Chill jl 2, p.25
Chill jl-2, page 25
part #2 of Jacob's Ladder Series
In tones of exasperation, the mammoth calf said, "--"
"It wants me to open the lock," Tristen said.
"I heard it," Mallory answered. "Are you going to do what it tells you?"
Tristen glanced at Gavin. The basilisk sat, contrite and collected, seemingly unaffected by any concern. Grand sacrifices were not beyond Cynric.
She was the one sibling Tristen could make no claims to ever having understood. Ruthless with herself and others, prescient, chill, and alien--and yet she had always seemed possessed of great compassion. A compassion that never stopped her from making terrible choices when she deemed them necessary.
She'd have killed him without hesitation, with her own hand, if she thought it necessary. She would as swiftly--even more swiftly--have offered her own death, if she deemed it necessary. As, in the end, she had.
If Gavin retained enough of Cynric's memories to be concerned by private knowledge of a potential trap, he'd also retain enough of her personality to walk blithely into one. On the other hand, if Cynric found it necessary to arrange a trap, it was possible that Tristen would agree with her reasons.
After all, he could not muster a particularly strong suite of arguments in favor of his own continued existence. And he thought now, with the clarity of hindsight, that if he had only had the courage or the moral convictions to join his half sisters in their uprising against Alasdair Conn, the world might have ended up a preferable place to live.
Tristen pressed his palm to the door and let it glide aside. And checked abruptly as a pair of battered shadows rounded a corner opposite.
Their forms were familiar. The taller folded his arms across his chest and cocked his head, heavy black hair falling straight to his hammer-edged jaw. The wavy-haired woman beside him came two steps past before she drew up short, bouncing lightly on her tiptoes when she stopped. She turned her head slightly to keep him in her peripheral vision. She might move to the forefront, but she would follow her older brother's lead.
"Hello, Tristen," Benedick said.
Tristen could as much as feel Mallory's smirk, as if it heated the nape of his neck. "Hello, Benedick," the necromancer said.
Chelsea's forehead wrinkled with interest, but Benedick gave no sign of having noticed anything beyond common courtesy. "Hello, Mallory. Hello Samael, Gavin. And, um." He gestured to the mammoth.
Tristen shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine."
"Mammoth," Benedick said, as if that settled that. "Isn't this convenient. I don't suppose you were guided here by some coincidental carnivorous plant people?"
"A coincidental mammoth," Tristen said. "If anything can be said to be coincidental when Cynric is involved."
Tristen patted the mammoth on the shoulder, and it responded with a nearly subaudible rumble. Chelsea eyed it, frowning.
Benedick made a religion of stoicism. Tristen did not expect his brother to react to the name, nor were his expectations confounded. Benedick's mouth might have thinned, but that was all. He closed the few steps between himself and Tristen, one hand extended to clasp wrists.
"Nova," Benedick said out loud, "tell Perceval I found them."
Tristen felt something very like a click in his chest and knew it for relief. The contact of Benedick's hand was firm and confident. Tristen strove to make his the same. Because he was not Benedick, he allowed himself a little smile of amusement at their performances. They were in truth their father's sons. "Nova is with you?"
"We have contact," Benedick said, his words confirmed a moment later when Tristen felt the angel's attention fall upon him. "She's not manifesting an avatar"--he raised an eyebrow at Samael's speckled form--"so as not to draw hostile attention."
"Does she know where to go next?"
"I do," Benedick said. "At least in general terms, though the question of how to get there is open." He glanced at Chelsea, who shook out her hair.
"Leviathan," she said.
Tristen had never seen it himself, but he understood that the blood draining from an amelanistic face could be a spectacular sight. Mallory actually grabbed his elbow, as if fearing he might topple over.
Mallory said, "Cynric and coincidences, indeed."
Gavin snorted. "Don't look at me. Just because the puppeteer's hand is up your ass, it doesn't mean you know what they are thinking."
Samael shot the basilisk a scathing glance, the snail-shell eye glinting dully. "Tell me about it."
