “Fine, I’ll take you as far as the maelstrom, but no further. I won’t risk the Gorgon inside the vortex. At least if you walk in, you shouldn’t be torn to pieces. But we have no idea what’ll happen once you get in there. The Rip is a one-way portal to who-knows-where, and nothing ever comes back out of it. Not the same as it went in, anyway.”
“Maybe we’ll be the first,” Cordax declared, her chin tilted in defiance.
Akmenos swallowed hard. The Rip sounded unlike any of the portals he’d patronised thus far on this wild journey. Still, Araxtheon couldn’t know that. Akmenos had pulled through all sorts of trouble already, though not everyone around him did. Where was Hrodok? Wandering blind in some nether waste? He couldn’t let such a fate befall Cordax. And it wouldn’t hurt to have someone watching his back who wasn’t manipulating him for their own sinister purpose. Presumably, at least. If Cordax and Araxtheon weren’t genuine, they were fine actors. Had they simply wanted the scroll case, they’d had ample opportunity before now to cut his throat and take it. No, he could trust them, despite Araxtheon’s antipathy.
Araxtheon turned away. “We’ll leave in an hour.”
~
Hal’alak swore. Not only did she have to lug this dead weight around until he came to—presuming Hrodok would ever come to—but she’d lost the trail. The constant wind blowing over the hardpan had scrubbed clean any tracks Akmenos might’ve left. Worse, the horizon’s few landmarks didn’t seem to move, no matter how hard she drove the taur. Her hunt for the Eternal Stair had never led her to this flat windswept plane of grey grit. What was its secret? If the scroll case was not a shortcut to the exit but a key, then she was in trouble. But she was an initiate of the Eternal Stair. No challenge was too great. Even so, doubt gnawed at her.
“Akmenos!”
Hal’alak startled at the sudden outburst. She had grown accustomed to the whistle of wind and the thump of hooves, the taur’s hissing breath.
Hrodok, slung over the taur’s mighty left arm, had folded up, mutilated eyes wide, hands outstretched, pointing ahead. “Don’t leave me, brother!”
There was nothing to see nothing up ahead, but Hal’alak spurred the taur to a run regardless. Unless Hrodok had lost his mind—which was entirely possible—then clearly, he had seen something. And something was better than nothing, at this stage. The bullman thundered on.
“Brother!” Hrodok cried, reaching for nothing but blind space. His arms trailed up, up towards the sky, as if following the path of a soaring bird.
Hal’alak reined in the taur, her eyes narrowing as she scanned the sky. “Hrodok, what do you see?”
“Akmenos, my brother. He was here.”
“Was here?”
“Yes.” Hrodok turned his battered face with its one crystalline black eye towards her. “And you used to be beautiful.”
Hal’alak stared at him for a long time, while his good eye drifted to the horizon and the barren sky. The other eye, all black facets reflecting light from an unknown place, fixed her, cut through her. Had she used the right enchantment to give him back his sight, or had she muddled the spell? Or was it this place, warping and perverting her magic?
“How do we follow him?”
Hrodok’s face relaxed, the pain falling away as this new madness drifted in to take its place. “We just let go.”
“Let go? Of what?”
“Of everything,” Hrodok said. “Let go, and fall.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Gorgon bobbed above the mist-shrouded crags. Above Akmenos floated a bladder of hot gas, the vessel suspended beneath it by cables of woven steel wire, not unlike a sailing ship with timber decks and a steering bridge. Sails thrust out to either side, catching the wind. Some ran the length of the vessel, like wings, while others stood out at strange angles, held in place and trimmed by a complex arrangement of ropes and pulleys which Araxtheon operated from the helm aft. Vents pulsed steam along the ship’s hull, and something thrummed in her bowels. Two fat-bladed propellers pushed them forward, presumably driven by whatever groaned and hammered in the heart of the ship. Akmenos had never so much as been to sea, much less taken a ship into the clouds. What a grand adventure.
From the prow, he surveyed the vista of misty mountain and crevasse. Not only was the view quite spectacular, if a little nauseating, but he was as far as he could get from Araxtheon without retreating into the stifling heat belowdecks. He’d be glad to part company with the other hornung, but no such luck. Akmenos had clearly offended him, yet that didn’t feel like the end of it. Araxtheon wanted an excuse to dislike him, and now he had his teeth set, he wasn’t letting go.
“This might be the end,” Cordax said, startling Akmenos. He really needed to concentrate more on his surroundings. If she’d been another relic-hunting assassin, he’d be dead. “I don’t know what lies beyond the Rip, but the Holy Flame wouldn’t lead us there without a way forward.”
“You really trust them. Why?”
Cordax frowned. “Pardon?”
