Iron Angel (26 page)

Dill rubbed his wrist where Mina had inserted a tiny splinter of her soul. He imagined her sitting alone in the darkness surrounded by those dusty shelves of skulls. He pictured her chamber rotting around her as she lost the will to maintain it. Perhaps he should just check that she was all right?

He knocked on her window.

It was a queer sensation. As his knuckles struck the glass, a vision flashed in his mind.

—A crowd of Sandporters cheered and clapped in a wide town square—

He knocked again.

—A brightly painted wagon stood in a sandy glade, surrounded by colourful trees—

“I told you to leave her be,” Hasp said.

“There’s no response,” Dill replied. “I’m going to open the window.”

“Not a good idea, lad. How would you feel if a stranger broke into your soul?”

But Dill was already searching for something to break the window with. And then he realized that he didn’t
have
to search at all—this little part of Hell was entirely malleable. He glanced down to find that a crowbar had already appeared in his fist.

Hasp growled. “Don’t do it. That kind of contact sends tremors through the whole damn Maze. You’re not just risking
her
soul.”

Dill hooked the crowbar under the window sash and pushed down on it.

—A mangy little pup sniffed around the deck of a ship—

The sash sprang open. He hoisted it up. Now only the closed shutters stood between him and Mina’s room. Behind him, Hasp threw up his arms in frustration and stormed back inside his castle.

Dill pounded his fist repeatedly against the shutters.

—Something padded through darkness, a powerful hunched shape. Blood dribbled from a sword into a clay bowl. A wild beast howled—

The rotten wood had split where Dill had struck it. One of the shutters was already coming away from its hinges. Dill pressed both hands against the wood and shoved hard. The shutters flew open.

—An odor of loam and bark, and of freshly butchered meat—

Dill stared. The room beyond the open window bore no resemblance to Mina Greene’s opulent chambers. It was much smaller—a dull brick-walled space with an earthen floor. To the left, a single doorway led to another similarly gloomy cell. There were no pillars, no grand cupola, and no furnishings except for a long wooden box sitting in the middle of the floor. It looked big enough to contain a corpse.

“Mina!”

Dill climbed up onto the window ledge and was about to step through, when he heard a scraping sound. Mina backed through the doorway, dragging a second—much smaller—wooden trunk behind her. When she reached the long box, she paused to catch her breath.

“That’s far enough, Dill,” she said without looking up.

“What are you doing?”

“Packing.” Mina opened the small chest. Then she tilted the long box up, standing it on one end. It was almost as tall as she was. With some effort, she lifted it up, and then lowered it down again so that its narrow base rested inside the open chest on the floor.

Dill watched in astonishment as the tall container slid down until it had disappeared completely inside the smaller one. Mina went back through to the other room. In a moment she returned with yet another chest, smaller again than the one remaining on the floor. She repeated the whole process. By placing the narrow end of one container inside the wider mouth of the next, she eventually managed to reduce her luggage to the size of a jewelry box.

“Where are you going?” Dill asked.

“I thought I’d have a wander around,” she replied cheerfully. She made comical bug eyes at him. “See some demons. Catch some ghosts.”

“That’s not normal,” Dill said.

Her dark eyes gleamed. “It is for me.”

“But what happened to your room? Where
is
everything?”

She wandered over to him, holding up the little jewelry box. “All the important stuff is in here,” she said. “Iril’s canals can drink the rest after I’ve gone.”

“But…” A hollow ache had taken root in Dill’s stomach. He didn’t want her to leave. Absurdly, a loose thread hanging from a seam on the side of her dress caught his eye. Why did he find this tiny imperfection so suddenly endearing? She was so close he could smell her perfume: the warm scent of desert spice on her skin. Without thinking, he shifted his position on the window ledge.

“Dill!” she warned.

Dill reached up to grip the sash above, but the window
flinched
away from him. Suddenly he was gripping nothing, and overbalanced. He fell forward into the girl’s room.

A moment of extreme disorientation overcame him, as though he had stepped outside of himself, and was looking back at his own face. It was the oddest sensation, both familiar and utterly strange to him. He saw the wings of an archon, his wings, with a plush room behind, but he was also staring at a dark brick-walled space and a screaming girl in a rainbow-coloured dress.

