Roil (23 page)

“Now!”

Kara Jade already had the job in hand, her face a mask of horror and determination. “Strap yourselves in,” she said.

Kara muttered over her controls, the
Roslyn Dawn
jerked sharply to the left and rose about a hundred yards in what seemed little more than a heartbeat. However, it wasn’t quite enough.

There was a flash of detonation, and the airship lifted on a wave of fire.

The history of this world cannot be understood without a complete knowledge of the three forces that govern it. The Roil, the Engine and, of course, the Breaching Spire. We know of a Mechanical Winter, we have heard whisperings of the punishment meted out for that by whatever brute intellect rules Tearwin Meet. We know that the Roil is ancient that it has come before.

So what is it that we know?

Nothing.

Our history is but one of events, scattered and continuing, but never in the context that such knowledge would bring.

We stare into the great dark, little more than idiots playing out roles that we do not understand.

WITHIN THE ROIL

David scrambled to his feet, his nose bleeding, spots dancing before his eyes.
Glad I have such a thick skull.

At least no one seemed to have noticed his tumble.

“Told you to strap in, idiot!” Kara Jade said, swinging from her controls to glare at him. David dropped into a seat, pulled the belts tight around him.

“Did we take a direct hit?” Cadell demanded. The Old Man hadn’t strapped himself in. He stood by Kara now, peering over her controls. David wondered if they made any sense to him at all.

“No, we’ve everything functioning. A direct hit and you’d hear it, a direct hit and I think we’d be hitting the ground not long after. But I’m getting us out of here, now. Thank the Mothers of the Sky for all this heat. There are thermals enough to lift us to the moons. The
Dawn
’s straining for the sky. Strap yourselves in. David, I’m talking to you.”

“Already have,” he said.

The nacelles coughed and shuddered, and the
Roslyn Dawn
raced into the air. David’s ears popped and he clutched at the armrests. Kara Jade worked furiously at the controls, venting gas and releasing ballast, pushing the
Roslyn Dawn
as far as she dared.

“If you don’t get it right, the lack of air pressure can burst the gas bladders,” she said to no one in particular. “And that is not a good thing. Kill an Aerokin quick smart. Foolish man, entering the Roil like it’s his right.”

There was another flash, however, this time, they were much further from it. David watched the great ball of fire hurtle past then plummet back down into the Roil. Something else caught his eye, a distant glint in the sky to the south that shot from east to west.

“What’s that?” he asked, pointing south west with a shaking hand.

It rushed past again (or at least he thought it rushed past) and was gone.

“Your imagination,” Kara Jade said. “Now quiet all of you. I need to concentrate.”

“What did you see?” Margaret asked, her voice uneasy.

David looked at her suspiciously. Just what did she know?

“I’m not sure what it was, but it’s gone now.”

Still, David stared south, eyes straining to see through all that murk. But nothing passed that way again.

The shift from Roil to sunlight was abrupt.

David’s eyes watered as he looked out beyond the shuddering edge of the Obsidian Curtain. Rain fell on the hills a hundred miles north of Chapman. A little to the west of those low hills Lake Uhl gleamed. A normal day, an unthreatened day, until he turned his head and the Roil was there behind him.

Even when he did not turn, it remained. Sunshine failed to scour from him what he had seen, the darkness had poisoned his world.

A ball of fire burst from the Roil, sailing past the 
Roslyn Dawn
, it described a steep arc that ended in the deserted suburbs where it struck a building setting it alight, then another and another followed until a whole block blazed.

“Those heat sinks, how did they build them so fast?” Margaret asked. “They weren’t there a few days ago.”

Cadell grinned darkly. “Disturbing, isn’t it? I have my suspicions, Margaret, but none of them are good. Nor are they helpful at this time.” He turned to Kara. “Land this as quickly as you can.”

Kara grunted in response.

“What does he mean?” David asked Margaret. “What does he mean that could make this more disturbing than it already is?”

“Vastkind,” Margaret said. “I think that’s where his thoughts lead him.”

“Vastkind?” Here was something David had never heard of, and Margaret seemed surprised. “Beneath the crust, where all is heat and even the stone melts and becomes a kind of liquid fire – the burning yolk of the world. There the old, old books say, dwells the Vastkind, a proto-roilbeast. An Ur-beast for it is from the fire that the Roil was sprung, whether through the dark designs of the Master Engineers or nature, the books do not know. But they’re big, terribly big.”

