The Hanging Mountains (42 page)

‘Was that really necessary?’ the mage blustered.

‘Balloon,’ explained the escort with the beaded hair.

‘Does that mean the Panic?’ asked Marmion.

‘Yes.’ The shadow slipped silently into the forest but still the guards kept them motionless. ‘There could be more. Combat blimps sometimes travel in pairs.’

‘Is that what the messenger meant by them being on the move?’ Skender asked. He had pictured the Panic crossing the forest much as they were, in single file through the trees.

‘They always travel by air,’ said the guard, ‘sneaking around in the clouds and dropping things on people, only coming down to steal our crops and livestock. Get them on the ground where we can fight them face to face and they won’t last long. Trust me.’

‘They live in a floating city, you know,’ said Kelloman to Skender. ‘Never seen it myself, but one hears rumours. As big as the Haunted City, apparently, and strung about with the skulls of their enemies.’

Marmion looked at the guard. ‘Do you believe that?’

‘I believe they’re overhead right now and heading for my home,’ she responded defensively. ‘Are you trying to claim otherwise?’

‘No, no.’ The warden peered up at the sky. “There’s no sign of a second one, though. Perhaps we should keep moving.’

They picked up their baggage and hurried along the path. Not long after, a second earthquake rocked the mountainside, milder than before but no less frightening for it. Skender held his breath and waited for the ominous rumble of another avalanche. None came, and he was profoundly grateful.

A runner overtook them, heading for Milang. Even younger than the first one Skender had met, he stopped to accept their offer of water and gave them part of his message. Word had been sent from an observation post north along the wall of mountains, relayed by any means possible to the Guardian in Milang: spies had seen the Panic city shifting location.

‘It’s headed for Milang,’ said the runner, losing some of his bright pink colour and beginning to breathe more easily. The Panic are going to destroy the Guardian!’

Then the runner was off again, sprinting through the forest bearing the terrible news on his skinny shoulders.

Marmion opened his mouth to speak. The guard glared at him, and he shut it.

As they resumed their journey, Skender glanced backwards over his shoulder, half-expecting a much larger shadow to fall over him — that of an entire city, bristling with murderous warriors. He tried not to believe it, but all he knew of the Panic came second-hand, plus a few frightening minutes of fighting. One had died at his feet.
Pan troglodytes sapiens.
He had only Sal’s word that they were peaceful.

When he tried to call Sal, he again received nothing but silence in reply. The thought occurred to him then that maybe his friend’s last message had been sent under duress. What if he had been used to make the humans drop their guard and the city of Milang more vulnerable? While Lidia Delfine had been off wraith-hunting, perhaps the Panic Heptarchy had been arming for war.

He hoped not — for Sal and Shilly’s sake, as well as for himself and all the citizens of Milang.

* * * *

The Bluff

‘Death is not the opposite of life. Death is the

opposite of conception. Both can happen in an

instant, unplanned and calamitous; both can

bring joy and pain in equal measures. But

if death is not the opposite of life, what is?’

THE BOOK OF TOWERS,
EXEGESIS 13:15

ake Highson’s hand. Use this charm, as hard as you can.’

‘What will it do?

‘Don’t ask questions! Just use it!’

Sal grasped the charm with his mind, turned it and shaped his will around it, filled every thought with its elegant complexity. Dimly he perceived the Panic guards shoving him, but he couldn’t afford the distraction. Griel bellowed something just as he flexed his will and brought the charm to life, but he stayed focused.

Metal tore. Sparks flew. Weightlessness overwhelmed him, sudden and startling.

Then they were falling into smoke and billowing mist, down through the floor of the Quorum chamber, away from the shrieking cousins, Tarnava and Elomia, and away from the furious bellowing of Oriel and the guards. Seven people — Sal, Shilly, Highson and Rosevear; Griel, Jao and Erged — suddenly airborne, dropped out of the bottom of the floating building, free but not yet safe, their future suddenly and frighteningly unknown.

And potentially very, very short. As long as it took to drop from the floating city to the ground below. Not far or long enough, Sal suspected.

