The Hanging Mountains (40 page)

‘An iron circlet. It went —’ He sat up and peered past Shilly in the direction he thought it had gone. There was nothing under the daybed. ‘I don’t know where it went.’

Griel and the others searched the observatory for any sign of the circlet, but it had disappeared.

‘Do you know what it was?’ he asked Griel. His legs wobbled underneath him as he climbed to his feet, but an echo of the unnatural vitality he had felt lingered still. The touch of Shilly’s hand thrilled through him like an electric shock.

‘If you were anyone else, I’d say you must be lying or mad.’ Griel spoke with his usual frankness. ‘But you’re not Panic; you can’t possibly know the legend of the King’s crown. He may be gone but it remains, appearing in times of crisis to those with great potential. I always thought it was just one of those stories designed to teach kids proper ways to behave — like don’t boast or you’ll do badly; accept your strengths quietly and you’ll succeed. But if you’ve seen it, received the offer right in front of us ...’

Sal didn’t know how to respond. Shilly was still staring at him. Jao looked more annoyed than surprised. He dusted himself down with shaking hands. The last dregs of euphoria hadn’t faded, and he repressed an urge to laugh uproariously.

‘How’s that charm coming along?’ he asked Shilly and Highson. ‘Can we get out of here soon, before I stumble across something else?’

‘Just about done,’ she said. ‘Give us a minute and we’ll be ready.’

Sal had more than a minute. He had a whole lifetime ahead of him. He didn’t need to be king of the world to enjoy his place in it, and at that moment, more than any other, it seemed as though nothing could harm him or those he loved. As he gathered up the accoutrements he had deemed useful from the empyricist’s wardrobe, he hummed a tune his adopted father had once sung. Even that memory of past loss couldn’t touch him.

* * * *

Griel uncovered no notes left by the empyricist, no clues as to his whereabouts, and no indication that he and Kemp had been taken by force. The lack of evidence gave little reason for them to linger. As soon as Shilly was ready, they left the observatory and headed into the city. The cage made three trips up and down the Way, bringing two or three people at a time down to its lowest level. There they found that the guards had been dismissed by Ramal.

Charmed to resemble Panic citizens with long arms and jutting faces, the humans hurried along the floating city’s complicated byways once more. Shilly avoided looking at Sal, unnerved by his altered appearance even though she knew it was still him, beneath the illusion. They encountered no resistance and few Panic; those they did see barely glanced at them. The mood of the city was tense and distracted by anger and grief. Children were kept indoors for fear of another wraith attack; windows were shuttered and doors locked; the only songs breaking the silence were in mourning to the dead. Griel didn’t take them anywhere near the section of the city that had been destroyed, but the pain of it permeated everywhere.

Sal didn’t seem to notice. Amongst Lodo’s notes were descriptions of tinctures used by some Change-workers to keep people awake longer or to make them feel temporarily stronger. Sal’s behaviour reminded Shilly of those descriptions. Immediately after the incident in the observatory, he had been restless, confident, unable to rest, and now he scaled the city’s ladders and ramps like he was genuinely one of the kingsfolk. His thoughts seemed half a second behind his actions.

They met the first signs of resistance at the entrance to the place where the Quorum lived. There, beneath three golden balloons, each as large as the Alcaide’s boneship, four guards tried to arrest them. Griel and Jao’s names were on a list of dissidents circulated by Oriel, it seemed. People on that list were to be apprehended and taken for interrogation, or killed if they resisted. Griel, of course, resisted. Once hooks were drawn, events happened very quickly.

It ended with one Panic soldier bleeding from a wound inflicted by Griel, and another gutted by Erged. The guard who had tried to lunge at Shilly had caught the full force of her charmed walking stick right between the eyes and he lay sprawled, stunned, at her feet. The fourth had gone for Highson. Sal, stepping in to defend his father, had exerted his wild talent in response.

The shock of it still echoed off the hanging buildings around them. Ties and stays vibrated, humming notes too low for her to hear. Even Sal seemed surprised in the aftermath, and that surprise finally erased the odd look that had been in his eyes since trying on the iron crown. Now he was himself again, and she was relieved on that point, if few others. His exertion had disrupted the charm camouflaging them. Anyone looking would see them for what they were.

