Antiphon (58 page)

Behind him, Neb heard the crash of a metal man colliding with the Watcher. “I’m coming,” he said.

No,
the Watcher whispered,
you are not.

When the metal mass struck Neb from behind, it felt like a building falling upon him, and he fell to the left, careening into an evergreen, hearing it crack as it dropped its load of snow upon them. The breath went out of him, and for a moment he felt the bite of bark in his cheek and saw bright flashes of light. A metal fist connected with his other side, and then a metal foot lashed out to catch his thigh.

The two mechoservitors fell upon the Watcher. The ancient mechanical shrugged off one, but Isaak clung to it, tugging at the Watcher as his gears groaned. The steam poured from his back and from gaps that were opening in his joints and from the tear ducts beneath his eyes. Neb heard a high-pitched whine from deep inside Isaak’s chest cavity.

He pulled the Watcher away and threw him.

Then Isaak looked to Neb. “You must listen to your father,” the metal man said. “You must leave this to us, and if we fail, you must find another way into the tower.”

Neb saw the Watcher lifting itself from the snow and glanced again at Isaak and his companion.

Then, he turned and ran north and east as fast as his feet could carry him. The blood of the earth that wrapped him felt the pull of the bargaining pool and poured the last of its strength into him as he flew over the snow.

“Coward.” Neb heard disdain in the metallic voice, but he pushed it aside and poured his attention into the run.

Isaak was right. His father was right. It was past time to leave. More than that, he realized, it might’ve been a mistake to come here. He’d gained nothing, really, other than alleviating Winters’s pain.

And seeing her again.
It was hard to believe a year had passed between them, most of that time spent beyond one another’s dreams during his time in the Churning Wastes. When he’d seen her both with the kin-raven and there in front of her, she’d looked different. She’d grown taller, her body taking on the curves of a womanhood she grew awkwardly into. But what had changed most about her was her eyes. They were darker, sadder, and when she’d first opened them upon him when he’d burst into the room, he’d seen something else in them that unsettled him now.

She was afraid of me.

Neb couldn’t blame her. The events of the past year—the past two years, really—had changed him into someone else. And now, his true
parentage and the legacy that came with that had changed him even further.

A realization struck him, and he found himself suddenly choking back a sob as he pushed his feet harder to carry him even faster.
I don’t know if I am even human.

He heard another collision of metal behind him, but no matter how badly he wanted to cast a glance over his shoulder, he resisted the urge. Instead, he squeezed the kin-raven.

Isaak?

The metal man was in the aether, the song playing around him.
Yes, Lord.

Are you okay?

There was no answer at first.
I am functional for the time being.

He reached for the other, his stomach lurching as he looked into the aether and ran at the same time.

Isaak’s companion was no longer with them.

Neb saw the meadow ahead and the last traces of the fire that marked the cave’s entrance. He raced over the wide open space and willed the dark opening to swallow him. He slowed slightly as his eyes, enhanced by the quicksilver, adjusted to the diminished visibility. Still, his feet flew as he pushed his way back into the cave, to the small door he had smashed open when he’d first arrived in this place.

He reached the shaft and climbed down, pulling the hatch closed over him even as he heard the sounds of fighting in the caves he’d just left.

He took the rungs as quickly as he could and heard the hatch torn open overhead as he went.

The sheath of silver hummed now, and the heat of it was unbearable upon his skin. He could smell the hairs on his arms and legs and head as they started to singe from it, but he pushed himself even harder, taking the twisting passage of the Beneath Places farther down. His own footfalls were quiet compared to the metal ones that followed him.

He returned to the aether.
I am nearly there, Isaak.

But Isaak didn’t answer. The Watcher did.
You are going nowhere, Abomination. The tower will remain closed and the antiphon will—

Neb roared and left the aether behind. Two more turns and the room would open to him on the right. As he rounded the corner, he saw the glowing moss that marked the ceiling and saw the shimmering pool. This one was larger than the others, a river feeding in and
out from it, a thick vein carrying the blood that sustained a world and served the Younger Gods it was made for.

“Clothe me,” Neb cried out as he entered the room.

Nothing happened.

He opened his mouth to utter the command again.

It serves you,
his father said,
but it does not necessarily obey you. It knows what your body can and cannot sustain.

Will it carry me?
He moved toward the pool now, suddenly aware of how tired he was, how sore he was.

It will.

Metal hands laid hold of him then, lifting him back and away from the pool, tossing him easily into the stone wall. The last of the silver burned out with the impact of it, and Neb groaned as he fell to the stone floor. Another metal hand gripped his ankle, and he felt it break beneath that viselike strength.

“Your time upon this earth has passed, Abomination.”

Neb twisted onto his back and looked up. A metal fist rose, and in that instant, he squeezed the kin-raven again. “Isaak!”

There was a whir and a high-pitched whine that hurt Neb’s ears. When the mechoservitor burst into the chamber, he saw in that brief moment that smoke—not steam—poured from gaps in his plating. Isaak’s jeweled eyes guttered, and his chest cavity glowed white-hot as he hurtled himself at the Watcher with a feral cry that sounded like steel grinding on steel. The room filled with the smell of ozone. With both metal arms locked tightly around the Watcher, Isaak’s momentum carried them forward and into the pool. Neb kicked himself back with his good foot as the two mechanicals tumbled into the thick quicksilver, thrashing as they sank beneath the surface.

He rolled over onto his stomach and crawled to the edge of the pool.
Isaak?

A single word found him.
Flee.