David nodded his head and shivered. “I don’t like the sound of that at all. At least, up here, we’re relatively safe.”

“We’re not safe yet, relative or otherwise,” Kara Jade said. “The bastards on the wall have started firing at us.”

She pointed behind her where flags hung from the wall. “Quick, the red and the grey flag and the green one two. Wave them out the port window.”

David grabbed the flags and did as he was told.

The firing stopped, but not before a shell glanced off the starboard nacelle. The 
Roslyn Dawn
 moaned.

Kara Jade cursed at that. “Whores of Argent Lane, if they’ve hurt my darling 
Dawn
, the Council of Chapman will pay in blood.”

The Engine is mad. It was built by the mad. What is hubris if not the grandest of madness? Think of it there, in the Distant North. Consider its endless thought and what it might be scheming with its great clockwork mind. Should its thoughts turn south again, distance alone will not save us.

Its thoughts know nothing of the miles, its thoughts take it everywhere.

He’d delayed when he should have run, but to do what they had wanted of him... He’d doubted more than any of them, and Stade had provided ample distraction.

He could not lie to himself. It had been fun. The chase he’d set Stade’s Vergers, which hadn’t been much of a chase, but a peculiar sort of predation. Oh, and the death he’d meted out, telling himself that it was fair and just. And if any innocents got in the way; if they fell; if he killed them. Well, there were no true innocents, and this game was not a game. Sometimes people died, sometimes quite a lot of them.

Cadell had always been the most sentimental of the Old Men. A dangerous shifting sort of sentiment, one that could both justify and mourn the deaths of so many.

The dozens he had slaughtered these past two years, they were nothing to those many who had died because of him.

Cadell approached the Tower of Engineers as though he owned it. Built in the centre of the city it rose above everything, an imitation of the Breaching Spire. At its crown, bordering the central spike, were the two huge Lights of Reason shining into the sky, a few months ago they would have been illuminating clouds now the rains had gone and they seemed almost to touch the stars. Impressive except that in another few weeks, if that, they would be smothered by the Roil.

The lights represented the ideals of Truth and Reason, but Cadell doubted there would be much of either on display inside the Council Chambers. Otherwise Chapman would have been evacuated weeks before. Had Buchan not been exiled he knew with a certainty the city would be empty of all but the mad.

The great doors were locked, but they opened at the touch of his hand, the locks freezing, then shattering.

Two guards stood at the foyer. They raised their rifles.

“That would not be wise,” Cadell said.

“What do you want?” demanded the nearest guard.

“I must speak with the Council.”

The guards exchanged glances. “The Council is in session. Have you made an appointment?”

“Of course not,” Cadell snapped.

“No reason to be so short tempered,” the guard said.

“Every reason,” Cadell said. “The Roil is about to strike. And I must speak to them one and all, the city must be evacuated.”

“On whose authority do you speak?” One of the guards asked, rolling his eyes.

“My own,” Cadell said and lifted his hand so that the ring he wore was easily visible.

Both guards lifted their eyebrows and lowered their guns.

“If you will excuse me,” one said. “I will have to get someone for you.”

The guard hurried off, leaving his very nervous friend.

“Is it true what you did to those Vergers?”

Cadell flashed a smile. “What do you think?”

Cadell did not have to wait long before the guard returned with a harried looking councillor. “At last,” Cadell said.

“Good evening, sir. I’m Gaffney, councillor medium rank. May I see the ring?”

Cadell growled. “I am growing bored of this.”

“It is just a formality. I have made the study of these rings my life’s work, I know what I am doing, sir.”

Cadell doubted that, but he reached out his hand. The councillor inspected it closely, his eyes almost touching the band. Then he let out a long slow whistle.

“It is indeed the genuine item.” Gaffney took a step back and inspected Cadell with almost the same level of scrutiny he had given the ring. “Which makes you the genuine article. It is an honour and terror to be in your presence. These rings decay when their bearers die, the minnows are sensitive, but this gleams with a brilliance that nothing but living metal can match. We have one in a case, sealed up, but it is not in nearly as good a condition as this. Should anyone touch it, there would be no ring but dust.” Gaffney caught himself. “Of course, you don’t need a lecture on such things. What a beautiful piece of work.”