They discarded their makeshift disguises, useless now the charm was broken. Griel opened the doors and hustled them inside. They hurried along a spiralling corridor that led to the heart of the building, passing a series of interesting artefacts Shilly would have liked to examine more closely. They sparkled with the Change, clearly relics of the times before the Cataclysm. Two tall doors stood ajar at the end of the corridor. A terrible wailing came from the other side of them, piercing in its volume and distress.

‘Srosha, why?’ wailed a Panic female’s voice. ‘Avesta, Armaiti, Mannah — how could you do this to us? Have we not been dutiful? Are we unworthy?’

A series of loud crashes followed. Griel burst through the doors, exposing a startling scene.

Shilly recognised the room instantly — the black-walled octagonal chamber lined with bookshelves that Sal had described — only now the books had been hurled around the room and the font at its centre had been tipped over. The fluid within now lay in a puddle across the floor, still casting a green light, so that shadows danced crazily on the walls. Shilly felt as though she had been plunged underwater. Her chest tightened instinctively.

Nowhere in the room was the Quorum to be seen.

‘You too, Bahman? And you, Horva? Why do you abandon us? What have we done to deserve it?’

The cry came from a dishevelled Panic female of middle years on the far side of the room. Her grey hair, once long and straight, now hung in wild disarray, as though repeatedly yanked at in despair. Her lined face was disfigured by deep scratches. Hollow eyes gleamed in the light. She didn’t react to Gael’s entrance, except to exclaim ‘Why?
Why?’
at him, as though he possessed the answer.

‘Tarnava!’ He took her by the sloping shoulders and shook her. ‘Tarnava, what happened? What’s wrong?’

‘They’ve gone. Can’t you see?’

‘I see, but I don’t understand. Was it Oriel?’

‘No. Oh, no.’ Tarnava wept openly, tears smudging the kohl painted around her eyes. ‘It was them
themselves.
They left us in the night. No word, no thanks, no signs at all. Just gone — gone, and nothing left for us who cared for them all these years. What are we to do now? Why would they have done this to us?’

‘You’re a fool, cousin,’ said a low voice from the shadows. A second Panic female — Elomia, Shilly presumed — stepped forward. She looked as wild as Tarnava, but radiated potent fury rather than desperate loss. Just looking at her, Shilly knew she was the one responsible for the chaos wreaked on the bookshelves. ‘You’re asking the wrong questions. They haven’t left us. They haven’t even arrived yet. In your madness you forget everything we ever learned about them.

‘They seemed restless to us all week, forgetful and incommunicative,’ she told Griel. ‘We didn’t realise they were settling in, that from their point of view they had only just arrived. They didn’t know who we were, and yet we knew
them ..
.’

Elomia bent down and picked a book up off the floor. She weighed it in her hand then threw it at the wall. Her long right arm exerted surprising force. The book’s spine split and pages flew everywhere.

Tarnava collapsed to the floor in a torrent of tears, wailing. Griel softened her fall, then let her go.

Elomia glowered at Sal. The incident with Mawson was clearly neither forgotten nor forgiven. ‘We should have recognised the signs,’ she said. ‘The day had to come eventually. But why now? Where
are
they now? Who sent them here? Will we ever see them again?’

Shilly thought of the strange trio she had glimpsed in the cave: Tom, Mawson and one of the Quorum. Three beings who lived, partly or wholly, outside the usual flow of time. Three who had, along with the rest of the Quorum, disappeared.

‘There’s something going on,’ Shilly said. ‘Something bigger than all of us.’

‘There is indeed,’ said a male voice from the entrance. Shilly turned to see a Panic male standing with a retinue of guards behind him, splendidly armoured in black and gold. His broad face was twisted into a snarl beneath a shining bald pate. A slick black beard coiled down to two elegant points that looked as though they had been waxed. ‘It’s called history, and we are all part of it. Some of us ride the winds of change willingly; others fight it and are swept away. The time has come to choose which path you want to follow.’

‘All this talk of wind is just that, Oriel.’ Jao loped forward, her anger a match for Elomia’s. ‘The only wind you’re riding is your own hot air.’

