Sea Of Ghosts Part 35

'Wouldn't they just fall through through the ground at the bottom of the pit?' Ianthe asked. the ground at the bottom of the pit?' Ianthe asked.

'Oh, they can keep that up for a while,' Briana replied. 'Fifty feet into solid rock, a hundred feet, maybe more. But there's a limit to the amount of matter they can destroy before they get tired. Sooner or later, the fall catches up with them.' She stopped pacing. 'No, that wasn't the problem. The problem wasn't what they destroyed, but what they made made when you weren't watching them.' when you weren't watching them.'

'Trove,' Ianthe said.

'They'll sit for days over a chunk of stone or sc.r.a.p of metal, running their fingers over it, chanting and muttering to themselves. It's almost as if they're praying. And when they've finished, the piece of stone or metal isn't a piece of stone or metal any more.'

'So you watch them all all the time?' the time?'

'For their own protection,' Briana said. 'Otherwise we'd have to kill them.' She tapped her heel against the gla.s.s floor again. 'Isn't that right, Marquetta?'

The young man continued to ignore her.

Briana's lips narrowed, and all of a sudden Ianthe sensed something something in the air around her a reverberation like a musical note too low to hear. The young man in the room below cried out suddenly. He dropped his book, clamped both hands against his temples and rolled over in agony. in the air around her a reverberation like a musical note too low to hear. The young man in the room below cried out suddenly. He dropped his book, clamped both hands against his temples and rolled over in agony.

'Their minds are like wine gla.s.ses,' Briana said. 'Easy to crack, easy to shatter.'

'Stop it!' Ianthe cried.

Briana exhaled, and the sensation in the air abruptly disappeared. Down below, the young man slumped forward and held his face in his hands. He was breathing heavily, his shoulders trembling slightly.

Briana turned to Ianthe and smiled. 'Now let's go find you one to practise on,' she said.

CHAPTER 17.

OVER AWL.

Dear Lucille,Let's not be under any doubt that some trumped-up, officious envelope-steamer who has been awarded her pointless role within the Haurstaf due to a lack of any real psychical ability will have read this letter before it reached you. If said person realizes the truth of that statement, and if she is insecure enough to feel threatened by it, she will undoubtedly wield what little power she possesses by immediately utilizing her censoring pen. However, upon realizing her pettiness was predicted, she should then feel embarra.s.sed enough to wish to destroy the entire letter. If said person realizes the truth of that statement, and if she is insecure enough to feel threatened by it, she will undoubtedly wield what little power she possesses by immediately utilizing her censoring pen. However, upon realizing her pettiness was predicted, she should then feel embarra.s.sed enough to wish to destroy the entire letter.But she won't.She won't do this because I coated the envelope in a fast-acting anemone poison capable of being absorbed through the skin. Our envelope-steamer will be dead in minutes. I have arranged for the letter itself to be removed from her corpse by a highly paid accomplice, who will pa.s.s it on to you, my dear, in a plain blue, non-toxic envelope. If the envelope containing this missive was not blue, then something has gone fearfully wrong, and I apologize.I miss you and Jontney terribly. Awl Palace is an empty sh.e.l.l without you here. There is an academy in which our vicious little trove-hunter has been enrolled and a modic.u.m of artefacts for me to study. The sisters float around in their robes as aimlessly as whiffs of cloud, soaking up gossip from the ends of the world. They have no interest the greater mysteries of life, but, like the majority of their s.e.x, are content to twitter vacuously among themselves. It's a blessing I cannot hear telepathic conversation, for every spoken conversation I have have overheard eventually leans towards the subject of hair. overheard eventually leans towards the subject of hair.Briana Marks is different. She is cruelly unsubtle, but clever, and finds deep enjoyment in the power games between her own organization and the empire. A woman like her expects to find treachery in every shadow. Sadly, because of her distrust I have failed to impress upon her the importance of my work.Nevertheless, I believe I have achieved a major breakthrough in my understanding of the Unmer's source of power. If I cannot convince Sister Marks of the importance of this, I must leave at once for Losoto to gain an audience with Emperor Hu. Be ready, Lucille. I will soon come for you both.

Maskelyne was pacing his room when someone slid a piece of folded paper under the door. He raced over and s.n.a.t.c.hed it up. He had been expecting a reply from Lucille, but this note startled him. It was a coded message from his contact.

