Penult (Book Four of The Liminality)

by A. Sparrow

  The promenade swarmed with defenders who patrolled in groups on foot. Olivier led me to an archway where two sets of broad steps carved into the side of the cliffs, angled off in opposite directions, zig-zagging down the face. One staircase was vacant, but the other was queued with heavily laden refugees making their way up from the lower terrace.

  “Newbies,” said Olivier. “Anyone who’s made it this far has already been cleared. All the vetting is done down below in the valley.”

  “Who don’t they let in?”

  “Spies. Infiltrators. But it’s pretty easy to spot Hashmals and Seraphs.”

  “Oh?”

  “Scars. Crisscrossed up and down their backs. Not sure what that is all about. Ritual scarification maybe? Some kind of initiation mark. They look too neat to be whip lashings. Whatever it is, it can’t be undone by flesh weaving.”

  We stopped to watch some of the new arrivals haul their belongings up the last flight of steps.

  “Some of them wait for days,” said Olivier. “It’s pretty dangerous for them in the valley, even behind the front. But here, at least, the cannons can’t reach, at least not where they’re currently deployed. These root cannons—horrible, clever things. They plug into the ground and suck in masses of raw root. The stuff feeds in continuously. Once they fire, they never need to stop and reload. They’re freaking death factories, churning out self-propelled projectiles that fly for miles. When they hit, they explode into living shrapnel. Stuff that hops and crawls, tearing into anything that gets in its way, like vicious little baby snakes.”

  “Jeez. Sounds awful. Like Fellstraw.”

  “Worse. The Dusters think they’ve destroyed most of them, thankfully, but the Seraphs still have a couple they hold in reserve … for special occasions … like when their Lords come to visit and want a show.”

  We continued on down the mostly empty down stairway. Halfway down the cliff face, we paused at a broad landing, where the stairs switched direction. The landing for the up staircase was only a stone’s throw away.

  Some porters ferrying supplies to the armies below had stopped to rest and partake in nectar and manna.

  “How are you holding up?” said Olivier.

  “I’m good. There’s nothing wrong with my legs.”

  On the opposite landing, in the crowd of refugees, a young woman caught my eye. She was about Karla’s size with the same shoulder length brown hair. She even moved with Karla’s distinctive grace.

  “Can’t be,” I said. She was quite a distance away and kept her back towards me. I leaned out over the retaining wall, straining for a better look.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “That girl. She kind of looks like Karla.”

  I shouted her name. Several refugees turned and squinted at me, but not the girl. She continued on up the stairs without a glance.

  Desperate, I studied the cliff face, looking for a crack or a ledge that would allow me to inch my way to the other landing, but the sheer, basalt face offered no such possibility. I shouted again.

  “Karla! Here! Over here!”

  “Are you sure that’s her?”

  “I … I think so.”

  “Come on, let’s head down. You can find her later.”

  “But—“

  “No worries. Listen. The Frelsians keep a record of everyone who enters this place. Once she’s on the upper terrace, she ain’t going anywhere.”

  All I could think of was the complexity of that warren. It panicked me. How was I supposed to find her if she went into that maze?

  I followed dutifully after Olivier, but I was on the verge of breaking away and running back up those stairs. The thing was, I couldn’t be entirely sure it was her. How many times back in Rome and Inverness and even Vermont had I spotted Karla in a crowd only to have the person turn out to be a complete stranger?

  My mind consumed with the image of that girl walking away, I followed Olivier down to the base of the cliff where the jungle had been cleared away from a triangular opening in the cliff wall between the staircases.

  The forest on the lower terrace was dense and lush. Massive trunks supported trees that spread tree-sized boughs over a dark and shady understory, devoid of brush apart from the occasional giant fern. The canopy, in turn, was cluttered and draped with parasitic vines. I could barely see the sky between the branches.