‘Is that so?’ Oriel gestured and guards rushed into the room with hooks in hand. ‘You defy the orders of the Heptarchs. You help prisoners escape from the holding cells. You bring the enemy to the very heart of our city. You murder your own. It seems to me you’ve already made a choice. No matter how your lips may phrase it, your actions speak volumes.’

Griel, Jao and Erged were herded with Sal, Shilly and Highson into the centre of the room. Shilly raised her cane and knocked the nearest hook aside, but another immediately took its place.

‘You can’t kill us,’ protested Jao.

‘On the contrary, I can, and may yet, when you’ve faced trial. For now, though, you live. The humans are a different story.’

‘They’re innocent!’

‘Like the ones who attacked us last night, I suppose?’ Oriel said, beard quivering. ‘A misunderstanding, you’d say. A mistake. I say otherwise. They have misled you. Their intent is and always has been murderous. They are spies and conspirators and guilty of crimes against the kingsfolk. I will not suffer them to live.’

Shilly didn’t waste time protesting. She took Sal’s hand and spoke to him through the Change.

‘I’m ready,’
he said.
‘Which one should I hit first? Oriel? The guard in front of you?’

‘No. We need to disable all of them at once.’
Panic soldiers shoved her, Sal and Highson together and raised their hooks. Green light gleamed off their sharp points. She fought to think clearly through rising terror, imagining herself gutted as the guard had been outside the entrance.
‘Take Highson’s hand. Use this charm, as hard as you can.’

‘What will it do?’

‘Don’t ask questions! Just use it!’

She felt Highson join the momentary gestalt and Sal’s unease at bonding so intimately with his father. She felt her own fear at the consequences of what she was about to do. She felt the Change flex as the Panic soldiers drew their hooks back to strike.

‘I accept!’ cried Griel in a loud voice. At the same moment, a bright light flashed and the floor literally fell out from underneath them.

* * * *

The Quake

‘We know for a fact that the firmament is

decidedly infirm. That it moved cataclysmically in

the past we take as axiomatic; that it might move

again is a possibility we cannot ignore.

Therefore two of the most important

responsibilities of a Sky Warden are to look

for signs of such a recurrence and to take all

steps necessary to prevent it. These transcend

all other duties. The world is still recovering

from the last Cataclysm. It might not

survive the next.’

MASTER WARDEN RISA ATILDE:

NOTES TOWARD A UNIFIED CURRICULUM

t was here!’

Skender stayed well back as Marmion raged about the campsite, clutching his injured hand to his chest and kicking at the evidence: rapidly cooling ashes; the remains of a small meal; numerous footprints, human and camel; harpweed fronds and the remains of a herbal paste; a patch of dried blood.

A Change-dead circle ringed the campsite, confirming what could merely have been supposition.

‘We suspected as much,’ said Banner soothingly. ‘The description matched perfectly.’

‘But to have been so close —’ Marmion stopped and stared at her, wild-eyed. ‘To know for certain that it lives —’

‘What is this creature?’ asked Lidia Delfine, a suspicious look on her face. ‘You made no mention of it when addressing the Guardian.’

‘I told your mother what she needed to know — as much as
we
knew, in fact. Anything else would’ve been pure speculation.’ He went back to pacing, unrepentant. ‘It was with Kail. That runner of yours named him, healed him, said he was travelling with one or two people who stayed hidden from her in the bushes. What in the Goddess’s name is that fool up to?’

Skender piped up at that. ‘Sounds to me like he’s helping the twins. I mean, think about it,’ he went on, although daunted by the angry look Marmion shot him. ‘They were together when the flood hit. The twins must have saved him, earned a favour or two. He’s bound by that even now, as they continue on their way. North-east, the same as before.’

He glanced up the path the Homunculus had followed. It wound and twisted up the side of a mountain, but its heading was clear.

‘Kail might be hoping to learn more about what the Homunculus wants,’ added Banner. ‘When he knows for sure, he’ll make a break for it and let us know in turn.’

‘Or maybe he already knows,’ said Chu, ‘and he’s helping out of the goodness of his heart. You may not like that possibility, but you do need to consider it.’