32/3/44/51/163/33/29/29/32/19/32/3/67/8/56/9/163/3/7/80/17/18/3/89/18/76/33/88/1/50/127/43/2/16/127/22/21/70/246/70/13/3/18/33/9/29/79/11/263/99/3/32/101/106/61/119/32/12/44/3/57.

Maskelyne cursed. His contact had repeated several of the numbers, which meant that any fool might decipher the message without the pa.s.s. How many times did he have to tell the man? Even the staff who delivered the messages might easily unravel such an obvious formula. He went over to the bookshelf and pulled out a volume of Clarke's Almanac Clarke's Almanac, then sat down, turned to page 412 and began counting through the script to find the letters corresponding to each number. A short while later, he had his answer.

Ianthe officially Haurstaf. They're going to execute you. Awaiting signal.

Maskelyne crumpled up the paper and popped it in his mouth. While he chewed, he decided it was probably a good idea to leave sooner rather than later.

He went out onto the terrace, where his scattered trove gleamed in the bronze evening light among potted plants and stone garden furniture. Reefs of golden cloud filled the western sky behind the mountains. Maskelyne leaned on the bal.u.s.trade and looked out across the valley. Smoke rose from a dozen military encampments located in cleared areas of forest below the palace. Several artillery emplacements occupied strategic ridges and hilltops, their steel barrels trained on the heavens. A foot patrol was marching south-east along the banks of the Irya towards Port Awl. He filled his lungs with cool mountain air, so sharp with the antiseptic scent of pine, and he waited for the sun to set.

Mountainous shadows crept across the valley floor. A few lights winked on in the military bases, and fires flickered between the trees. The sky grew darker. Maskelyne watched the first stars appear overhead. Cloud cover would have been better, but there wasn't anything he could do about that. He licked his finger and held it up to test the direction of the breeze. The evenings frequently brought cool air down from the mountains towards Port Awl and the sea, and he was relieved to find such conditions tonight. He picked up the gem lantern from the table he used as a workbench, opened the shutter so that its light spilled out and went back inside.

From under his bed, he took out a brown paper parcel and tore it open to reveal a Guild soldier's uniform and a specially adapted leather harness. Maskelyne stripped, then donned the uniform. The heavy cotton was lined with wool and fitted him snugly. Warm enough, he supposed. Then he secured the harness over the jacket, tightening its padded straps around his waist and under his arms. Its many pockets had originally been used to hold ammunition, but Maskelyne's contact had had these enlarged and reinforced with wire. A further addition had been the ring of bra.s.s hooks around the base, each of which supported a small burlap sack full of sand.

Finally dressed, he checked all of the straps a second time. The harness was heavy and c.u.mbersome, and the weight of the sandbags put an uncomfortable strain on his shoulders. He wandered into the bathroom and set the gem lantern on top of the cistern. He lowered the commode seat and stood on top of it. From here he could reach the eight chariot ballast spheres resting upon the ceiling. One by one, Maskelyne took them down and fed them into the pockets on his harness, securing each firmly with a bra.s.s buckle. The harness began to strain upwards against his chest, wanting to rise, but his weight kept him grounded. When the last sphere was in place, he stepped off the commode.

He drifted slowly down the floor.

No good. He had to shed some weight. He had to shed some weight.

He raised the commode seat again and unb.u.t.toned his fly. A few moments later, his head touched the ceiling. He b.u.t.toned himself up again, then grabbed the gem lantern. Its extra weight was just enough to bring him back to earth. By traversing the bathroom in a series of slow leaps, and by pushing himself along the walls, he made his way back through the doorway and into the bedroom. At the door to the terrace, he stopped and reached inside the gem lantern, making a small adjustment to the feedback mechanism he had fitted inside. The light began to grow brighter immediately. Quickly, he set down the lantern and pushed himself through the terrace doorway. His boots sc.r.a.ped the flagstones for an instant, but then he was rising swiftly into the star-encrusted sky. Up past the palace pinnacles he soared, watching the terrace drop away below him. The breeze carried him southeast, out over the forest towards the army encampments and the coast. The palace dwindled behind him, its windows all glimmering like the facets of a jewel.