Mallory unwound those fingers from Tristen's arm and turned slowly to face Samael's avatar. Quietly, breathing through a taut throat, the necromancer intoned, "He maketh a path to shine after him; one would think the deep to be hoary. Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear."
"The key," Samael said.
Tristen looked from one to the other. "Did it unlock anything this time?"
The angel stared back, at first seemingly nonplussed by Tristen's sarcasm. But glacially, as if with deliberation, the long vertical lines of his hound-creased face rearranged themselves into a grin.
"Hell, yes," the angel said, waving his immaterial hand. "Follow me."
Samael--looking much the worse for experience and worn thin--led Benedick, his siblings, Mallory, and Gavin at a quick trot, down through still more barren corridors.
"This is the way to the Broken Holdes," Benedick said, as his colony reminded him with images and maps of when he had been here before.
"To and through," Samael said. "Mallory's code and the location have opened the way. We're going outside."
"Into the belly of the Enemy," Benedick said.
Mallory hid a laugh inside a sneeze. "Where the Leviathans dwell."
"Great," Chelsea said. "I hope there's some undamaged armor down here somewhere, because Benedick's and mine ended up at the bottom of a compost heap. And it seems Mallory doesn't have any either. I don't know about you two, but I don't fancy skinny-dipping in space."
The mammoth calf touched her wrist and Chelsea startled. Benedick--who a moment before had been fraternally pleased that she had the mature awareness to notice other people's needs in tandem with her own--lurched forward to intervene and found Tristen's hand on his chest.
"Wait," Tristen said, and for a moment Benedick wanted to smash his hand away and remind him of all that caution and cowardice had cost them.
But he was Benedick Conn. He did not perform his drama, and as he raised his gaze to meet Tristen's, it occurred to him that the sin he had been about to assign his brother was his own. Tristen had never been overmuch for prudence, and his ingrained recklessness had cost him as dearly as ever Benedick's reserve. He settled his nerves and said, "Yes, Brother?"
To his shock, it was the calf that answered: "--"
He never could have named the words it spoke in, or recited the sentences. But whatever they were, they filled him with comprehension.
Chelsea, too, apparently. She pointed with her thumb to a sealed hatchway. "Through here? How do you know that?"
"--" the calf answered. It knew because it knew. Because, Benedick surmised, it had been made to know. Because, it said, it was a Bible.
He swallowed a dizzying surge of resentment. "Cynric," he muttered, as if that explained everything.
Gavin--ensconced on Mallory's shoulder--arched his thick neck and fluffed his crest. "Do you ever stop to wonder if maybe she just couldn't have explained things?"
"Sure," Chelsea said. "Because we all listen so well."
She stepped between her brothers, skirting the mammoth and pushing to the forefront of the group.
"Through here?" she said, turning to glance over her shoulder. Even more than the healing burns on her cheek, Benedick was struck by the line of her scapula, the way the bone projected through flesh and worn clothing.
"I haven't been taking care of you," he said, when she caught him staring. "You're thin."
"So are you," she answered. "We've been busy."
She palmed the door lock, but the door didn't open. "Wait," Mallory said. "Let me."
But as the necromancer addressed the door, the mammoth calf interrupted. Benedick thought he might almost be growing accustomed to its manner of speech. Or unspeech. Or what-you-might-call-it.
"A different verse?" Mallory said, with a glance aside to the animal. "Why don't you just tell us?"
The mammoth stared at the necromancer, blinking. After a moment, with an exasperated wave of its trunk, it spoke a few unrepeatable words that provoked Mallory to irritated laughter.
"Because we're meant to look after ourselves, Princess Cynric, and so you didn't bother to tell your construct the answers? Oh, very well. I hope it's still Job? I could just run through the whole thing, you know--oh. One attempt? Well, I guess I'd better get it right the first time, then."
Benedick was somewhat accustomed to the manners and means of sorcerers. He did not even have to pretend unsurprise as the necromancer laid both hands palm to palm as if praying, rested lips on fingertips, and stood for several minutes merely addressing the door. For some time, nothing happened except Gavin rustling boredly and the movement of Mallory's lips--not quite enough to count as mouthing the words, but certainly the tic of somebody recalling memorized phrases.