“It serves its purpose,” Cadell said. “Now, I must meet with the Council.”

Gaffney nodded his head, and folded his hands before him. He motioned to the lift at the back of the foyer. “We are in session, brother Cadell. Will you join me?”

Cadell bowed. “I will indeed, brother Gaffney. There are issues you must be informed of.”

They walked to the elevator. The doors were already open, Gaffney waited for Cadell to enter then followed. He pushed the appropriate button and the elevator rose.

“We have not seen an original ring for over a century here,” Councillor Gaffney said. “I certainly never expected to see one in my lifetime.”

“Well you have now,” Cadell said. “If you do not mind me asking, who was it that last came here?”

“I truly don’t know, sir, except that he was a great man.” The door to the elevator opened and Gaffney pressed a button by the door once. “He also said that should anyone else of his order ever come here we were to take them to the fourteenth floor and press the open door button twice.”

“Don’t,” Cadell said. Gaffney stabbed the button a second time, and some obdurate force picked Cadell up and hurled him out the door.

Cadell landed on his knees, and scrambled to his feet.

The lift door clicked shut, just as Cadell reached it, closing on to nothing. Cadell swore and swung his hand against the air. Blasted portals, he’d thought them all undone, they had been dangerous things more likely to fry your organs than take you where they ought. He was lucky he’d survived.

Cadell looked around. This could be anywhere.

Where he was
not
, was Chapman. The air was cool and dry and smelt old. The vegetation leaned towards highland subtropical, ferns and the like.

Far away. I am far away.

Bellbirds started chiming and the sound was like a knife in his heart. He’d thought he’d never hear that sound again. A plump lizard, curled around the branch of a nearby tree, watched him with grey and watery eyes.

“Narung, or there about,” Cadell mused aloud.

The air filled with a booming chuckle, as though the sky had decided to mock the dull earth. Ferns shook and the lizard scurried away.

“Always so quick to voice an opinion, Mr Cadell,” came a voice from behind him, a familiar voice and one that chilled him.

“You,” Cadell said, spinning on his heel, and there it stood.

The human manifestation of the Engine of the World was tall, and vaguely masculine, it regarded him with large, mocking eyes. “We need to talk,” it said, dipping its head so it was the same height as Cadell.

Cadell grimaced. “I should have known it would be you. You never made anything simple. Why are you doing this?”

“That is what we need to talk about.”

“There is nothing to talk about, you know your role.”

“Yes, but I have changed, developed, almost four thousand years of sentience has given me pause for thought and thought of pause. I know what damage I have wrought.” His dark eyes drilled into Cadell’s. “I have no desire to do it again.”

Bah. Build a weapon with a conscience and what do you get? Trouble.

“You have no choice,” Cadell said. “You’re just a machine.”

The Engine’s face darkened. “I am no less human than you, Mr Cadell. And do not tell me you have not known doubt. Why, this conversation should have occurred earlier, but it did not. You have always submitted to my punishment. Just a machine, indeed.”

“That’s not an issue. You are the Engine of the World, you have no choice.” Cadell repeated. “None of us have any choice, we’ve gone beyond the time of choices. If we do not act, night will fall forever.”

The Engine shook its head. “No. The galaxy moves on. I understand what I am and why I am. I will not fail, should you require it of me. But I will not make it easy for you.”

“What will you do? Conspire with the Roil?”

“Heavens no, Mr Cadell. That is not at all what I am suggesting. The Roil will not deal with me, I am too alien to it. The time will come when you understand me, that time is not now but soon, perhaps, it will all start to make sense.” The Engine bowed. “This is but a warning.”

Then the engine was gone, running down the hill and up the next in a series of precise distance eating steps that Cadell knew he had no hope of matching.

Still, Cadell made to follow (what other choice did he have?) but, at that moment, the door behind him opened with a ping. He turned towards it.

A nervous Gaffney waited at the doorway.

“You may not believe it,” Gaffney said. “But I am quite glad to see you. I am to take you to the meeting, sir.”

Cadell paused and turned to see the Engine disappearing over the hill.

Cadell scowled and Gaffney blanched. “I would hurry, sir. This portal is most unstable and heaven knows where
here
is, but I’ll wager it would take us sometime to reach Chapman.”

“All right,” Cadell said.

He stormed back into the elevator, cringing as he passed through the portal, the doors clanged shut behind him.