Mainspring (38 page)
Authors: Jay Lake
Hand in hand with Arellya, Hethor followed the shaft clockwise around its curve. The great column of metal fit into a little lip of rock where it emerged from the flower meadow. Given the immense size of the thing the tolerances were miraculous. Which by definition had to be true.
Hethor smiled upward as if God or His angels were watching.
A cluster of the correct people waited ahead of him, Tiktiktee and the other young males crowded around the entrance. As he approached they stepped back, flowing away in a hairy tide.
The stairs were simple enough, descending into a hole in the flowered turf that resembled an open grave. It was set a few feet back from the shaft.
Perhaps to provide clearance
, Hethor thought, though why divine Creation would need an inspection access was beyond him.
Perhaps to provide clearance
, Hethor thought, though why divine Creation would need an inspection access was beyond him.
There was no marker to indicate the access way, though with the shaft close to hand, one was not needed. He stopped at the head and stared downward. Stairs led into the earth, their well gloomy but not impossibly dark
as it curved to follow the shaft. The spiral ran counter to the rotation of the axis, heading to the left. Hethor could see where it bent out of his vision, following the curve.
as it curved to follow the shaft. The spiral ran counter to the rotation of the axis, heading to the left. Hethor could see where it bent out of his vision, following the curve.
“This is it,” he said, resisting the urge to make another speech.
One of the young males stood and walked over and touched Hethor's hand. “Luck, Messenger,” he said, “and may your soul rest in the easiest of places.”
“And yours,” he said.
Then another, with a simpler message. “Luck.”
Tiktiktee hugged Hethor, the correct person's strong arms tight around his waist. “Our world is yours, Messenger.”
One by one, the rest of Arellya's eight surviving tribesmen came forward to Hethor. Each had a word or two. Each took a moment to let their touch linger. Each walked away into the flowers without a second glance.
After a few minutes, only he and Arellya remained. She held one of the last of the correct people's spears in her hand.
“You cannot come,” said Hethor.
“You cannot stop me.”
“Don't. Please.”
She smiled again, though the smile wavered. “I will not stay here to die of cold, wondering what finally became of you.”
Hethor didn't want to be apart from her, not for a minute, but he couldn't take her into the Earth. It was akin to inviting her to stroll with him in Hell. “The men of your tribe will protect you.”
“From the storms? No.” She tugged free of his hand to set foot upon the first of the steps. “I can run ahead of you to make you chase me.” She pulled her foot back up. “I can hang back to follow you like a shadow cut free from its source. Or we can walk down together. Partners. Mates. Woman and man.”
“You are from Creation's dawn,” Hethor said. “I am from its noontime.”
“Or sunset,” she replied, “if you fail. That is no argument against me.”
He opened his arms and she stepped into them. They hugged for a long time, him breathing in the sweet scent of her hair, mingled with poppies and the tingly bulbs they had eaten and the slightly raw odor of mice. Hethor imagined the world shuddering to a halt on its track, the sun's light boiling some oceans while others froze in eternal darkness. Would the Chinese Empire suffer in eternal night? What if the turning of the Earth stopped on the other side, with London facing the stars? Would anyone's interests be served?
Master Bodean, Librarian Childress, the farmers who had helped him, that girl with the hearse, even the crazed and foolish candlemen, Her Imperial Majesty's sailors, the Jade Abbottâall their lives hung on him. If Arellya chose to walk by his side, who was Hethor to deny her? Perhaps she, too, had been called by God. Perhaps he was her angel, her Gabriel come from the sky to awaken her people to their peril.
Just as someone else might have sent Gabriel to him.
Hethor felt an unaccountable longing for the late Simeon Malgus, though the man was half a traitor and fully arrogant. The navigator had possessed a way with words and a willingness to explain things. Sometimes, at least.
Hethor could no more explain the world to himself or Arellya than he could explain love.
Arellya shouldered her spear. Hand in hand, facing the darkness, they descended beneath the Earth little more than an armspan away from the spinning wall of brass that drove the world.