Tristen's armor creaked when he folded his arms.
Just as Benedick was about to interrupt, Mallory flashed a grin. "Hah. I knew it was back there somewhere."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I'm a necromancer," Mallory said, tapping skull with forefinger. "What did you think that meant? I get information from dead people. Gavin, you can just whisper it in my ear."
The basilisk rustled, crest flat, head skulking low between hunched shoulders. "Don't you da--"
"You will tell me what you remember."
"And if I don't remember?"
"You mean if you don't want to remember?" Mallory shrugged. "Then we all die. Gavin--"
"Every time I look at her," the basilisk said, "I come back a little less myself."
Benedick scrubbed the corners of his eyes. "Space this. Can't we just cut it open?"
Mallory's head shook back and forth. "For me, critter."
And Gavin sighed and tucked his head under his wing, but from the look of comprehension on Mallory's face, he gave the necromancer what they needed.
Mallory placed a palm flat against the panel beside the door and recited, "In his neck remaineth strength, and sorrow is turned into joy before him."
There was a creak, a hesitation, a groan of tired metal and fatigued machinery. A fine whitish dust, more like lime scale than rust, showered from the top of the frame.
The door glided open and Chelsea, straight-spined, brushed past Mallory with murmured thanks and stepped through. Benedick stood aside so Tristen could follow, but Tristen gestured him on. "I have armor."
"Right."
Benedick passed through the entry, Mallory--with attendant basilisk--only joining the procession when he and Chelsea were well inside. Beyond, he found himself in an armory like any other, the suits lined up at rest from wall to wall. They were all alike, uncustomized, suitable for anyone to take and make his own.
"Nova," Benedick said, "how is it that these suits were not measured among our resources?"
"I didn't know they were here," the angel said. "I'm afraid this is all very much outside my program, Prince Benedick."
"Right."
"Cynric," Gavin said, the name stressing his voice strangely. From the corridor outside, Benedick heard Samael's hoarse chuckle. "And from the number of suits here, she may have expected more than a few of us."
"Well, it's nice to know she can be wrong about something."
Chelsea touched the closest suit of armor, laying her palm against the access plate. Benedick was reassured when the armor reacted just as it should, first absorbing the plate, then peeling open to allow her admittance.
Benedick snaked one long arm over her shoulder and touched a suit in the second row. It came forward, picking its way around both Chelsea and the first rank of suits, and paused before Benedick. He tapped the shoulder, and it unfolded like a flower. As he stepped inside, he saw Mallory choosing a suit, too. Gavin fluttered up, onto the suit's head, and Mallory stepped inside.
After a moment of concern, which Benedick endured with the best stoicism he could muster, the armor sealed around him, stretching and snuggling until it settled against his body like a second skin. The cool colloidal layer of the interior adjusted, molding close while he grimaced at the familiar, unpleasant sensation. Then it was done, the armor chiming to indicate a successful fit.
He scrolled his helm open. Mallory came up on his right side, Chelsea on the left. There was no hesitation as they returned to Tristen, who had sealed his own armor. Tristen took the fore. Benedick, Chelsea, and Mallory fell in behind him. There could be one leader of an expedition such as this, and Tristen was oldest and highest-ranked in the family and the crew. Etiquette and tradition brooked no argument.
"Samael," Tristen said. "We are ready."
But Samael paused for a moment, immaterial arms folded, head tipped insolently, and grinned at them.
"Yes?" Tristen said.
With every evidence of satisfaction, Samael shook his head. "If I saw us coming, I'd beshit myself."
Tristen's helm was up, but Benedick did not need to see his face to hear the satisfaction in his voice. He touched the hilt of the sword at his hip; Benedick recognized Mirth, and also its provenance.
"Good," Tristen said, and gestured the angel on ahead with a white-gauntleted hand. "Then let us essay the Broken Holdes."