The Change flared a second time. Fog gathered around them in a dense cloud and turned to frost with a crisp crackling sound. Barely had he time to grip Shilly’s hands tighter, to attempt to draw her closer to him, when a broad flat surface came out of nowhere and smacked them apart. The surface flexed like rubber. He literally bounced through the air. Frost turned to ice against his skin as something much more solid loomed out of the mist. This time a metal surface struck him, sending him into a tumble. The ice made it hard to find and keep a purchase. Seams slid by, bruising him, and it was against one of these that he finally scrambled to a halt.

Momentarily winded, it was all he could do just to breathe for a moment and wonder at his survival.

They had fallen. The charm Shilly had given him had blasted a hole in the bottom of the Quorum chamber and they had dropped right through it. Instead of plummeting to the ground, however, they had landed on another part of the Panic city — a fog-collecting vane, perhaps — lower than the one they had been on, and suspended from the upper one by wires and stays, just as every part of the city seemed to support one or more other parts. From there they had bounced onto the next solid structure down. Had that been Shilly’s intention all along? Or had she simply taken the only way out she knew, and luck had been on their side?

He didn’t care to know, for the moment. Scrambling painfully to his feet — being careful not to slip, for the surface beneath him sloped increasingly downward to a drop shrouded in mist — he sought the others who had fallen with him.

‘Shilly! Highson!’

‘Over here!’ The cry came faintly through the fog: Shilly’s voice, some distance away. Sal set off in that direction, wondering what sort of structure they had landed on. The sky around him contained little but the suggestion of shapes: faint outlines of neighbouring habitats and walkways, all connected to balloons invisible above.

A distinctive Panic silhouette loomed out of the mist. ‘Griel?’

‘No.’ Blood trickled down Erged’s face from a gash on his temple. ‘He fell over there, I think.’ He pointed in the same direction as Shilly. ‘What happened?’

Sal briefly outlined the effects of the charm Shilly had made as he helped the Panic across the strange metal surface. ‘Then Highson condensed the mist around us,’ he explained, remembering the frost that had formed as they fell and working out for himself where it had come from. ‘That cushioned the impact.’

Erged still looked slightly dazed. ‘Oriel?’

‘Probably still trying to work out where we went.’ Sal looked upwards, but could see no sign of the structure they had fallen from. He didn’t know how long it would be before guards headed their way.

Four figures appeared in the distance, standing and crouching where the metal curve beneath them peaked like a low, time-worn hill. Shilly waved her cane on seeing them. Sal urged Erged to hurry.

‘How are you feeling?’ Shilly’s arms around him were warm and welcome.

‘Fine,’ he said, although his head throbbed and he suspected all his left side was turning into one long bruise. Despite that, he felt vibrantly alive and strong: the after-effects of wearing the crown, he presumed. ‘What about you?’

‘No major injuries,’ said Rosevear. ‘Have you seen Griel?’

Sal noticed then that the Panic standing with her and Highson was a battered-looking Jao, not Griel as he had assumed.

‘Over here!’ came a cry from his right. ‘I’ve found the way in.’

Griel’s voice. The six of them followed the sound down the sloping hull to where the Panic stood over a large, square hatch.

‘I knew it was here somewhere,’ he explained, beaming proudly and bending down to swing it open. Its hinges complained but his muscular arms were equal to the task. The hatch fell aside with a soft, ringing thud, revealing a ladder descending into darkness.

‘Where does that lead?’ asked Shilly with a doubtful expression.

‘Somewhere safe. That was an inspired idea to drop us down here,’ he said, clapping her on the shoulder. His eyes held a manic air. On his head he wore the same iron band that Sal had tried on in the observatory.

Sal recognised the look in Griel’s eyes. He had felt it from the inside.

‘Where did you get that?’ he asked, pointing at the crown.

Griel grinned. ‘I picked it up after you dropped it, thinking it might come in handy. I put it on when Oriel appeared, hoping it might help and not knowing we were about to be ditched outside. As it turns out, though, that has worked out just perfectly.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Jao, scepticism written across her forward-thrust face. ‘What has that thing done to you?’

‘Nothing I don’t welcome. Sal, tell them what you saw when you put on the crown. You didn’t tell us everything, did you?’