THE BRASS
stairs spiraled slowly through layers of rock. The wall of spinning brass that was the main axle of Earth's rotation was always on their left. Hethor could glance over the brass rail of the stairs and see something like infinity receding until perspective folded the view into itself. On the right, the differing strata. They told a history of the Earth's Creation, the careful folding of layers into one another by the hand of God.
stairs spiraled slowly through layers of rock. The wall of spinning brass that was the main axle of Earth's rotation was always on their left. Hethor could glance over the brass rail of the stairs and see something like infinity receding until perspective folded the view into itself. On the right, the differing strata. They told a history of the Earth's Creation, the careful folding of layers into one another by the hand of God.
Always there was light. Vague, sourceless, as though stars shone overhead even in the depths of the Earth.
“How deep do these stairs descend?” Arellya asked as they made their way downward.
“Farther than we can journey before we starve, I fear,” said Hethor. The mathematics were simple enough. If he truly had to descend into the clockwork heart of the Earth, it would be a walk of thousands of miles spiraling ever downward. No man, or correct person, could survive that. “We must as always trust to faith.”
“You have come far on trust until now, Messenger,” she said with a squeeze of his hand.
After a time the rock gave way to gear trains and layers of metal clattering just to their right as they descended.
Walls of machinery and spinning fields of brass extended into the gloom. They walked among it all like flies on the windowpane of a machine shop.
Walls of machinery and spinning fields of brass extended into the gloom. They walked among it all like flies on the windowpane of a machine shop.
This was the balancing mechanism within the Earth, part of what kept it on God's track. Hethor tried to imagine what sort of interrupter gear would allow these devices to function tied to the central shaft, while also permitting his descent via the stairwell. Perhaps there were spiral reliefs cut through the shells of the inner spheres of the Earth. Or the stairway itself was discrete, a section that descended like a worm gear regardless of how rapidly or slowly he and Arellya walked.
As well to imagine flights of angels buoying them toward their destination. Yet this was all the work of God, somehow.
In time, the gearwork gave way to crystal caverns extending into the depths of the Earth. These spaces glittered like the captured stars of Hethor's imagining. Their right-hand wall vanished utterly, so that the brass stair wound onward seemingly unsupported. On the one side it wound around the spinning shaft like a lover's hand. On the other, empty void, their clanging footsteps echoing from the star-speckled depths. Everything had the clean, cold smell of an icehouse in winter.
It was here, lulled by hours of walking without need for rest or food, that their first test came. Wooden statues tumbled out of the surrounding darknessâthe tall, flat-faced servant-automata of William of Ghent. In a clattering moment, Hethor and Arellya were trapped upon the stairs. Two wooden men blocked them below. There were three more above.
Hethor had no fire with which to fight them this time. No weapon at all. He had not thought to need one here.
Of necessity, he raised his fists. “You will not bar me from the heart of the world!” he shouted.
Then the creatures were upon them. Splintered arms slashed toward him only to bang against the brass rail of the stairs as Hethor ducked the blow. Arellya slipped to
his back, shrieking a ululating war cry of the correct people. He felt her move, bumping against him as she jabbed with her spear.
his back, shrieking a ululating war cry of the correct people. He felt her move, bumping against him as she jabbed with her spear.
It was like fighting a house. He would land a blow only to shock his knuckles. One of the wooden automata would strike back, nearly shattering bone in Hethor's shoulder or arm. All that stood between him and final ruin was the crowding of the stairs. Only two at a time could face him.
Behind, Arellya shouted and jabbed some more. She did not scream in pain or fear. He trusted her and instead concentrated on what stood before him.
You've been among sailors and tropical warriors,
Hethor told himself. He must have learned something. He stepped into an incoming blow, set his weight against the wooden automaton's chest, and shoved it into its neighbor. The two toppled and spun, trying to untangle and carry on the fight, until one tipped against the rail and fell silent into the pit that spread below them.