Arianrhod would have liked to have moved proudly from the embrace of her angel to the belly of Leviathan, but her strength was spent. She found herself delivered like a baby, like a package, something handed off as an inconvenience. She could not even stir herself to protest, though her numb hand itched for the hilt of her unblade.
--Here is your safe place--said Asrafil, his coat furling about him like wings.--Here is your bower.--
Arianrhod fell through space, drifting into the cage that surrounded the pitted dullness of the living asteroid. Its mass drew her in, gently, lightly, assisted by a little thrust and guidance from Asrafil's colony. If she had the strength she would have reached out to him, spread wide her arms in supplication and pleaded like a child, but her Exalt body was freezing from the edges, already stiff with the Enemy's chill, and soon even her mental processes would fail her.
Panic stabbed her, sharp as a fistful of shards.--Do not make of me your sacrifice!--she begged.--Have I not served you faithfully, O Asrafil?--
Asrafil only receded. He still moved with comfort, his pale hands shining with reflected light as he gestured before his coat. Before, also, the face of the Enemy, wreathed though it was in the dust of dead stars.
--This service you may do me also--he said, allowing her to imagine that she felt the brush of a hand against her cheek, stroking back the strands of her hair. It was a projection, a manipulation. Nothing real. --Don't leave me!--
He was too far away now for her to have seen it, and anyway her eyes had frozen, but she knew the look of his smile. Even imagining it pierced her heart.--Silly human. I cannot leave you. Don't you know I am with you always?--
A maw--a fissure--opened across the surface of the asteroid beneath her. Light shifted within, aurora veils fingering forth in chilly, gelid blue reminiscent of a colony's genetic marker.
And Arianrhod fell into the welcoming embrace of Leviathan.
The mammoth bid them adieu at the air lock, which Gavin found disappointing. He'd rather been anticipating the spectacle of a quarter-ton quadruped in armor.
Gavin was not only sad to see it go due to the potential for entertainment. Whether he and it had grown from splinters of the same personality like so many soldiers grown from dragon teeth was an open question. But if they had, they were something like siblings.
Gavin had never had a sibling before. He was curious to discover what it was like.
He hoped he'd get the chance.
The Broken Holdes were exactly as Gavin had expected: barren, twisted, full of warped metal and fluctuating gravity. The Holdes were disintegrating, as the name would indicate, but you could never tell until you passed into a space if it was holed and evacuated, or if the atmosphere held--and, if it held, what its density might be. And that density wasn't necessarily consistent from one section of a space to the others. The random gusts of gravity and vectors of the world's rotation and acceleration affected that, as did the simple matter of how the ventilation in any given unit was working.
As they moved deeper into the wasteland, Gavin released his grip on Mallory's armor and flew up to join Samael at the head of the group. Gavin was more material than the angel's makeshift avatar, so if there were traps, he would be more likely to trigger them. Moreover, Gavin wasn't so trusting as to leave the angel unsupervised to choose their path through such treacherous terrain.
Gavin flew close-winged, using atmosphere where it was available, surfing the edges of dangerous gravity surges and slick-sloped mass tunnels. This was a sport played by the winged youth of Engine, a chance to demonstrate prowess and an adolescent status game. But now, for him, with four wingless Exalt in tow, it proved nothing but an annoyance. The humans slowed him. Armor and symbionts or not, it was too easy to imagine them ruptured and twisted, oozing precious bodily fluids into the cold vacancy that surrounded them.
But his urge to caution was mitigated by the need for haste, the sense that, after days of pursuit, Arianrhod was almost within reach. Gavin was flogged onward not only by Tristen and Benedick's palpable desire for vengeance, but by the undeviating conviction that, if they did not catch Arianrhod now, everything would be lost. This was a woman to whom the murder of hundreds, Exalt and Mean, was an acceptable loss.
Surely, Gavin thought, in that choice she was very like the Builders.
This entire portion of the structure was acrawl with radiation--another legacy of the Breaking and the wreck of the world's mighty engines. It was why the material of the Broken Holdes had never been salvaged for use elsewhere, and why they remained here, a shattered memorial to the dead, isolated at the bottom of the world.
