Antiphon (33 page)

Faint and on the wind, he heard the strains of third alarm and watched as his men scrambled to arms. But even as they did, the noise
of commotion grew in the canyon—muffled sounds of metal on metal, shouts and cries, and then suddenly, a storm spilled into the cavern.

It came twisting and writhing into their midst, a moving, muted cacophony of magicked and unmagicked forms locked in combat. He saw the bright-colored winter woolens of his soldiers, the darker colors of scouts who’d not yet had time to magick themselves, and the shimmer at the center that bespoke invisible aggressors.

Even in those first moments, as he tugged at a scout knife with his good hand, Rudolfo saw two of his men fall beneath blades he could not see, then be tossed carelessly aside as they bled out on the cave floor. The men in their blankets dropped them to stand naked and face the intruders with bare hands or knives they scrambled for in panic, and even as they did, the storm advanced into the room as tables were overturned and pages were scattered.

He heard a harsh but muted whisper in a language he did not recognize and watched as the closest mechoservitor was suddenly upended into the shaft, whistling and hooting as it plummeted below.

The miner, Tyrus, reached for a shovel, and lines of blood appeared on his flesh as his blanket was torn away. Invisible hands threw him up and into the rock wall, and when he fell, he did not move.

In the space of the time it took to blink, another three men fell.

Rudolfo moved forward only to feel an iron hand grab his wrist and twist the knife from him. A low voice, muffled by magicks, spoke in his ear. It was a woman’s. “We do not war with you, Lord Rudolfo. Call off your men and let us pass.”

The second mechoservitor spun, a dent appearing suddenly in the side of its head. One of its jeweled eyes guttered and then went out as it, too, was tossed into the shaft. This time, Rudolfo heard the distant crash of metal on stone.

Outside, third alarm grew louder as another wind poured into the cave.

The hand on his wrist twisted farther and then released when something heavy impacted the woman who held him, staggering her.

Rudolfo’s foot lashed out, his heavy leather boot striking what he hoped was her knee. “You come magicked and in violence into my lands and tell me you do not war with me? Your queen has gone too far.”

He saw the faint shimmer of his Gypsy Scouts as they moved into the room. But he knew they were no match for these invaders. He’d watched the enhanced strength and speed of the blood magicks tear through a room of armed men to assassinate Hanric and Ansylus,
crown prince of Turam, at his Firstborn Feast. There was pain in the voice now when it spoke again. “We do not answer to Machtvolk house servants. Stand down your men in name of the Crimson Empress or watch her Blood Guard cut them down.”

Rudolfo felt his scalp prickling with rage, but even as he opened his mouth, hands tugged him back and away from the magicked woman. “Stay clear, General,” a voice hissed in his ear. “We’ll take them.”

Rudolfo struggled against the hands, and as he did, he watched his men fall. He heard the soft cries and grunts as his best went down beneath the whispering blades. The scout who had pulled him aside staggered into him, and Rudolfo felt warm blood that he could not see spatter his face as the man went limp and crumpled.

He tugged at his second knife with his good hand even as the woman’s voice returned near his ear and her hands took hold of him. “Stand your men down and tell us where the other two metal dreamers are.”

“We will not stand down,” he said through gritted teeth. “Your Crimson Empress does not rule the Ninefold Forest.”

“She will soon enough,” the woman said. “We will find the Abomination’s hand servants ourselves.” She barked orders in a language he did not recognize and released him suddenly, pushing him back and away.

He watched what remained of his men as they disengaged, watched the small boot prints appear in the gathering pools of blood as the magicked force made their way to the lip of the well and its ladder downward.

The room became quiet but for the groans of the wounded. He heard his blood pounding in his temples and felt his body trembling. He took in the room at a glance, saw the crumpled forms of naked and bleeding scouts, their blankets cast aside in the fight. And he knew that among those bodies lay the magicked bodies of those men of his who pursued this Blood Guard into the cave.

It was the decision of a split second. He made it without thought beyond the need of satisfying the anger that blurred his vision.

Rudolfo saw the lever that locked the pulley and its heavy cage still in place and threw himself at it.

The ropes released, and the cage plummeted down.

Somewhere, far below, he heard a crash and a scream.

More men poured into the cave now, magicked scouts and unmagicked foot soldiers. Lysias came with them, his face red from exertion and his mouth grim.

Rudolfo locked eyes with the general. “Pursue them,” he said. “Send a company if you have to, but find them and bring me prisoners.”

Lysias nodded and started barking orders as men scrambled into the shaft and army medicos knelt beside the wounded.

Taking in the sudden carnage of the room, Rudolfo felt something break inside of him. He seized the edge of his worktable and hurled it over, no longer mindful of the pain in his arm. A flood of paper scattered the room, settling onto the bloody floor. His foot lashed out and caught the chair, sending it into a wall.

Blood for blood,
he thought.

Then Rudolfo roared his wrath, silencing the rest of the cavern as all eyes went to their lord and general. And the anguish of that cry, echoing down the well and through the cave that led outside, was a sound that raised the hair upon even his own arms and neck.

“Blood for blood,” Rudolfo said into the silence that followed.

They saw it on the horizon, and at first, Vlad Li Tam thought it must be a pile of white clouds. As they steamed closer, those clouds seemed more likely to be mountains or something like them.

Finally, the Moon Wizard’s Ladder took shape ahead of them, and the vastness of it made him feel very small.

He stood at the bow with Obadiah and wished Baryk were here to see it. By now, he suspected the warpriest and the rest of the family aboard
The Serendipitous Wind
were three or four hundred nautical leagues northwest of them, moving slowly under sail toward the Divided Isle and the Entrolusian Delta that waited behind it. They would bear word to Rudolfo of their investigation so far and petition Charles, the Forest Library’s arch-engineer, to see if the old Androfrancine might have another power source for their limping vessel.