Hethor told himself. He must have learned something. He stepped into an incoming blow, set his weight against the wooden automaton's chest, and shoved it into its neighbor. The two toppled and spun, trying to untangle and carry on the fight, until one tipped against the rail and fell silent into the pit that spread below them.
Hethor rushed the second, which was still off balance, before its fellows could close. He got it over the left-side railing. There he pressed his advantage to slide its head into the spinning brass wall of the axle. Splinters and sawdust flew amid a burning stench and a strange buzzing noise. Blows rained down upon his back in a sort of vengeance.
Arellya screamed.
Hethor heaved the suffering creature over the side, where it would bounce splintering against the whirling shaft, and turned to duck another swinging blow. Arellya lay on the stairs. Her spear was braced to keep two of the wooden attackers at bay. They loomed over her, jostling one another for the chance to stomp her.
Hethor tried to leap, but the one survivor above him grabbed at his ankles. He fell, striking his face against the wrought metal of the steps.
In a moment his legs would be smashed. Just ahead of him, Arellya cried out again, blood matting her lovely, lovely fur.
It could not end like this.
Hethor closed his eyes and reached for his sense of the underlying reality of Creation. The wooden automata were masses of gears, eerily regular in their formation when compared to the wild naturalistic designs within Arellya or himself. He reached back with his power, working against the pain in his legs, to crumple and scatter the gears of one of his tormentors.
His ears reported an explosion as splinters hammered into his body. He turned to face Arellya's attackers. The image of fire came to his mind. In his holy sight it was an unbound chaos in this version of the world, a chaos that destroyed through reduction, making unstable structures of breathtaking beauty that collapsed in a moment in a shower of springs and parts, each in turn another world of complexity.
Hethor made a gift of this chaos to Arellya's two. They each erupted into billowing heat and flaring madnessâan unraveling of the orderly world of Creation.
Setting aside his holy sight, Hethor knelt beside Arellya. She still clutched her spear. Her eyes were filmed over and she was whimpering. Blood matted the fur of her neck and shoulders and chest.
“Can you hear me?” Hethor asked.
Arellya nodded.
“Will you live?”
She just stared.
He reached for her then, trying to find the mainspring that drove her body without disturbing her essence. There were patterns of chaos, or worse, silence, in the tumbling assemblage that was Arellya. She had taken a sharp blow to the head. He caressed her there, his fingers feeling matted fur over shifting bone even as his eyes saw more of God's favored brass.
Though Hethor could not make her whole all at once, he could smooth out the chaos and set gears spinning within the silent places of her head. As he bent to do that an unexpected blow struck his back as an ax strikes a sapling.
There had been another attacker.
He collapsed on the stairs, still seeing the underlying world as he slid past Arellya. Hethor's hand reached for her spear even while he rolled away from a further blow that set the stairs ringing. The spear was close, but not close enough as it brushed against his fingers, so he made his own, willing it from the fabric of the air. There was a rushing howl of winds and the sharp smell of a storm as he thrust his clockwork spear forward.
His holy sight was gone, stripped from him by exhaustion. The last of the wooden automata tumbled slowly away from him. Its flat face melted into the screaming visage of a dark-skinned man, much as William of Ghent's servants had done when his great jungle fortress took flame.
He stood to shake off his vision, soul-sick from the magic. His feet ached dreadfully. Blood streamed from a hundred splinters. Arellya clung to the rail two steps above him now. Her spear stood wedged into a stair riser. She smiled. “We live.”
“We live.” He shuddered. Hethor had never known he could absorb, or deliver, such punishment. He only prayed to God he would not have to do more, though he suspected such a prayer to be no better than vanity. “Onward.”
“Messenger ⦔ She sounded uncertain. Heartbreakingly so.
Hethor paused in the act of turning around, one hand on the rail. “What?”
“I am afraid that I cannot stand.”
“Ah.” He looked at his beloved for a moment. “Then I must carry you on my back.”
THEY PRESSED
onward. The diffuse light came to seem a despairing gloom. The endless echo of the brass stairs was a bell tolling out the last strokes of Hethor's life.
