The King of the Skies

by Robert J. Crane

  “Thousands of years ago,” Bub confirmed. “Most life here was razed.”

  “So who built the bridges?”

  “You’ll see,” said Heidi tightly.

  Our rock was little more than an oversized boulder. Devoid of surface features, the side we found ourselves on terminated in a jagged cliff edge, as though a stone had been broken in two under the impacting blow of a hammer. That was the direction we went, heading for our nearest bridge between rocks. Behind us, though, was a different story. The farther I looked, the more the surface became curved and smooth: heat from the impact had turned the rock to molten ooze which then re-solidified.

  The bridge was like a string of silver, hung perfectly. Closer end affixed level with us, it arced skyward, twisting softly to the left like a rollercoaster track. The other end linked with a rock maybe a mile above us, smaller than ours, smooth and yet pocked with holes.

  My stomach clenched at that.

  It must’ve shown on my face. “You okay?” Clay asked, looking over at me.

  “Mm.”

  He followed my gaze upward. “Oh.”

  “We came out on the only clear one.”

  “Unforgiving surface,” Clay said, looking over it. “Too hard. Softer rocks, not so much of a problem.”

  Carson was torn between looking in the same direction as me, up at the dark hollows, or tracking the bridge. “I don’t understand—are they—geez, this bridge, it’s … it doesn’t look very safe.”

  “They’re all perfectly safe,” said Heidi.

  “But how? The atmosphere, and gravity …”

  Trust me,” said Heidi. “I’ve been here before.”

  Carson turned wary eyes on her. “Why?”

  “Doesn’t much matter. Let’s just go.”

  She stepped out onto the bridge before any of us.

  Carson, uneasy, followed, and so did Clay and I, Bub taking the rear. He had a particularly unhappy expression painted upon his face today—but I guess all of us probably looked that way, so …

  “Is there no way around?” I muttered to Clay. “No way of avoiding the rubble piles and taking a route around the more holey rocks?”

  “The arena is built in one of the rubble piles. Builders cored it out to construct it inside.”

  “So as we fight toward the second crypt key we’ll be plagued by—”

  “Potentially,” said Clay.

  My stomach dropped even lower. Any more and it’d have to choose which of my legs it wanted to slide down.

  Halfway along the bridge, Carson dared a look back—

  “Geez!”

  He threw his arms out to clutch a rail. But the bridge was wide, spacious enough to have allowed traffic to pass in either direction. (You could call it the Asteroad. Brilliant, Mira. You are a genius.) So with the edges too far away to grab hold of, he just looked kind of panicked, like a cat pressing itself low to the ground and freaking out before figuring out which direction it needed to weave in.

  I followed his gaze.

  We were well along the curve now. What had been ground underfoot was close to a wall at our backs—and knowing that we had been standing on it no more than five minutes ago, it was hard to fight off the sudden swimming sensation that overtook me. I should be falling, my brain told me, and I flinched too, the way Carson had sans throwing my arms out, because now I was aware of it, it seemed only natural that gravity would right itself, centering on our entry point.

  It didn’t, and I relaxed.

  “It’s okay,” said Heidi, gently pulling at Carson’s arm.

  “This isn’t real,” he whispered. Eyes fastened shut, he’d gone very ashen. His legs refused to yield. “This isn’t happening.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Heidi. “It’s really happening. And we’re okay. So just open your eyes and carry on.”

  Carson obeyed, loosing a slight whimper.

  But the world remained underfoot, our horizon aligned correctly, our gravitational center directly beneath our feet. It was just that Biristall had canted around us, that was all.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Carson wheezed.

  “Like I said earlier,” said Heidi, “plenty of things don’t, if you want to be scientific and analytical about it all. But we’re here, experiencing it, so it’s real. Best to just … get on with it, hm?” She said so very kindly, smiling her best, most encouraging smile at him.