Vlad Li Tam looked at the metal man. They’d spent many days together now, first in rough quarters they’d rigged for their guest in the boiler room before they’d determined which ship to send back. Then, later, after Ren had replaced the dead sunstone, they’d wandered the vessel together.

They’d spent the nights together in the bow, watching the d’jin—the light-bearer—moving ahead of them just beneath the surface of the water.

In all of it, they talked about the dream, though the mechoservitor still spoke cryptically and in riddles about it.

“It was not meant for your kind,” Obadiah had told him at one point. “It was meant for the Homeseeker just as we were meant to prepare the antiphon for his coming. He will save the light.”

Vlad Li Tam had met the boy Neb. He’d met him in the gravediggers’ camp on the plains of Windwir. He’d seen him again in the crowded pavilion where Petronus had ended the Order by taking Sethbert’s life without naming a successor. He seemed an unlikely Homeseeker. Vlad had heard bits of Marsher mysticism and still wondered how an Androfrancine orphan could fulfill their so-called prophecies of a promised home.

“You say the dream is not meant for our kind,” he had said, “but Neb is our kind. And you tell me that I am called to the dream as well.”

Obadiah’s eye shutters had flashed open and closed. “The light-bearer calls you to your part in the dream, but it is not to be comprehended in a moment. It is arrived at with meditation and reflection. For me to expound upon it to you, even
if
I fully comprehended your role in the antiphon, would rob you of discovery.”

“Did the light-bearer also call Neb to his own part in the dream, then?”

The metal man had shaken his head. “No,” he said. “The dream was fashioned for the Homeseeker’s advent.” His voice became low, as if he spoke of something sacred. “It is his dream in the end. We are simply his abacus.”

After that, they only discussed those aspects of the dream that Vlad could pull from the images that haunted those few hours he slept. Images of light dancing to a song beneath the water that grew more vivid the farther southeast they sailed. And something else—something dark and massive and hungry—that awaited in blue-green shadows and watched for his coming.

Now they stood together at the rail as the ladder took shape ahead of them. It looked nothing like a ladder, this massive ring of white stones standing high in the sky, each curving gently inward as they rose. Squinting at the top of it, lost in a veil of clouds, Vlad saw that the ends of the stones joined together. Something shimmered there, and it took him a moment to see it.

It was a massive globe made of a silver so bright that it reflected back the sky and clouds around it. It sat above the ring of stones, making it
more like a gigantic cage that rose up from the sea, with gaps of leagues between each white stone bar.

“Gods,” Vlad whispered.

“Yes,” Obadiah agreed.

Vlad was so taken by the sight that he didn’t hear his forty-eighth son approaching from behind. “We’re ready to power down the ships at your word, Father.”

He nodded absently, his eyes still locked on the ladder. Its sheer size boggled him, and he was struck by the unlikelihood of it, here in the heart of the Ghosting Crests, surrounded by wide open seas.

He forced his attention to the metal man. “You will know when it is time?”

Steam vented from Obadiah’s exhaust grate, and he nodded. “Yes.”

The metal man’s memory was faulty on what exactly had happened—whatever had burned out its sunstone had also damaged its memory scrolls. But it was clear that at some point, as he and his metal brothers had approached the ladder, their power sources had begun to fail. His next memory was waking up in the boiler room to Vlad’s questions.

Vlad looked back to the stones and the impossible globe that joined their upper reaches. “I wonder what we will find there.”

Obadiah’s ears tipped, and deep inside his chest cavity, gears spun and clacked. When he spoke, it was in a singsong voice, reedy and metallic. “You will find Behemoth, and he will take you into the basements of the ladder.”

Behemoth.
He felt sweat beads on his forehead at the word. Vlad’s eyes narrowed. “But you do not know how or what it is I am to do there?”

The metal man shook his head. “We believed it was our part of the dream,” Obadiah said, “but we were mistaken. The light-bearer chose
you
for this.”

Again, images and sound washed him. The water swallowed him, warm and burning the open wounds that lacerated his skin. He clutched at his grandson as they plummeted, and he opened his eyes on light as the water around him filled with song. He felt his heart breaking from the power of it, and hands grabbed at him, pulling him up and away from the purest, truest love he’d ever known, though at the time he had not understood it to be so.

He shook the memory away, tasting the salt of water and blood in his mouth.

I have been chosen for this.
He’d spent a lifetime in the shadow of the
Order, raised in the reason they espoused, though he could never quite revere their light with the same tenacious drive those robed and backward dreamers could. Certainly he grasped the Androfrancine need to control the flow of technology and magick, of knowledge and information. But it had never been an act of worship for him. It had been a means to an end. Still, he’d learned like most in the Named Lands to eschew mysticism and madness.

And now I hear prophecy from a metal man,
Vlad thought.
I find dreams within a song. I chase ghosts in the water.

Finally, he opened his eyes and glanced at Ren. “You know what to do when Obadiah gives the word.”

The young man nodded. “We’ll stop the armada and ready the captain’s yacht under sail.”

Vlad looked back to the great stone columns filling the horizon to the south of them. “It is impressive,” he said.

Ren chuckled. “It is. But it looks like no ladder I’ve seen before,” he said. “I wonder how he descended it?”

I wonder, too,
Vlad thought but said nothing.

He’d seen the work of both the Younger Gods and the Older. But never anything of such scope. Of course, ancient texts he’d seen in the Great Library claimed that the Younger Gods had actually found the moon barren and white and lifeless—that they had made it into a garden.

And even Obadiah was a testament from their time, though the metal man was obviously a close approximation based on the reproductions of that ancient Czarist engineer, Rufello.