The Iron Ship (4 page)

Aarin set his feet wider and tossed his last two darts. He neatly hit her in each foot, pinning her in place not four paces from himself. Where the iron met her flesh, glowing smoke curled upward, bright in the evening. She screamed with her mouth closed, the sound emanating from the cavity in her back. She glared at him, dead eyes full of hate.

“Come on, Pasquanty! Get past her! Onto the wood once more!”

Pasquanty crawled past, as far from the revenant as he could get. His hands found part of the railing buried in the sand. The touch of the wood gave him strength and he scrambled past her with redoubled speed. She watched him go to his superior, whose sleeve he grabbed in a shocking lapse of etiquette.

“I saw, I saw...” Pasquanty gulped. For once, Aarin forgave the squirmings of his face. “I saw the dead, howling at me from the pit in her back. Like they were a long way down, though she stood upright...”

“The souls she has snared,” said Aarin. He looked disdainfully at Pasquanty’s hands clutching his arm. The Correndian muttered an apology and removed them.

Pasquanty looked back to where the spectre stood silently, still watching them. “Will she be waiting here when we return?”

“In all likelihood no, not even Hollow Anika enjoys the bite of iron.” Aarin became brisk. “We should hurry. We have wasted enough time with this. We are fortunate, in a way. Hollow Anika will have scared away the other dead. We should find no more trouble on our way to the Black Isle.”

“Are you certain?”

“No,” said Aarin, “I am not. But whatever the marshes hide, you will see worse upon the isle. You should prepare yourself, Pasquanty.”

“Guider...”

“You wanted to come. You wanted to
learn.
It is too late now to raise objections.”

CHAPTER TWO

The Black Isle

N
IGHT WAS SMOTHERING
the marsh by the time Aarin and Pasquanty made the base of the Black Isle. The White Moon was rising, its pale face brightening by the second as it crossed the edge of the much larger Twin. The Red Moon would follow soon. Quicker, it ran always ahead, outpacing its brother to rise twice most nights.

Aarin’s servants were named for the contrast between the lesser heavenly bodies, and in reference to the Twin. A joke he had had to explain to Pasquanty.

The island towered over the priests, almost as high as the cliffs of which it was a fragment. The walls of the Black Isle were too lofty to be overwhelmed by even the mightiest tide, and its summit was never covered by the sea.

Evening brought a sharp drop in temperature. Pasquanty, sweaty with fear, was chilled uncomfortably.

“We must be ready to begin the ritual before the moons have completed their transit of the Twin,” said Aarin. “Conjunction is in an hour and a half.”

“She will not come otherwise?” said Pasquanty.

“She will come whenever she is called,” said Aarin. “But we are more likely to get something approaching the truth if she is brought out when the Twin is at its noon and encompasses both moons within its circle.”

The night was at its darkest despite the early hour. The White Moon had yet to attain its full brilliance. All was a murky grey, the isle a forbidding slab smeared with pale patches. The Guiders mounted the steps carved up a fault in a rock. These were very steep, steeper even than those that came down from Karsa’s cliffs, and Aarin and Pasquanty had to resort to the chains running alongside the stairs. This was iron, chill to the hands and slick in the way of cold metal, greasy as lead. The smell of it pervaded the narrow cut.

They passed the first white blemish, a cairn of bones carefully stacked by type on a shelf in the stone. Many more followed. Had it been light, they would have been able to see the tangle of remains around the shores of the isle. It was to Pasquanty’s good fortune they could not.

The summit opened before them as both moons sailed high overhead, lighting the marshes in their combined, roseate glare. Piles of bones the height of several men were illuminated in pink monochrome, the harshness of the lunar light picking out their details. The Twin loomed over everything, twenty times the size of the larger White Moon and black as pitch, the bulk of it swallowing stars by the score.

“We are not too late,” said Aarin. “The monolith is this way.”

He led Pasquanty and the twins through the towers of stacked bones, in places so densely placed as to make a labyrinth. Pasquanty started at every shadow. The wind moaned through the spaces between the mounds, playing tunes on hollow bones.

“Calm down, deacon,” said Aarin. “This place is holy, an area of proper passage. We will encounter none of the dead here, they have all gone, and those that have refused to go do not come here in case they are forced into the next life. The walls are very thin here, and we are safe.”