  “But I don’t understand how …”

  “Don’t think about it,” Heidi said, and she resumed pulling him along. He went with her, only slightly slowed in his unwillingness. “That needs to be your motto in this world. That or ‘pack more bandages.’”

  Our world remained flat, though we were always moving toward a skyward curve. It never seemed to arrive … yet it grew before us, and the rocky rubble pile, coalesced under its own gravity, came into view, then gradually settled where the horizon should be.

  More bridges arced away from it, one that I could see the entrance to, and more which began somewhere on other sides of the small globe. Clay pointed out that we’d need to take one of those, a far one that meant walking around the mile-long rock … and which meant navigating the trypophobia inducing cavities strewn about the landscape.

  We stepped off the bridge …

  “Careful now,” Clay warned quietly.

  We’d not been talking much before. Now, though, our lips were sealed tight. I barely dared to even breathe.

  Clay signaled us ahead, pointing at himself and then across this fragment of Biristall to indicate he would lead. Fortunately the vacuous spaces leading to darkness were spaced apart, their clusters disconnected from each other. It gave us a way through … but we would have to tread carefully.

  We moved into single file. I waved Carson and Heidi ahead of me. Bub let me go next. I nodded my thanks and began to tiptoe across the terrain, hoping that the orc’s armor and footfalls would not give us away.

  I scanned the landscape for movement.

  Nothing, all around—and then something seemed to shift in the dark, just on the edge where the rock curved away. Boulders and rubble littered the land out there—and spread around them were holes to pitch black.

  “I think I saw something,” I hissed.

  “Shut up,” Heidi warned. Her words came from between gritted teeth. Still, she stopped, as did Carson and Clay up front. The gentle motion of Burbondrer’s armor shifting back and forth on his torso stilled at my rear.

  I waited, counting seconds, hoping …

  Something else shifted.

  I jerked my head around to center it in my vision—

  The ground was moving beneath us. A dull vibration began, low. The rubble pile was held together just enough not to shift—but all at once it felt precarious as something, many somethings, began to slither from their burrows …

  “Oh no,” I croaked.

  “Great,” said Heidi. “The party begins.”

  And they came: the holes disgorged steely grey worms. Bodies bulging in bulbous lumps, their heads came first, recognizable by a snout of a mouth, and two fat eyes like too-ripe berries, ready to explode under the sheer pressure of their growing juices. Their bodies followed, pushing, pulsating, contracting and extending to unfurl them from the ground … and into the air. They floated, contorting around, as if searching—yet the five of us could not hope for even a fraction of a second to blend in, and those bloated red eyes found us … and en masse, they began to snake through the air toward us.

  I swallowed hard, kept my breathing shallow. Sweat broke out on my palms.

  Heidi’s face was tense. Carson, to her side, paled. Clay pursed his lips. Bub muttered, tucking in close to me—as if I would offer any protection to an orc against these three-meter-long behemoths almost as long as a car.

  The first of them were almost upon us. Twisting unpleasantly in the air, they hovered over us. Their eyes had tiny pupils, and the spasmodic movements of their ungainly, glistening bodies allowed their gaze to move back and f
orth over us.

  I squeezed my hands, fingernails digging into my palms.

  I bit my lip …

  They writhed overhead—

  Then one descended, lowering, lowering, until it was almost but not quite face to face with me, just a little higher, so it could look down out of beady, horrible eyes …

  It opened its snout-mouth, exposing tiny gnawing teeth, all connected, fanglike thanks to its serrations—

  I cringed back, eyes closed …

  “Mira Brand,” it said, high and terse—

  It was my mother’s voice. It might have been over six months since I had last heard her voice, but I would always recognize that way she’d pitch up when berating me for some awful transgression that Emmanuel would have never made (or which he would have been instantly absolved of). So, too, could I pick out that way her faint Nigerian accent became more pronounced, growing stronger as her rage built.

  I swallowed against the lump in my throat. Nothing but a dry click.

  “You came all this way,” the worm continued in her voice, “without a coat? I know it’s summer, but you never know when the weather will turn!”