He saw, or felt, Mina shudder; Dill couldn’t be sure. His senses were reeling now, confusing him. He heard the savage howling of a wild animal. He reached out to Mina, or thought he did, but suddenly he was reaching out to himself, a young angel standing in a dismal cell. A girl stood by the window, her arms outstretched.

His fingers brushed another hand. The touch sent a powerful shock through him. Nausea cloyed at his throat. He heard shrieking, followed by the deep growl of a hound. Perfume mingled with the thick stench of animals. It was too much to bear. He staggered back from the angel, from the girl in the bright dress. His hands gripped something. A window frame?

He fell backwards.

“Fool!” Hasp’s voice roared somewhere behind him. “Close that window now! You’d better hope the Mesmerists didn’t feel that commotion.”

Dill’s thoughts still spun. “What? I don’t understand…”

“You stepped inside her soul,” Hasp growled. “Did you think her reaction to an intrusion like that would be subtle? You just violated that girl in the worst possible way.”

“I’m sorry,” Dill stammered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

But he was cut off by a sound like an earthquake. His whole apartment—his whole soul—groaned and shook.

“Light and Life,” Hasp said. “Get back from that window!”

Dill rose unsteadily. Through the open window he could still see Mina. She was wailing uncontrollably, clutching the jewelry box to her chest. Dust shuddered free of the walls and clouded the air around her.

“Get back! Don’t make me come in there.”

But how could Dill leave her in such distress? Whatever was happening was his fault. By setting foot in her room, he had triggered this.

He shouted back to Hasp, “What’s happening?”

“Menoa’s hordes are coming.” The god smiled coldly. “And it sounds like they brought a Worm.”

The rear wall in Mina’s room suddenly cracked and then burst inwards. Chunks of brick and mortar showered the earthen floor. Something smashed through, and then pulled away again, leaving a ragged gap.

Claws?

Mina screamed again.

Bricks exploded to dust behind her. In one heartbeat the entire rear wall of the room disappeared. In its place Dill saw what appeared to be a wide tunnel, sloping upwards at a shallow angle. The interior of this space was moving, seething like a swarm of insects.

Demons? They were crowded together in the darkness, a crush of anthracite-like bones and curved claws and teeth all woven together by strands of red muscle. This moving mass receded as far as the eye could see. The leading rim of the tunnel had pressed firmly up against the edge of Mina’s room, while the nearest limbs reached in and tore away more sections of wall, passing the debris back to ranks of snapping teeth. A gale blew out from the tunnel, as heavy and dank as stale rainwater. The edges of the room had already begun to bleed.

Dill gasped. Further back, among the tunnel’s connective tissues, the crowd of demons were passing objects forward through their ranks towards those in front. These looked like pale gelatinous spheres, and the demons handled them with particular care. The objects, he realized, were eyes: thousands of them all staring back at the young angel.

Still screaming, Mina dropped to her knees and pressed her palms over her ears.

“Take my hand,” Dill cried. He reached back through the window. “Come with me, quickly!”

She didn’t look up at him.

“Get away from there, lad!” Hasp roared from the doorway.

The tunnel consumed more and more of Mina’s room, chewing through the walls as though they were paper. Cracks shot through the earthen floor. Fragments crumbled away only to be plucked up and skirled by the howling wind.

Dill scrambled back into Mina’s room, where her agony hit him like the blast from a furnace. He staggered but managed to grab her and drag her back towards the window.

Hasp pounded on the doorframe. “Leave her!”

Somehow Dill bundled them both over the window ledge. With the tunnel of claws and teeth mere yards behind them, the pair collapsed in a crumpled heap on Dill’s floor.

Or was it a floor? For a confusing moment, Dill glimpsed forest all around him—dark, ancient oaks crowding his vision. The rich perfume of soil and mulch filled his lungs. He heard Mina give a gasp…

…Then silence.

Dill’s vision faded abruptly; he was sprawled on the floor of his room again. Groggily, he shook his head and looked around.

Mina still clutched her jewelry box, but her eyes now stared vacantly into a faraway place.

“What’s wrong with her?”