“That can happen?”

“So many rites have been accomplished here, the presence of a Guider is not always necessary for even the most reluctant or most wounded of souls,” said Aarin. He strode unerringly. They kept on going, and going, until the distance they had gone was further than the isle should allow.

“The Stone of Passage,” said Aarin, holding up a hand. Pasquanty looked through the gap between two enormous piles of bones. He spied a wide, circular space. Aarin passed through, Pasquanty and the twins followed. Only when he was in the ceremonial space did he see the monolith.

Forty feet tall, irregularly shaped, black like the rocks of the cliffs and the island, but shot through with silvery veins of glimmer. There were shadowed hollows all over it that Pasquanty realised, after a moment, were sigils like those on the path.

“The holiest site of our order,” said Aarin. “Here the Guiders of the dead performed the funeral rites for untold aeons. It is still a place of great power. You should really have been here before, Pasquanty.”

“So much glimmer!” said Pasquanty.

Aarin made a face. “Yes. Do you know, the Glimmer Guild wanted to tear it down and smash it up? The aldermen said no. If only they had done the same for the rest of the island.” He referred to the disused quarry on the far side of the Black Isle. “Nothing is sacred anymore, the glimmer pollutes the land, the money it brings pollutes men’s souls. I sometimes wish I were born in simpler times, Pasquanty. When the powers were wilder and the gods still sat in their thrones.”

He fell silent, staring at the stone, so Pasquanty respectfully did the same. Shortly, Aarin looked up at the Twin’s great black circle, whose centre was coasting into position directly over the Stone of Passage. The Earth quaked at its presence, a far off rumble and a swaying beneath their feet. A fall of bones somewhere nearby clattered from their heap, then silence again.

“The Earth heralds the Twin’s ascendancy. Now is the time. Remember what I told you, do not approach the stone. Do not address her. Do you understand?”

Pasquanty nodded.

“And just so we are absolutely clear, do not speak with anyone about what you witness here.”

“Of course, Guider Kressind.”

Aarin directed the twins to the base of the monolith. They placed the casket and withdrew. Pasquanty watched them nervously. They seemed more... alive in this place. There was a gleam in their eyes that was usually absent. They moved with greater purpose, with fewer of their ticks and gurning. Perhaps a glimmer of their former intelligence. Pasquanty fervently hoped their eyes reflected the moons’ light and he imagined the rest.

The chest was three feet long, eighteen inches high and deep. The wood was covered in a pale, dirty leather whose origin Pasquanty didn’t like to think on, but often found himself morbidly considering. Thick three thick iron bands ran around the chest vertically, two horizontally. A ridiculous amount of reinforcement for such a small chest. Silvered chains enwrapped it, closed in neat patterns by iron padlocks. Aarin knelt by the chest, and fumbled out a ring of keys from under his robe. He muttered irritably as he clicked his way around the ring. Pasquanty took a few halting steps forward, but Aarin held his hand up and shooed him back. Aarin undid the padlocks upon the chains, then the lock inset into the lid. There were no incantations or passes. The majority of Guiding did not require the pomp propriety demanded of it. Without an audience, Guiders were able to cut corners.

Aarin grasped the lid and glanced over his shoulder. “You want to see? Come and look then. She will not come forth until called. Quickly now.” Aarin looked up. The moons moved toward the centre of the second planet. “We are approaching the most propitious moment.”

Pasquanty looked within. A set of yellow bones filled the chest. The skull was on top, the jaw detached and placed in front of it. A coil of dark iron chain occupied a good portion of the space.

“Pasquanty, meet the mother.”

“Mother...” began Pasquanty.

“Don’t say her full name you idiot!” hissed Aarin. “Even an amateur like you will pull her out in a place like this. Now stand back, right back.”

Pasquanty scurried back right to the edge of the bone cairns. Aarin stood, and took five backward steps.

“Mother Moude,” he said. That was enough.

A sparkle of light travelled across the web of glimmer embedded into the rock. Weak phosphorescence played about the lip of the open chest. At the edge of hearing they heard a building shriek that became abruptly louder as if the screamer had burst through a door into the same room as they. The phosphorescence flared, becoming dazzling. The ghost of Mother Moude shot out from the chest, trailing the iron chain behind her.