But the light from his bedroom already outshone all others, and was growing brighter still.

Maskelyne drifted out across the valley, enjoying the cold, pine-scented air. Acres of dense woodland swept by under his feet. To the east he could see the mercurial ribbon of the Irya gleaming faintly among patchwork fields, with the dark ma.s.s of the mountains towering behind. His flight path would take him directly over a Guild army camp, but that couldn't be helped. He had to hope that any spotters would have their telescopes fixed on the palace by now.

The light from his gem lantern was blazing like a small white sun. Even from this distance he found it difficult to look at directly. The feedback mechanism couldn't last much longer. Maskelyne knew it had to fail, and fail soon.

Any moment now . . .

The light flickered. And then a fireball bloomed in the heart of the palace. A heartbeat later, the sound of the concussion reached Maskelyne: a sharp crack, followed by a prolonged rumble. The blast wave punched through the air around him, pushing him onwards with a noticeable jolt. A cry came from one of the military camps down below, followed moments later by the rising-falling cycle of an attack siren. Maskelyne drifted onwards, out into the night, a single tiny mote among billions of stars.

The higher he rose, the colder and thinner the air became. It soon felt like ice in his lungs. The harness was starting to chaff and pinch under his shoulders. He blew into his hands and rubbed them constantly to try to keep the blood moving through his veins. His lips and face already felt completely numb. After a while, he unbuckled one of his harness pockets and released a chariot stone, which duly shot up and away to be lost forever in the heavens above. Maskelyne wondered how many there were, floating up there in the vacuum between worlds. He began to descend again, more rapidly than he would have liked, so he opened one of the sandbags and scooped out handfuls of ballast until his descent slowed.

On he drifted, over fields and hedgerows and hayricks, floating through the darkness like some strange wandering sorcerer. He pa.s.sed over a farmhouse with bright windows spilling firelight across an empty yard. No one was around to notice him. He crossed the River Irya and followed a country lane for a short while, before the breeze carried him back out over the water and the farmland beyond. At one point he sailed above a clump of woodland, his boots skimming the tops of the trees, while he frantically bailed out more sand.

Eventually, he came within half a mile of the Crossing Inn, where the palace road crossed the river. The breeze was blowing him west, further away from the road and his arranged meeting place, so Maskelyne decided to land. He released another chariot sphere, controlling his quickening descent by dropping more sand.

He landed easily in a gra.s.sy field several yards behind the road, whereupon he rubbed his hands and set off for the inn.

His contact was waiting for him in a corner of the bar. Firelight played across the roughcast walls. A few long, dusty tables lined the walls, but the communal benches were all empty at this late hour. Even the innkeeper had retired for the night, leaving his single guest to pour his own mead. He looked up when Maskelyne entered, grinned and then shoved a clay goblet across the table towards him.

'Cold outside?' he asked.

'Good to see you, Howlish,' Maskelyne said, rubbing his hands fiercely. 'Be a good fellow and put some more wood on that fire.'

The captain leaned over and pitched a few logs onto the fire. Flames snapped and crackled.

Maskelyne joined him at the corner table. 'You've seen my wife?'

'Recovering well, by all accounts.'

'And Jontney?'

'Fine, fine. They're expecting us before dawn.'

Maskelyne took a sip of mead and leaned back in his chair. 'I was thinking we might postpone our escape.'

Captain Howlish looked at him.

'For a few days, at least,' Maskelyne added.

The other man took a long draught of mead, then set down his goblet. 'It's your money, Maskelyne, but I think you're making a mistake. News travels fast here. There are a lot of psychics on this island.'

'Those psychics have taken something that belongs to me,' Maskelyne said. 'A man in my position simply can't allow thefts like that to go unpunished. It's a matter of my own survival.'

'They're not going to give you the girl back.'

'No,' Maskelyne admitted. 'I don't expect they will.' He took out a sc.r.a.p of folded paper from his uniform jacket pocket and handed it to the captain. 'I wonder if you could collect some more items for me.'

Howlish unfolded the paper and read through it. 'The rifles are easy,' he said. 'Cutting tools, brine gas, ichusae if you have the money. No problem.' But then he shook his head. 'Forget void flies. I didn't even know there were any left in the world until you brought out that d.a.m.ned blunderbuss.' He grunted. 'And what's with all these lanterns? Are you planning a war or a party?'