Akmenos shrugged. “I’d never heard of the Holy Flame or the Eternal Stair or multiple worlds or any of it before now, and I only have now because someone framed me for murder. Forced to choose, the Holy Flame seems like the better option. But I know nothing about them.”
“The Holy Flame seek to elevate the lowly and the oppressed, and to break down the chains of
power that hold so many in slavery and servitude.”
Akmenos nodded. “You mean, powers like the Hornung Empire?”
Cordax shifted uncomfortably. “Exactly. Maybe.”
As the son of a Cursemaster, Akmenos had always assumed power belonged to the powerful, and that one day he would come into his own share of that power. “And replace it with what?”
“Freedom,” Cordax said simply.
“Sounds like a recipe for chaos to me.” How quickly would a kitchen without a chef turn to custard? Cooks battling each other for space on the burners, scullery boys beating each other with dirty pots, sous chefs devouring their delicious wares and never getting them to the dining room. In the dining halls, hungry guests turning on each other, storming the kitchen with flaming torches and pitchforks, trying to fry their own sausages. Bedlam. Someone had to be in control. Anything less was to invite disaster, like pork crackling left too long to broil. “Aren’t you free anyway?”
Cordax leaned on the rail, her hair like fine copper strands rustling lightly in the wind. “Maybe, but many aren’t. Most my kin are nothing more than slaves. That must change.”
“Your kin?”
“Yes. Other Mecha.”
Ah. Akmenos could almost hear the penny echoing hollowly in the vastness of his ignorance. “Mecha? You’re a…”
Cordax nodded. “Yes, Kamenos. I’m a machine.”
“Oh,” he said. And then: “Oh.” His head spun, undoubtedly the dizziness of being so high above ground. Not because someone he had thought was a person was in fact a contrivance of gears and wheels and…and what? What else made up this creature, who seemed so very real?
“It doesn’t make me any less real,” she said, almost bitterly, as if reading his thoughts, “any less of a person.”
“Oh, I won’t think any less of you for it,” he stammered. “You’re still you, right?”
“That’s right,” she agreed, and smiled, and for the first time Akmenos saw her, really saw her, not as a human woman beneath a thin layer of metal, but as a construct, put together so lovingly by her creator that she could know empathy and loyalty and the yearning for freedom that defined every living thing. She was truly lovely, and Akmenos blushed.
“So, why would Araxtheon be so jealous? It’s not like you can…like he can…” Akmenos gestured vaguely, futilely, at her body.
Her glance was steely, yet her tone remained light. “I may have been made without certain extraneous parts, but that doesn’t make me incapable of love, nor of being loved.” She looked away again, a cloud falling over her features. “But that’s not what troubles Araxtheon. In many ways, he still sees me as a possession, like most people consider the Mecha. His concern is for himself. He worries what you might bring here with you.”
Akmenos tapped his pockets. “Paprika?”
“He’s been hiding a long time.”
“Why?”
Cordax shrugged. “He’ll tell you if you need to know.”
Wind buffeted the Gorgon, slewing her sidewise through the thin cloud. Akmenos dug his hooves into the timber and gripped the rail while Araxtheon brought her back under control.
“We’re nearing the Rip,” Cordax pointed. “Those clouds mark the edge of the Maelstrom. See how they spin? It’s a vast windstorm that never eases. Very dangerous to fly through.”
“And what’s that dark patch on the horizon?”
Cordax grimaced. “That’s the Vortex. Anything that gets too close is sucked into the Rip. Nothing comes out.”
“That’s where we’re going?” Akmenos choked.
Cordax closed her metal fingers over his. “Ask yourself again: is this really what you want? There’s no going back.”
Akmenos heaved a sigh, as the Gorgon dropped towards the rocky plateau. “I just want to go back to how things were.”
“Things change,” she said. “Sometimes, they can never be the same again.”
“But I’m not a hero, not really.”
“Heroes arise from the strangest of places.”
Akmenos bit his lip, the airship bucking as it neared the ground. “You’re coming with me, right? Wherever this road goes?”
“As far as I can.”
Something within the Gorgon clattered, and half a dozen anchor chains spooled out, iron castings slamming into the ground. Winches groaned, reefing in the sails and winding the chains into the belly of the ship.
“Then I’ll carry on. Because I need it to end, all of it. The running, the hiding, the pretence that I’m something I’m not.”
“You’re more than you think you are.”
Akmenos shook his head. “No, I’m really not. I’m just making the best of a very bad situation.”
Araxtheon thumped across the deck. Cordax withdrew her hand, and they turned to face him. “This is as close as I can go without breaking something,” he said, as much of the stormcloud in his eyes as in the sky above. “Cordax, tell me you’ve reconsidered. The Holy Flame would want him to go on alone.”