  We made our way through the clearing to an enormous and deep grotto guarded by a half a dozen giant rhinoceros beetles that came scurrying up to smell us with their clubbed antennae. They were gentle with us, sliding their antennae over our hair, and then quickly retreating back to their posts and letting us pass.

  “How do they know to let us through?”

  “Easy. We don’t smell like we’re from Penult. The beetles can tell.”

  We passed into the echoing main chamber of the cavern, the lower reaches of which appeared to be a root mine. Whatever natural cavity had been here had been greatly expanded by extensive excavations. The space bustled with warriors dragging several and huge and bulbous devices into the deeper recesses of the cave with skids and pulleys.

  “Root cannons,” said Olivier. “The Dusters captured a bunch but only these two are in good enough shape for us to use. Once we figure out how to start them we just need a spot to plug in. See those ducts?

  “You’re gonna fire cannons from this cave?”

  “We got no choice. Up here, this is the only source of undifferentiated root. The bedrock on the upper terrace is a couple hundred feet thick.”

  The war cannons looked more like witches’ cauldrons than the howitzers I had pictured when Olivier first described them. They were short and squat with a cavity that could fit four men and two lengths of ribbed ducting with barbed tips intended to burrow deep into the root beds on the plains.

  Various fragments of condors and falcons were strewn about—a shattered cage here, a talon, a severed wingtip.

  Olivier led me up to a column lying horizontal across some massive saw horses. It was intricately carved and resembled a totem pole though its designs were more abstract than naturalistic.

  “This here is a cracker. The Hashmals tried deploying it at the base of this very mesa, hoping to take the whole thing down. But the Dusters pounced before they could initiate it. We have others as well, but they’re generally trashed. This one’s in the best shape. It’s just a bundle of tiny hollow fibers as far as we can tell. No levers or switches. It’s just a goddamn telephone pole, basically.”

  “Why not just destroy it?”

  “Why waste it? Why not use it? Turn the tables on the bastards. Yaqob and Zhang want us to make a bunch and drop them into their formations. Give them a taste of their own medicine.”

  “An eye for an eye?”

  “And more. We want to make them to run back wherever they came from with their tail between their legs. Punish the fuckers! Make them wish they never came here.”

  “You think …? Is that possible?”

  “Listen. Before Penult came and fucked everything up, we had peace on the surface. Yaqob was already meeting with Zhang. And believe it or not, Luther was the grease. He’s the one who made it happen. Before the invasion we had a chance to make something really great here, and we can do it again. If anything, the war has brought us even closer together. We just need to get these damned Lords to take their toys and go home.”

  “So … what do you want from me?”

  “Same thing you did with the wings. Help us figure these things out. We don’t even know how to turn the damned thing on. There’s no … switch … or plunger or trigger. It’s just … a lumpy pole.”

  I sighed. “I can’t promise anything. But … sure. I’ll give it a shot.”

  “Of course not. But you have a better chance of sussing these out than any other soul I know. Believe me, Zhang has had his best Weavers look these over inside and out. But they’re not James Moody.”

  “Whatever that’s supposed to mean.”

  I went ov
er and examined a cracker column that lay in pieces on the ground. It interior seemed to be a mass of hollow channels and tubes of various sizes, twisting and spiraling around a solid core. The device had no moving parts that I could see, no control panel or anything of the sort.

  Over on the side, I spotted a pair of wings—Kitt’s—from the looks of them. They had a mottled salmon and turquoise pattern on the membranes, a flourish she had added to make them prettier than the generic grey Luther had initially devised.

  “These Kitt’s?”

  “Yup,” said Olivier.

  “She okay?”

  “As far as I know. She faded back last night. She’s a Hemisoul too, you know.”

  “I figured. Think she would mind if I borrowed these?”

  “Borrow them? What for?”

  “I need to check on something.”

  “What about the cracker?”

  “I’ll be right back. I promise.”

  “This is about that girl you saw, isn’t it? The one you thought was Karla?”

  “Yup,” I said, as I adjusted straps meant for a more petite frame.