'A little bit of both.'

'It would easier to explain this without a pistol pointed at my head,' Herian said.

Granger kept the pistol aimed at the old man. It was the same weapon Herian had tried to use on him earlier and, as far as he could tell, the only thing in this G.o.dforsaken trap he could be sure didn't have a nasty surprise in store for an unwary handler.

They were standing beside the shattered pedestal in the transmitting station's main chamber. It was rea.s.suringly gloomy in here without the crystal's radiance, however most of the trove around him now appeared to be defunct. Herian had a.s.sured him it wasn't.

The old man threw up his hands. Then he wandered over to the nearest pile of trove and sat down. 'There's a story about a human who once made deal with the Unmer,' he said. 'He was a slave, of no real value to anyone, but he proposed something that piqued the interest of the greatest entropic sorcerer of the age. You see, the slave thought he had devised a method by which he might live forever.'

Granger listened.

'He imagined that if he could trap his reflection between two mirrors,' Herian went on, 'then it would remain there indefinitely. And so some part of him would always be preserved.' He shifted uncomfortably, frowned and moved some shiny piece of trove out from under him. 'However, although he could place two mirrors so that they faced each other,' he said, 'the slave could never duck out from between them quickly enough to leave his reflection behind.' He looked up at Granger. 'But the sorcerer decided that if he could slow down light enough, the reflection might remain. He didn't care about the slave, of course, only the problem he presented.'

Granger sat down nearby. He balanced the pistol on his knee.

'So the sorcerer tried everything to slow down light. He filled the s.p.a.ce between the mirrors with all sorts of gases, liquids and prisms. Nothing worked. And then he had an idea. He didn't have to slow down light. All he had to do was increase the distance between the mirrors. If the light from the slave's face took long enough to reach the mirror and rebound, the slave need not even be there when the reflected light returned. The hard part would be to create two perfect mirrors, and place them far enough apart.

'After many years of labour he finally created the mirrors. But he knew that the distance he required between them would be phenomenal. There wasn't enough s.p.a.ce in all of Anea to place the mirrors far enough apart. So he put the slave and the mirrors in a chariot. And then he flew up into the void beyond the earth.

'The sorcerer had constructed a suit to supply him with all the air and food and water he'd ever need, and to keep him warm during his journey across the freezing wastes. The slave didn't have a suit, of course, and died quickly, but that didn't matter. He didn't actually have to be alive alive to cast his reflection. The sorcerer set one mirror adrift in the void, and then he took the slave's body and the other mirror away with him deep into the unknown.' Herian shrugged. 'And n.o.body ever saw him or heard from him again.' to cast his reflection. The sorcerer set one mirror adrift in the void, and then he took the slave's body and the other mirror away with him deep into the unknown.' Herian shrugged. 'And n.o.body ever saw him or heard from him again.'

Granger grunted. 'Is there a point to all this?'

'The point is,' Herian said, 'don't get involved with things you don't understand. The artefacts you call trove were designed to study different facets of the cosmos around us. You are no different from the slave. You cannot wield any these weapons safely unless you understand the forces at work.'

'So teach me.'

Herian shook his head. 'It took me years to learn. It would take you you a lifetime.' a lifetime.'

Granger got up and walked over. He placed the barrel of his pistol against the old man's head. 'This gun turns things to ash,' he said.

Herian snorted. 'Ash? It increases entropy entropy.'

Granger's finger tightened on the trigger. 'I don't care what you call it,' he said. 'It'll hurt just the same.'

'You have no idea what you're getting into.'

Granger shot him in the foot.

Herian howled as half his toes vaporized in a puff of grey-coloured ash. He clamped his hands across the stump, but there was no blood at all. His crown fell off, and he began to shudder and wail.

'I think I just increased some entropy there,' Granger said.

'You b.a.s.t.a.r.d.'

Granger grabbed the old man's neck and lifted his face so he could look into those terrified eyes. 'Tell me how these weapons work,' he said. 'All of them.'

Herian just stared at him with utter contempt.

Granger raised the pistol again.