Then, a white light built at the heart of the pool, and the floor began to move—first a tremble and then a wild shaking. There was a loud roaring noise from beneath the surface, and the bargaining pool swelled upward and outward, a sudden hot and rising sun contained within it as it did. Neb felt his hair catch fire even as the pool fell back in on itself. Boiling silver rained down even as the ground continued shaking, and he heard the crack of stones breaking in deep places.

A compulsion seized him, and he thrust his hand into the hot mass of liquid. He felt the fire of it travel up his arm, and he screamed the
anguish even as he uttered the single word that went out from him and into the blood of the earth.

“Isaak,” Neb cried out, and the word rang loudly in the room with a tone of command that surprised him.

The ceiling fell now, large chunks of rock splashing into the pool or landing upon the cracked floor. Fissures deep below had opened, and already the pool was draining as the quicksilver followed gravity and the path of least resistance in the aftermath of the explosion.

Neb pulled himself out onto the boiling surface, feeling the heat of it as it burned what little remained of his robes. He willed it to bear him, and he gave himself to the network of veins that flowed east, letting the hot light swallow him, leaving only his screams behind to mingle with the sound of stone upon stone as the caves collapsed.

When Neb felt the metal hands upon him, he kicked and thrashed against them, unable to see in the dark place he found himself in. But the hands were cool and they stilled him.

“Lord Whym,” the metal man said, “the antiphon awaits you. I will bear you to it.”

He felt himself being lifted and felt his awareness graying. He heard the quiet whisper of moving gears and spinning scrolls as the metal man moved quickly through the dark cavern. His hand throbbed from where he’d thrust it into the boiling pool, and he felt the kin-raven still clutched in it. With his last conscious thought, Neb cast about within the aether.

“Isaak?”

But there was no answer as the gray became a dark that swallowed him. And this time, when Neb dreamed about the moon, the Watcher waited for him there, laughing down at him from the pinnacle of a tower that remained closed to him.

The old man danced with abandon and poured his body into the blade. Three times he sliced, three times he punctured, the faces of his children flashing across his inner eye as he brought edge and point home to his grandson’s flesh, a steel traveler too long on the road. The young man’s surprised cries were the welcome of an innkeeper and the wideness of his eyes, a lantern-lit window.

As he danced, he laughed low and savored the jarring of his arm and wrist each time the knife found purchase.

When he finished, Vlad Li Tam wiped his grandson’s blood from the knife and stooped to recover the shining staff. The boy tried to move, his mouth opening and closing and his chest whistling from the wounds that punctured his lungs. Vlad stepped carefully around the pooling blood as he moved back and squatted on his haunches to watch.

Mal Li Tam’s eyes rolled, a mumble on his lips that gradually took form. “My . . . last . . . words.”

Vlad shook his head, never looking up from the staff. “Lord Tam hears the last words of his kin. You are not my kin.”

More muttering, and in the wet-sounding words, Vlad thought he heard something about love. He scowled and was not going to answer, but suddenly words found him as image after image of his family upon the cutting table flashed before his eyes. “What would you know of love?”

The voice was a whisper, and Vlad leaned forward to hear it. “Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for love.”

He felt the anger first; then it resolved into something calm and quiet. He did not know if it was the exhaustion and last dregs of the scout powders that made him so or the hypnotic way that the blue-green light danced the room, bent through crystal and water. Regardless, he sighed. “Perhaps you have,” he said. “And perhaps you’ve loved the wrong thing.”

Then he stood, placed his foot on the neck of his fallen grandson, and let his full weight settle upon his heel as he crushed the boy’s windpipe.

Child of Frederico.

It was a woman’s voice. He heard her clearly above the moving crystalline room, and the radiating stone hummed. Vlad looked around, feeling gooseflesh rise on him. Then, he realized he was not hearing the voice with his ears.

It spoke again.
My love.

He looked to the d’jin that throbbed and twisted, captured in the stone. When he found his words, they were a whisper. “Is it you?”

She continued, as if she hadn’t heard.
You have drawn the Moon Wizard’s staff from the heart of the ladder and can now make right that which he has made wrong. It must return to the tower before Lasthome falls or the Continuity Engine of the Older Gods will fall with it and the light will be extinguished. Seek the heir of Whym and place the staff in his hands; he will know by his birthright how to wield it. Find Shadrus’s children. Bid them follow the song home.

Vlad stretched out a hand toward the stone. It hung above him just out of reach, and for a moment, he was tempted to tap the stone with the staff he held. But something in him resisted.

Use the staff to aid you; but use it with care. For the tools of the parents are not made for the hands of their infant children.

He recognized the quote but had thought it was P’Andro Whym’s, possibly from one of the earlier gospels. Another question arose and he asked it, though by now he suspected perhaps this wasn’t a conversation as much as it was words rehearsed and now reproduced. “Who are you?”

Frederico’s Behemoth will bear you to the Barrens of Espira. I have hidden my father’s spellbook there. The staff will lead you to it. It too must return to the tower and be locked away in the Library of Elder Days. My family stole both when they took the tower and raised their fist against the Engine of the Gods.

There was a pause, and it was so long that Vlad thought perhaps she was done speaking. When the voice returned, it was quiet and low.
My love has called you forth and will continue with you, Child of Frederico. We have bargained in the Deepest of Deeps that the light once more be sown in the darkness that contains us all.

One of the silver lines broke free and moved, slow as a python, and its tip touched the end of the staff. Light moved through it, and he felt the steel grow warm in his hands as it vibrated. The surprise of it caught him off guard, and when he tried to release the staff, he found that his fingers would not move. The vibration increased as the rod burned first white, then blue, then green.