  My heart was pounding like a demon as I ran towards the opening of the grotto, wincing as my squeezed my shoulder blades together to get those wings pumping. They burst into action with a flurry of wing beats. My feet left the ground.

  Chapter 34: The Assault

  I burst out of the grotto like a crazed moth, all six wings churning. A bunch of Duster warriors gathered in the clearing paused their conference to watch me careen about. A mantid roosting in a huge tree flicked its head my way, feasting on one of the overgrown leafhoppers that foraged high in the treetops. It looked like it was considering me for dessert.

  I didn’t stick around to tempt it. I looped around and caught an updraft that billowed up against the cliffs. I clenched my shoulders, rising, following the up staircase, where knots of souls laden with belongings trudged up the steep stairway to join the burgeoning population of New Axum. I buzzed the uppermost reaches, searching for the girl I had seen earlier.

  People flinched and ducked at the sight of me, mistaking me for a Seraph despite Kitt’s gaudily decorated wings. I didn’t mean to freak them out. Surely, they could see that a soul as scruffy as me was no citizen of Penult.

  A Frelsian guarding one of the landings glared at me.

  “Go away! You’re frightening them.”

  I hovered close. “Can you help me? I’m ... looking for someone. A girl about twenty. Dark hair. Kind of skinny. She was just here a little while ago.”

  The guard gave me a look like I was daft.

  “Hundreds have already passed this morning. We’re evacuating the valleys. The Cherubim are challenging our lines.”

  “Maybe she spoke to you? Her name is Karla. She’s Italian, sort of, but she lives in Scotland and her family is Austrian and Swiss.”

  The guard shook her head impatiently.

  I floated up and over the rim where groups of new arrivals had stopped to catch their breath before wandering the ruins to find a place fix up and call home.

  My sudden appearance almost got me blown out of the sky by a patrol as I flew up and down the promenade, scouring every side alley for the girl with the graceful gait. She had better not already faded back.

  The warren made a lot more sense from a hundred feet up. I could see its pattern of concentric circles and spokes. The place was bustling with settlers, but Karla or her lookalike were nowhere to be found.

  It took a while for me to accept the futility of my search. I had only managed to make a spectacle of myself.

  Now I felt bad for ditching Olivier. I flew back to the promenade, straight over the brink, and let myself drop straight down, the wings tilting just enough to kill most of the lift, but controlling my fall like a parachute.

  There was way more going on in those wing engines than mere flapping. The things were somehow attuned to the nervous systems of their wearers, anticipating maneuvers and executing them before we even had to think about them. My problem earlier, was trying to force it. All you had to do was to let it happen.

  The way I descended kind of matched my mood. I felt deflated. Defeated. If this had been another realm, roots would have been clamoring for my soul. But I was already in their realm. In Root, there was no escape from the blues.

  The Dusters I had seen hanging out in the clearing outside the grotto were now frantic, saddling up the mantids they had called down from their perches. One mantid rider kept watch from the treetops, sitting tall, staring across the terrace, his mount’s spiky forelegs raised and ready for battle.

  I nearly shit my pants when I spun around to see what had prompted all this activity. A flight of seven condors flying high was heading straight for the mountain. We were about to be raided.

  A pair of Dusters on dragonflies screamed past us, one zooming off to the upper terrace, the other taking a bee line to a larger camp in another clearing.

  I glided just above the canopy, passing across the entire mile-wide shelf. When I reached the edge of the lower set of cliffs, I freaked.

  Down below, a column of Cherubim was advancing on the outermost barricade of one of the side valleys that embraced the terraced mountain holding New Axum. The barricade looked daunting and deep and well defended by Frelsians and their armored Reapers. I thought for sure that the narrow column of Cherubim would be easily repulsed.

  And most of this vanguard did indeed fall, but the mixed column kept coming, bashers bashing, slingers slinging, until it had been used up like a candle burning down past a nub.