“Perfidy! Perfidy!” she howled. “Trapped! Trapped! Damn you, damn you, priest! The banished gods take you and rend you!”

The ghost looped around Aarin’s head until it reached such distance that it jerked on the end of the chain. She wailed and flew down and then rapidly ascended. The chain snapped taut, and the ghost was arrested. She tried several times, crying piteously and clawing at the air each time she reached the chain’s fullest extent, before coming to a halt with her feet level with Aarin’s eyes. The chain ended in a barbed hook that pierced the ghost’s ankle. Spectral blood leaked from the wound, dissipating into glowing smoke on the wind.

“Curse you! Curse you a thousand times! Why do you not let me free?”

“You are my servant,” said Aarin. “As is the law. You were convicted, Mother Moude. You pay the price for your crimes.”

“A hanging, and this limbo? Caught in the brakes of the borderlands, and for what? What?” Mother Moude’s form flickered, passing rapidly through all the forms of her life: infant, girl, young woman, middle-age, to rotting corpse and finally a glowing skeleton then back again. When executed she had been a handsome woman just past the prime of her life, and despite the horror of her decaying form Pasquanty could not take his eyes from her. “For what? For healing magic and midwife’s cantrips! Ghost-talking those who could not stand a man’s attention? I brought peace and comfort and for this I am damned? This is men’s law! Men’s law!” she shrieked. She lunged at Aarin, arms outstretched, the flesh melting from her and her jaw extending impossibly. Aarin stood his ground.

“It is
the
law,” he said coldly.

“Fuck you priest! Fuck you! What do you know of proper power? Nothing, nothing!” her words broke into wailing.

“I am not a priest.”

Mother Moude’s hands went over her eyes. She stopped, and peeked through her fingers, one eye alight with unholy energy. “You’ve a peeping friend here I see! Has he come to see the downcast whore? I was no whore! Why did they call me so? Why? And what so if I were? Men make whores, not women! Men’s law! Men’s law!” she shouted. “If he’ll see a whore, then a whore he’ll get. I was well regarded in my time!”

She laughed deeply, it was a lusty sound in sickening juxtaposition to her wild state. Pasquanty looked up to see Mother Moude naked and in the full glory of early womanhood. His mouth went dry. He tore his eyes away and stared at the ground, his cheeks burning. In the glow of the ghost he saw the entire surface of the plateau was made of compacted bone.

“Stop tormenting my deacon, Mother Moude,” said Aarin. The dead witch’s head snapped back to regard him. She ran through all the forms that she knew to be most disturbing to men, but Aarin did not look away. “I bid you answer a question, as you must.”

“You scrabble along the fences of death. I’ll tell you nothing! Nothing! Let me go! Let me go! Wicked man! In life I was imprisoned by marriage, in death by your art. For my petty acts of freedom I was condemned. Let me go!”

“I cannot.”

“What is it, when in this world and the next men can hold such as we in bondage!” She wailed and made another futile ascent. “You are lacking morals. You priest! No god set you so high.”

“I am not a priest, their kind is gone from the Earth, because there are no gods,” said Aarin. “Not any more. Now speak, Mother Moude. You know what I want to know.”

“Speak it, if you would ask. Do not make me your slave to guess your every whim. Bastard! Fiend! Fucking priest!”

“Why is the Rite of Passage changing?” he said. “It becomes easier. There are rumours of Ocerzerkiyan magi who can talk the ghost from a living man. At the same time, the ghosts who will not go become harder to send on. Something is happening.”

Mother Moude laughed, this time in a shrill, unpleasant manner.

“You will see, you will see! The layers in the Earth hold the answer. The lights in the sky know! Go ask them!”

“I am asking you.”

“And I answered, now leave me be.”

“What is causing it?”

“One question you get, priest, one question!” She screamed so loud it seemed the sky would split. Aarin stood his ground. She stopped, and smiled. She sank lower, the chain coiling on the ground beneath her. She became sly. “I’ll grant you a second answer if you let me go. Have pity, it burns here in the marches. Let me free! Let me go into the blazing world, do not leave me to torment here in the shadowed edge. No matter how you judge my sins, you are not an unmerciful man. I know, I see!”

“I cannot, as well you know,” Aarin said regretfully. “Back into your box, Mother.”