'All right,' Herian said. He let out a growl of pain and frustration. 'There are two main schools of Unmer sorcery: Entropic and Brutalist. Brutalist sorcery concerns the movement of energy. Gem lanterns, wave cannons, air stones, perception devices, they're all made using those principles. Entropic sorcery focuses on matter, its destruction and creation. It's how trove is made.'

'How do I use the Replicating Sword?'

'I'll come to that!' Herian cried. 'Just give me a moment. Give me a moment!'

Granger had no means to judge the pa.s.sage of time inside that gloomy tower. He sat and listened for hours as the old man talked about the principles behind many of the artefacts around them. Most of it he didn't understand, but he learned enough to be both frightened and respectful of these things the Unmer had made. Some objects, it seemed, had no discernible purpose other than to test a theory about the cosmos, while others had been deliberately crafted to torture and kill. The deadliest weapons were not always the ones that looked dangerous. Seemingly innocuous objects worked horrors Granger could scarcely comprehend. There were pins that turned flesh to gemstones and screaming rings that, once worn, could never be removed. In one corner Herian unearthed a crib once used to smother human children. Devices for exchanging perceptions abounded, and Granger wondered if he might use one of them to communicate with Ianthe. But he was afraid to try anything in the old man's presence that might affect his own mind in ways he couldn't predict.

It must have been late into the night when Herian finally slumped to the ground and begged Granger to let him rest. Granger left him alone and took the chariot back out into the frozen wilderness to find a place where he himself might sleep safely.

The sun was rising over the Mare Verdant, and the waters lay under a veil of green vapour. Not a breath of wind disturbed the snow. Granger flew the chariot leagues into the north until he could no longer see the transmitting station tower. Still the ice stretched on forever. The curve of the world bowed before him under ink blue skies.

There he slept, wrapped in his fur jacket and clutching his pistol, while the chariot hovered twenty feet above the bitter ground.

At dusk, he turned the machine around and headed back to the transmitting station. He had no doubt that the old man would by now be armed and waiting for him, but Granger decided to take that risk. He had so much more still to learn.

Two soldiers strapped the Unmer man to a chair, then ripped off his blindfold, revealing the leucotomy scar on his forehead. He was a rag of a man, skeletal, limp-haired and savage-looking. He glanced feverishly around the room, before his gaze settled on Ianthe.

Briana paced behind Ianthe's chair. 'Just do what you did with Caroline, but tone it down a thousandfold.'

'Constance,' Ianthe said.

The man's eyes filled with fury. His cheeks moved rapidly behind his gag. His naked chest rose and fell. Sweat dripped from his forehead, causing him to blink. Behind him, the Guild soldiers retreated to the far wall. One of the pair brushed a speck from his blue uniform sleeve and then stood to attention. The other man yawned. They were young, these two, but their blank expressions verged on boredom. They'd seen torture before.

Mirrors covered the three walls of the room facing the prisoner. Ianthe could see nothing in them but the room's reflection, and yet she sensed dozens of figures waiting behind those huge panes. She cast out her mind . . .

. . . and found herself among a group of old women seated on tiered benches, their faces rapt as they studied the young Evensraum girl in a room behind a gla.s.s wall. The mirrors worked in one direction only. Ianthe flitted between the minds of her hidden observers, watching them through the eyes of their own peers. They were ancient, older than any Haurstaf Ianthe had seen. She sensed expectation, perhaps even excitement, in that secret room. She could see it in their eyes, in the twitching of skeletal fingers, the pursed lips.

'Start with . . .' Ianthe returned to her own body, '. . . a point behind his eyes,' Briana said. 'Sometimes it helps to picture a tiny tuning fork located there. Concentrate on the image until you begin to hear the fork vibrate. Haurstaf use such techniques to visualize and manipulate unconscious processes.'

Ianthe tried to picture a silver fork between the Unmer man's eyes. Immediately, he began to struggle against his restraints, thrashing his head left and right. Had he been sensitive to that simple act of visualization? She wasn't convinced. She imagined the fork vibrating, and she imagined the sound it made, but it didn't seem to affect him in any way. 'What do I do next?' she said.

'Visualize pain in your own head,' Briana said. 'You can imagine someone driving a nail into your skull. As soon as you start to feel it, push the sensation across into the tuning fork. If you've made a connection with the subject, he'll feel that pain, greatly amplified.'