  I tried to ease back a step and collided with Bub. A barb stabbed just left of my spine, and I arched my back to avoid it.

  “Do you want to catch a cold?” the worm demanded.

  Carson’s face had gone paler still. “It … it really does sound like …”

  “Your mother,” said Heidi. “That’s how they speak.”

  “So you hear my …?”

  “No,” she said. “I hear mine.” And didn’t she look happy about it. “All of us hear our mothers went they speak. Even Bub.”

  Bub shuddered.

  “I just worry, darling, I really do,” the worm continued. “When was the last time you ate? You’re practically wasting away.”

  “I eat plenty well enough,” I muttered.

  “Really, now. You’re skin and bone.”

  I pursed my lips.

  “Mom,” Carson said, a baleful note in his voice. Then he turned, suddenly, a touch of pink coloring the tops of his cheeks. “Um. She just means—”

  “We can’t hear it,” said Heidi. She had a somewhat muted look about her, eyebrows low. Her bottom lip stuck out. “Whatever you hear is just for you.”

  “But … how …?”

  “They’re telepathic,” said Clay. He had a slightly pained look about him—though going by his face compared to the rest of ours, he was getting off the most lightly. Maybe he had an actual normal parent, and not a controlling one like mine, or a guilt-trippy dead one like I figured Carson was dealing with, or … whatever Heidi’s missing mum was like. Not especially pleasant, I guessed.

  “They just beam what you’re hearing directly into your head,” Clay continued. After a wince: “And pull from it for some of their … more on-the-nose observations.”

  “Hey!” said Carson. “That’s an invasion of privacy!”

  “So’s a mobile phone,” Heidi retorted, “but it hasn’t convinced you to chuck yours away.”

  I tuned them out and, in spite of my reticence, listened to the worm doing a damned good job of emulating my mother.

  “I warned you about this Seeker business, I really did,” it went on. “I know you thought I was just trying to boss you around, tell you what to do … but it’s a dangerous world out there! How many times have you come close to dying? How many scrapes? I see that you’re bruised right now! It’s not a good world for a girl like you, Mira. I wish you’d come home. We miss you, your father and I. Camille misses you too. And Manny. He said you’d seen him. He said …”

  I breathed a sigh. The initial shock of it worn off, there was something almost pleasant about hearing her voice again. I mean, we’d had our disagreements, but she hadn’t been a terrible mum. My upbringing had been a safe, secure one. Maybe a mite detached from my parents, but in her own way, she was just looking out for me.

  I shook the thought from my head. Couldn’t get stuck on that train of thought. Yes, I kinda sorta missed her, but in the way that every child misses an estranged parent—it’s the idea of what they represent, plus an ameliorated view of their good qualities, absence having made the heart grow fonder.

  It would not be healthy to start missing my mother. So stop it, Mira. These are worms. Your actual mum wants you locked in a room with all the edges filed down, and do not forget that.

  But as we resumed our journey to the arena where we hoped to head off Burnton, this only became more difficult. As more and more worms swam up, joining us in a chorus of voices as we crossed bridge after bridge, it just grew harder—for all of us.

  Carson’s deathly pallor had not improved. Every so often he would cringe. Now and again he’d turn, I assume in the direction of another voice—because not only were these things telepathic, but they’d got a kind of surround sound system going on—and I caught sight of him murmuring. Some of his whiteness had leached into Heidi, who stared straight ahead, very stoic … and then there was me.

  I was rattled, no two ways about it.

  The tide of mother voices went back and forth. Half of the time they berated me in that falsely kind way that parents and grandparents had down, a kind of passive-aggressive I’m so right and I only care about you, if only you would see how correct I am. The other half, they’d land on things that actually sent a pang into my stomach.

  “Why don’t you just come home? Camille really misses you, Mira. She used to look up to you so much. She still does, I know it. But she’s so hurt, knowing that you just went. And without saying anything? She’s broken-hearted, Mira, she really is.