The god grunted. “Shock,” he said. “Watching the shell of your soul being consumed by demons can have that effect. It’s a wonder she hasn’t already become a shade. Look behind you!”

There was almost nothing left of Mina’s room; it had been swallowed up, the fragments carried back inside the Worm’s endless gullet. The rim of the tunnel had finally reached Dill’s window. But then it came to a sudden halt, and those demons closest to the window held up their fists so that the eyes they clutched could peer into the angel’s room.

Dill dragged Mina to her feet.

“What do I do now?” he cried.

The god stepped aside. “Get in here.”

“But you said—”

“I know what I said. Get in here! The Mesmerists have
seen
us now.”

Dill took a final desperate look at his surroundings. The walls and furnishings were losing their colour, turning as white as his own eyes. The room was
afraid.
Only the portraits on the walls kept their colour—those thirteen souls who had shared his blood on earth and now shared his space in Hell. Why should he leave them to be consumed? Frantically he yanked down the canvases from the walls. With frames stuffed clumsily under each arm, he urged Mina towards the doorway to Hasp’s castle.

“Not the girl,” Hasp said.

“She can’t stay here!”

The god spoke through his teeth. “You had no business bringing her inside your soul, and you are not going to bring her into mine. Leave her!”

Dill didn’t move. Something strange was happening within the tunnel now. The demons parted, jostling and snapping at each other as they cleared a path through their ranks. The tunnel itself writhed and flexed, its muscles contracting. And soon a wide avenue had appeared among the hordes; it stretched upwards to follow the tunnel’s inside curve. In the far distance Dill saw some sort of procession marching down this newly forged road: a group of pale, armoured figures and great brown beasts like oxen.

“Mesmerists?” Dill whispered urgently.

“Icarates,” Hasp growled. “The Mesmerists manufactured them to enforce their laws. But they have been forced to bend the structure of Hell to facilitate their progress down here. See how their armour sparks? Their power is temporarily depleted.” His mouth set in a grim line, he beckoned Dill towards his own warren of chambers. “Come with me now if you want to survive this. Quickly! Before I change my mind.”

“I’m not leaving Mina.”

Hasp gnashed his teeth in anger. And then he reached in, grabbed Dill and Mina, and pulled them both through the doorway into his castle.

The sudden sense of disassociation Dill felt when he set foot inside the god’s soul nearly drove him to his knees. He dropped the paintings and heard them strike the floor. He saw Hasp’s face looming over him, grey and sweating, his eyes a hard blue under his creased brow. And yet he felt power all around him, ancient and immensely powerful. It was staggering. Memories of ten thousand battles assailed him. His skin crawled with countless pains. He heard the clash of steel and the screams of armies, smelled blood and death. He sensed the pounding heart of a god in his own chest, and struggled desperately to cling to his own identity. Mina slumped against the wall, slack-faced and staring at nothing.

“My home,” Hasp said through his teeth.

“Your soul,” Dill replied.

Hasp grunted. “Try not to break it.”

The procession in the tunnel was nearer now. Huge beasts like the gods of oxen snorted and steamed in the demon-crowded corridor, each harnessed to a wheeled cage. These prisons were full of people who gibbered and shrieked and rattled their bars. Eyeless things with wet red skin and clickety teeth kept pace on either side, while banners of black and gold snapped in the gale above their heads. The white-armoured warriors hobbled like cripples, yet they wielded heavy hammers and tridents. They were yards away from Dill’s room.

Hasp kicked Dill’s dropped paintings aside, and then hurried the young couple down the long low chamber, past racks of swords and shields, bows and quivers of arrows. From behind came the sound of splintering glass. The Icarates were smashing their way into Dill’s soul. Pain clouded the young angel’s vision, throwing up a barrage of colourful dazzling lights. He stumbled, but Hasp grabbed the collar of his steel shirt in one huge fist and dragged him onwards.

“Those rooms back there are just a manifestation of your soul,” said the god, “like the body you think you now inhabit. That manifestation is now being destroyed, but the core of your soul remains here, under
my
protection. Remember your training. Ignore the pain, or you’ll end up as catatonic as this
human
.” He held up Mina like a rag doll in his other fist. “You can avoid the girl’s fate if you have the will to do so.”