Each footfall was multiplied in weight, and pain. He had come so far. Hethor would not stop now.
onward. The diffuse light came to seem a despairing gloom. The endless echo of the brass stairs was a bell tolling out the last strokes of Hethor's life.
Each footfall was multiplied in weight, and pain. He had come so far. Hethor would not stop now.
He could do little to command his own slowing, however.
The crystal caves were gone. There was only an endless, echoing space with the shaft always to their left. The wind of its rotation plucked at them. The hum of it nagged at their ears. Arellya's weight on his back grew and grew, until Hethor felt as if he carried a draft horse into the nether regions of the Earth. Only her warm, shallow breath on his neck, the sweetgrass scent of her tingling his nose, reminded him of his true self, his true purpose.
After a while he became aware of a creaking noise in the shadows around him. Something large moved there. It made him think of
Bassett
under way, or perhaps how the chest muscles of the winged savages popped as they flew.
Bassett
under way, or perhaps how the chest muscles of the winged savages popped as they flew.
Then Gabriel alit upon the stair rail. The angel crouched to grasp it with its fingers, each hand set just outside the feet pressed together. The pose was odd, balanced by the wings, making the angel seem like a great turkey or rooster.
“Greetings, Hethor,” said Gabriel. “You have come so far.”
Hethor wanted to kneel on the steps, babble out his relief and pray for aid in this terrible place. Only Arellya's weight upon his back kept him standing. “I have done all that you asked and more,” he said, “though it cost me dearly.”
Gabriel nodded over Hethor's shoulder. “It gained you dearly, too. But you have not done everything. You have neglected the Key Perilous.”
Hanging his head, Hethor said quietly, “I never came near it. Though I sought it far and wide.”
“You turned your face south too soon.” The archangel smiled, pity and love mixed together like a balm for Hethor's wounds. “Your errand is moot now. Another way must be found, though time before the end is very short.”
“I go forward,” said Hethor. “There is no turning back.”
“No,” agreed the angel, “but you can rest. You have earned it. Sit here a while. I will find some food and blankets for you.”
Where would it find such things? Hethor wondered. On his back, Arellya stirred. Gabriel was right. He should just sit down and rest. He must set his load aside first.
“No,” she whispered.
No
, he thought. She was right. This made no sense, though it was hard to find the logic amid his fatigue. “Why would you have me abandon my quest?” Hethor asked. “Turn back perhaps, but why stop here?”
, he thought. She was right. This made no sense, though it was hard to find the logic amid his fatigue. “Why would you have me abandon my quest?” Hethor asked. “Turn back perhaps, but why stop here?”
“You deserve your rest.”
“No,” whispered Arellya. “He plays you false.”
Hethor considered. The wooden men must have been a sending from William of Ghent, still seeking an end to the world's turning. Allowing the Mainspring to wind down was freedom, perhaps, but Hethor could only imagine it as the freedom of death.
And now this. Gabriel had not spoken to him so, back in New Haven. Gabriel would not urge him to lie down and rest.
“The token you gave me,” Hethor said, “the horofix that was taken from me in New Haven. What became of it?”
“It is in God's hand.” Gabriel smiled.
“It was a
feather”
Hethor shouted. “Not a horofix.” He gathered his holy sight, made a fist of the power, and shoved the false archangel from the rail. Gabriel exploded in a cloud of clockwork, much of it tiny as the splinters of the wooden man had been, so that Hethor's clothes and skin were slashed anew.
feather”
Hethor shouted. “Not a horofix.” He gathered his holy sight, made a fist of the power, and shoved the false archangel from the rail. Gabriel exploded in a cloud of clockwork, much of it tiny as the splinters of the wooden man had been, so that Hethor's clothes and skin were slashed anew.
He was so weakened by this use of his power that he slipped some distance down the spiral on his buttocks, dragging Arellya with him. They finally came to rest in a groaning tangle with Hethor's left leg jammed against one of the metal stair posts.
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