  “Don’t you remember when I used to read you bedtime stories? I used to love that. And I know you’re a bit old for it now really, but, well … it’s been so long apart, and you are my baby girl … if you just came home, I could read to you again. It could be like when you were small. Remember that? Remember the story of Jack and the bull? I still know how it starts. Don’t you? The little song? Sing it with me; I know you remember the words. ‘Jack, the village mender’s son, who had himself a bull; did venture to the market, so he might trade for wool …’

  “I baked shortbread again this week. There’s so much of it to go around without you here. I always thought I made it too sugary, but you liked it so much, with that sweet tooth of yours. I never did like it as much as you, but I covered the top in an extra thick layer when it was fresh out of the oven just to keep you happy. The smell of it’s filled the house now. You’d love it, Mira, you would …”

  Shut up! I thought … because I didn’t dare open my mouth and tell the worms so. That they’d affected me so would be obvious the moment I opened my mouth and those words warbled from my throat.

  They’d know, though. They’d know the effect they were having as they dredged up the memories in the first place to pick apart and regurgitate.

  It made me angry.

  “This is it,” Clay said breathlessly. Whether that was because we’d crossed almost half of Biristall—and it was a big debris field these days—or because his own psychic interruptions were whittling down his resolve too, I couldn’t be sure.

  What I did know was that we had arrived. Nestled amongst the maze of bridges and rock that was the shattered world, a rubble pile to defeat all rubble piles curved into view before us. Miles across, it had indeed been cored out, right through the middle. A hexagonal arena had been erected—but it had no floor or ceiling, and as it was rotated ninety degrees toward us as we made our final approach, we could see right down the middle. A smaller debris field lay scattered within, stone softly pirouetting against a backdrop of empty space.

  “What’s the game here?” I asked.

  “Zero gravity, by the look of it,” said Clay. “Couldn’t say for certain though.”

  I nodded. Zero-G was fine by me. Not the first skirmish I’d had in a weak gravity field, thanks to Lady Angelica. That time, I’d beaten Borrick to the punch for the Chalice Gloria. So it
was pretty much destiny that I beat Burnton to the prize for this next quest on the road to Brynn Overson’s crypt.

  Slowly, the arena tilted away as it lowered to our horizon …

  Then we were upon it.

  The bridge exited right beside it. Beautifully convenient. I just wished now all the bloody mum-worms would get out of here—because this was a mighty crowd we had following us. More still were joining by the minute, expelling themselves from new holes built around the arena walls.

  “Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?” I said. “Before Burnton gets here.”

  “Supposing he hasn’t made off with it already,” Heidi muttered.

  I pursed my lips at that. He’d had more than enough lead time to do so.

  My one hope was that, if he had arrived here sooner, possibly by the Spurn Wyle, that he had had a mother who doted on him enough to have caused that oversized, smug head of his … and the sound of her cooing, repeated by his own droves of psychic worms, would have slowed him down so he could really drink in their praise.

  Another part of me hoped he had an awful mum who didn’t love him, and that he cried about it at night.

  Not that I was bitter or anything about losing crypt key numero uno.

  The arena was entered via a misshapen opening not unlike those eaten in the rock by the psychic worms. It made me cringe to pass through, but the wall was not much more than fifteen feet thick, so we did not need to descend into any dark places where they might lurk, bodies wet and pulsing, eyes fat and staring …

  And into the arena we went. There was no platform: just the corridor made by the hole in the wall. Then it terminated, dropping off into empty space, filled with rocks ranging from pebbles to ones the size of footballs, some the size of cars, all gently turning—and not one hinting, so far as I could see as I leaned over the edge to peer down, at where the second key might be located.

  “Oh, geez,” Carson moaned.

  “She won’t fall,” said Clay. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure there’s just no gravity.”

  “I think he’s more worried about himself falling,” said Heidi.

  “I can’t see where the key would be,” I said.