  I hovered just beyond the edge of the cliff, watching as a second column followed up the initial attack, trampled the remains of its predecessor, attacking the barricade in exactly the same spot and meeting pretty much the same fate. But then a third column came up and a fourth and they both punched through the center of the barricade like a dagger through a melon, penetrating deep behind the Frelsian lines before turning and broadening their line of attack against the flanks. Their fervor for battle never flagged despite losing more than half their strength.

  The Frelsians manning the barricade had no choice but to abandon the wall or be exterminated. A squadron of ant riders charging down the valley to reinforce arrived too late and found themselves caught up in the mad retreat. Some managed to filter through to screen the fleeing Frelsians from being picked off by surviving Cherubim who continued to fan out to span the valley bottom as yet more columns advanced unopposed through the outer barricade.

  The retreating Frelsians reached the second line of barricades with most of their force intact, but the Cherubim now had access to the cliffs and to my disbelief, began to climb straight up the sheer slides. New Axum had felt so safe. I couldn’t stand the thought of these Cherubim marching on and slaughtering all those unsuspecting refugees.

  Without even thinking, I dove and buzzed them, drawing a barrage from a bunch of slingers arrayed across the valley bottom to protect the climbers from air attacks. Projectiles ripped through my wing membranes, but I was able to keep on flying, this time keeping my distance.

  The climbers were yet another category of Cherub with special limbs adapted for climbing, with bony blades and wedges that could be jammed into cracks, securing themselves to the cliff wall. Another type of mutant lashed onto their comrades with tentacle-like limbs. Together they made a broad human scaffold that the other Cherubim could climb. The top of this ladder was already halfway up the cliff wall and climbing.

  Like an idiot, I had left my sword in the grotto, so I had nothing to focus my energy but my fingers. I tried summoning a blast, and while I had no trouble generating that churning feeling in my midsection, what came out was diffuse, buffeting the climbers with no more than a gentle gust of wind.

  I squeezed my shoulders so hard it hurt and soared back up to the lower terrace. Duster warriors were racing along the forest paths to reach the rim, but they were so few. Once the scaffold reached the cliff rim, Cherubs would pou
r onto the lower terrace and overwhelm it.

  The seven condors, meanwhile, were still closing in. It was clear now that they were aiming straight for the open ledges directly above the climbers.

  Indecision and panic froze me into inaction. I wanted to go back to the grotto to fetch my sword, but I didn’t want to leave the scene with the condors about to strike.

  Frustrated, I landed on the ledge, unstrapped the wings, and snapped off a bleached and grey branch from a gnarled and stunted tree that clung to life on the bleak stone. If it worked for Urszula, why not me? Why did I even need a sword? We all knew that the power that made these weapons work came from within each of us.

  With the condors coming right at me, I raised that stick, pointing it at the center of the formation and waited for my stomach to churn. Again, I had no trouble conjuring the feeling. In fact, this was going to be a good one. Question was, could I focus it?

  The band of Dusters I had seen running along the paths burst out of the forest and joined me. They smiled broadly at the sight of me, forming a line along the ledge and raising their own scepters.

  The condors were coming in fast. It was now or never. But just as I was ready to release a blast, an array of hands with bony hooks latched onto the ledge. The scaffold had reached the top of the cliffs.

  The Dusters were already unleashing balls of plasma at this threat, allowing the condors to approach unscathed. I kept my focus on the lead condor, and with the most certainty I had ever felt, unleashed a tight ball of plasma from the end of that stick that arced right into the central cage of the lead condor, taking out the pilot. The condor dropped and veered right into the path of the one beside it, talons tangling and hauling the second condor straight down into the valley.

  The remaining five condors came in unscathed, stalling and touching down lightly on the ledges in a widely dispersed row. Cherubim—bashers all—boiled out of the cargo cages, six per condor and came charging at us.

  Three mounted mantids bounded in beside us and pounced on the bashers, raking at their limbs. We advanced behind the mantids. I was too caught up in the moment to even think about the risk.