Sal shook his head. ‘It showed me Stone Mages and Sky Wardens united under my rule. It showed me a unified system of Change-working all across the Earth.’

Griel’s grin only widened. ‘Me too, except I see kingsfolk and foresters living together in peace in the forest. That, I think, is not an unworthy dream.’

‘We all agree on that,’ said Highson, ‘but what difference will that thing make? It’s just giving you an empty promise.’

‘I don’t think so. Jao, you know where we are. We’re in the heart of the city, where it all started. That’s why the Quorum gathers nearby, and why Oriel will be furious when he finds out.’

Jao nodded. ‘We’re on the skyship.’

‘And that is ...?’ prompted Shilly.

‘The King’s original vessel, where our ancestors lived. The city has grown a hundredfold since then, but this will always be its foundation, its fulcrum.’

‘And here we are, climbing aboard.’ Griel swung himself into the hatch. ‘Come on. Let’s see what mischief we can cause down here.’

One by one they followed, Shilly grumbling at yet another vertical climb. The way, fortunately, wasn’t long. It opened on an attic canted several degrees from horizontal. Dust and debris had slid along the floor to one side. The rubbish was half a metre thick in places.

Light came through round portholes that hadn’t been visible on the outside. Everything buzzed and hummed with the Change. Sal felt the skin on his arms and neck creep. Another hatch opened onto the next level down. Griel put his hand on the handle, and hesitated.

‘I hear voices. There’s someone down there.’ He stood up. ‘We’ll wait a second, see if they go away.’

‘So let me get this straight,’ Shilly said, running her fingers through her sun-bleached curls. ‘Are you the King now you’re wearing the crown?’

‘Down the years, many people have worn the crown,’ said Griel, ‘but there has only ever been one King.’

‘And who’s that?’

Griel shook his head. ‘If you don’t already know, I’m not going to say.’

‘Gah.’ She went to bang her walking stick on the floor, then remembered the people below. ‘This is getting us nowhere. That will be guards down there for sure, and more on the way. The longer we wait, the less chance we have to get out of here.’

‘I don’t want to get out of here,’ said Griel.

‘No? Well, you have a nice time. I’ve got better places to be.’

He held up a hand as she approached the hatch. “This is the perfect place to be, Shilly. This is the original skyship —’

‘The heart of the city. You’ve already said that.’

‘Listen to what else I have to say. This is the heart because it’s where the motivators are housed. Those people down there, they aren’t guards. They’re probably Engineers, maybe even pilots. If they are, that means Oriel has already sent word to move the city.’

‘Why now?’

‘To avoid the wraiths or to bring it closer to Milang for an attack on the humans. Take your pick. Either way, it gives us an opportunity we can’t ignore.’

‘If we assume control,’ Jao said, coming forward to take Griel’s arm, ‘we could go anywhere!’

‘That’s the idea. But first we have to get down there.’ Griel touched the hatch again, hearing with his broad fingertips. ‘Okay, they’ve moved on. Let’s go, but keep it down. We don’t want anyone to raise the alarm just yet.’

They scurried down the ladder into a room filled with arcane machinery. Giant brass columns turned at constantly varying speeds, slowing down and speeding up with sudden whirring noises. Chimerical energy throbbed through the metal cylinders and made the air itself shiver. Fleeting shapes on the cylinders’ polished surfaces painted flickering, powerful charms that came and went in a matter of instants.

Sal watched Griel. With the crown on, he seemed rejuvenated, no longer tired and bitter, but the same person looked out through those eyes. The crown appeared to release an inner strength or capacity — something that had always been there, but might not have had the opportunity to emerge. And if the crown could help make Griel’s dream a reality, using all of Griel’s resources, so be it.

Another hatch, another ladder. The lower levels were maintained more carefully, but evidence of age lay everywhere Sal looked. Metal scuffed and scratched with time, and even the clearest of glass tarnished. The rumbling of engines grew louder.

Griel led them to a door that opened outward into the main body of the skyship. Sal’s eyes boggled at the sight of a vast space crisscrossed with girders and cables through which several Panic workers climbed and swung. The air crackled with the Change; potential flowed back and forth in stately waves. He felt the fingers of his right hand curl tight around the rail he held for balance.