Cordax stiffened her back. “The Holy Flame encourages working together, sharing each other’s strengths for the common good. It’s about—” She glanced quickly at Akmenos, then back at Araxtheon. “—being strong together.”
Or, to put it another way, it’s about carrying the weak.
“If you’re so concerned, why not join us?”
Araxtheon paled, then his face crumpled into a glare. “I have work to do here. I’ll drop the ladder for you.” He stalked away.
“Well,” said Akmenos brightly, “that went well.”
“Don’t,” Cordax said. “You need allies.”
Akmenos shrugged. “If there’s no coming back, what are the chances we’ll ever see him again?”
“Indeed,” Cordax said quietly, and walked away, some of the spring missing from her step. What had he just missed?
~
There, floating in the sky, was Akmenos. Swirling upwards with the mist, ghostly maybe, but there.
Hrodok turned his gaze—one eye of flesh, one of shining black rock—to Sianna, saw the skin taut against her bones, saw the age worming through her. Saw time spoiling away, dust and smoke and ash.
“Can you see him?” His voice was low, rough, like a man denied water as he awaits the gallows. He should have exulted that she had come to his rescue, after everything that had passed between them, sweat and skin and promises, yet he saw nothing but slow decay. Even the promises, falling apart. None of it had been true. Yet they were bound, because even though he could see time slipping back and forth like water, he was still chained to the past, and to the future. The needle and thread piercing his skin, his soul, the spool tugging him forward, the weight of all those tiny stitches and knots winding back into the mist behind him. He had started weaving this thread, and now he must unravel it. To do that he must move forward, and back, through the time he had left behind, the time he was sutured into. He needed Sianna, and he needed Akmenos. Yet he must let nothing hold him.
His face a mask of calm, he let go.
A flash of alarm lit Sianna’s features as he rose, before she unleashed one crackling silver rein and snapped it up, wrapping around Hrodok’s leg and lashing it under the bullman’s armpit. The pain was intense, and Hrodok screamed as the creature’s weight stretched his joints. Then the taur understood, maybe, because it too let go of the world below and together they ascended.
Following Akmenos’ phantom as he vanished into the mists, Hrodok let everything fall away, let the future drag him on, even as he slipped further into the past. Something wordless crashed against his senses, his personality and his sanity fracturing and flying in opposite directions, one looking through each eye; hope and loss, ambition and defeat. Future and past, love and death. He was all of it, and none.
He was ruin, come to life.
~
The wind howled. Akmenos pulled his apron tighter over his mouth and nose in an effort to keep out the swirling, stinging dust that tasted of sulphur and burn
t hair. The weight of the pack bore him down, but Akmenos was glad for it; Araxtheon had supplied them with food, blankets, water, and other essentials for stepping into the unknown. Whatever his feelings towards Akmenos, the pilot wouldn’t let Cordax go questing unprepared. Araxtheon wanted her to come back from beyond the Rip intact and alive, if alive she could be called. The Mecha struggled on beside Akmenos, head down, arms folded over her chest. For all his questions, he could hardly shout down the howling wind, much less string together appropriate words. What lay ahead took up most of his attention.
They staggered, foot by struggling foot, towards a swirling whirlwind of darkest grey at the windstorm’s centre. Akmenos was surprised the wind had not lifted them off the ground, twirled them into the sky, snapped their spines and flayed their bones already. The Holy Flame was a grand cosmic joke, something people believed in but which simply ate its victims alive before spitting out the bones.
Cordax reached out, grasped his fingers, her grip strangely stiff. Akmenos didn’t resist. Maybe she was a machine, but she was more real than some people he’d known. Then the wind grabbed them, lifted them, and sucked them into the sky. Akmenos glimpsed the Gorgon’s silhouette through the dust-haze, then the vortex dragged them into its screaming black heart.
Or maybe it was Akmenos screaming. He wasn’t sure. Didn’t want to ask in case he didn’t like the answer.
The air around them burned, crushed, condensed. Akmenos found Cordax’s other hand, pulled her to him, wrapped his tail around her legs and bound her close as the turbulence raged at them. Her knees locked behind his, metal tight. Akmenos squeezed his eyes shut against the whip-sting of flying dust. If he opened them, he might see her there, tight in his embrace, close enough to kiss, their hips locked together. Were she flesh and bone, and not a construct of metal plates with a heart of steam, it would’ve been vastly inappropriate. But as they were clinging together for dear life so as not to be torn asunder, lost to each other and to everything, forever, he could live with that. The vortex drew them into the Rip’s yawning maw, and then they were falling, down, down, into eternal black.
