The Factory Trilogy 01 - Gleam (24 page)

‘Nice one,’ Churr said. ‘Good work, dickhead.’

‘I’m not a good liar.’

‘You’re not good at anything.’

‘He’s quite good at singing,’ Spider said.

Churr rolled her eyes.

Alan turned to Spider. ‘
Quite?
’ he said.

Spider shrugged.

‘You can’t lie, you can’t kill, you can’t—’

‘I can fight a bit.’

‘What good is that if you’re not going to kill?’

‘I’m pretty sure I could kill, actually,’ Alan said, quietly. ‘It just hasn’t been absolutely necessary yet.’

‘My understanding,’ Spider said, ‘is that Alan chose his companions with his own limitations in mind. He is not generally comfortable with killing, so he asked me along, for example. Not to mention Bloody Nora.’

‘
I
secured Bloody Nora,’ Churr said, ‘and don’t you idiots forget it.’

‘Lest anybody forget,’ Nora said, ‘I’m here for my own reasons.’

Churr glared at Nora, then slammed her hands onto the table, stood up and strode off.

Alan took a deep breath. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Coming to see Eyes?’

*

‘This is the place,’ Spider said to Alan as they entered the Sanctuary. ‘The place the Omentoad showed me. It feels the same. I knew it augured something good. This is where we succeed.’

‘You are too optimistic,’ Alan said. ‘We may have found our Benedictions, but we have not yet succeeded in anything.’

‘I felt the magic,’ Spider said. ‘I felt it coming up from underneath. I don’t feel it now, but I did then – that must be what the afflicted feel. That must be what you feel, Nora.’

Nora nodded briefly, but her face did not betray anything like the wonder that was in Spider’s words.

Alan, Nora and Spider stood around Eyes, lying on his wooden gurney. Once Nora and Spider had taken in the nature of the Sanctuary, the Goddess and the Giving Beast, they relayed the recent developments. The flesh of the Giving Beast smelled much stronger this close to its interior ‘wall’, and the surface of the gills was soft-looking, inviting.

Alan had to resist the urge to climb inside one of the gills and lie down himself. ‘I wish I’d made better use of my bed,’ he murmured during the silence that followed their story.

‘Aye,’ Eyes said, ‘if you’d just stayed in bed, you’d likely not be getting the boot.’

The old man was much, much better – in fact, his recovery was almost eerie. Alan was shocked when they first saw him. Although Eyes was still blind – he’d lost his sight permanently, it appeared – the skin of his face had healed and the infection had diminished almost totally. Apart from being far too thin, he actually looked better than he ever had before.

The Giving Beast
. Alan couldn’t shake his unease. It was giving, yes; it was giving very much. But was it taking anything in return?

‘It all comes down to the Pyramid, then, eh?’ Eyes said. He chuckled softly to himself. ‘Sending all their shite out here for the likes of us to deal with the consequences.’ He
laughed again. ‘Ah, well. It should be no surprise to me any more.’ He shook his head. ‘No surprise at all.’

Alan waited for the onset of the trembles, for the agitation, for the explosion of anger and entreaties for action that usually accompanied Eyes’ musings on the Pyramid.

But they didn’t come. He just lay there, calm and sanguine, a clean cloth wrapped around the top of his head, laughing quietly. It must have been the effects of the spores.

Then Alan cocked his head. ‘Can you hear that?’ he asked.

‘What, exactly?’ Spider replied. ‘I can hear lots of groaning, talking, children shouting.’

‘Babies crying,’ Nora said, standing.

‘Yes,’ Spider said, ‘babies crying, too. The breath of our great host here, the squeaking of these pulley systems …’ He trailed off.

‘The babies,’ he said.

Alan stood up and simultaneously a cacophony of screams erupted outside the Giving Beast. Wound through it all was the high wail of a crying baby.

As they ran from beneath the fungal curtain, warm blood spattered across their skin. Screams echoed throughout Dok and bodies rained down from the hole at the top of the tower, splattering onto the stone ground and bouncing from the Giving Beast’s canopy, fluids spraying wildly from tears and ruptures.

‘By the Builders!’ Spider said. ‘Holy hell!’

The baby cries became that awful gurgling laughter and then warped back again, all the time growing ever louder. Alan couldn’t see much up at the top of Dok – he could just about make out the large aperture through which they’d all entered – but there was no bright sky beyond to illuminate anything, not when they were this deep. There was just a paleness, and the impression of movement. And, of course, people falling: Pilgrims and the afflicted alike. Some Pilgrims were running down the walkway and some were running up, armed with staffs, swords and crossbows.

‘We’re up, Nora,’ Spider said, but Nora was already on her way, moving fluidly through the chaos, slipping between the Pilgrims and flowing up the spiral like something betraying the laws of physics.

Spider put a hand on Alan’s shoulder. ‘Now’s your chance, Alan,’ he said. He gestured back at the Giving Beast. ‘We’ll handle the Clawbaby. You get in there and secure those Benedictions.’

‘I should fight it,’ Alan said. ‘It’s here for me.’

‘We don’t know that.’

‘I do – I can’t explain it, but I know. It used to wait for me outside the House of a Thousand Hollows, I’m sure of it now. I used to think there was something out there, watching me. It’s been there ever since I was young. Even when I lived in the Pyramid. Sometimes when I was out on the terraces I felt it, watching.’

‘Alan, we don’t have time for this. Go and get what we came for; you take the Benedictions and you take Eyes and you go. Just go. Because once this is over, there will be no mercy for you. The Pilgrims are dangerous: you know it and I know it. You will have to run. We will all have to run.’

‘Where’s Churr?’

‘I don’t know. Now go.’

‘I—’

Spider shoved him back towards the Giving Beast and then set off at a run, shouldering his way across the increasingly congested ground floor. Alan heard a wet
yell from directly above and instinctively side-stepped; a woman with her head twisted right around smashed into the ground right where he’d been standing. The sound of her bones breaking made Alan want to cry. He looked at her and realised that her neck wasn’t twisted; she just had faces on both sides of her head.

When he looked up again, Spider was gone.

Alan ran back to the Giving Beast, to find that inside was no less chaotic. There were obviously different denominations within the Pilgrims’ order, and some of those were trained to fight, and many of those were on their way up to do battle. But those who were not fighters were gathering here and Alan’s heart sank when he looked up and saw how crowded the branches of the Sanctuary were: a bountiful crop of pious greycloaks clutching their cuffs and chanting at the Terrarium.
Praying
. Yet more Pilgrims were climbing the trunk, and many were simply kneeling on the floor, facing the centre of the great dome. Though most of them would not pose much of a threat individually, he had no doubt that together they could easily overpower him. And there were a few more threatening people pacing around the inside: lithe, bare-chested, wearing loose trousers instead of cloaks and twirling staffs in their hands.

There weren’t any attempts to move the patients out – maybe there was nowhere else for them to go. And perhaps they believed the spores in here would slow down or even stop any attackers, overwhelming them with a
pacifist spirit. Maybe that would work on normal human beings, but Alan was pretty sure that the Clawbaby would not be dissuaded from its grisly work, whatever that work was.

Eyes wasn’t in his gill. His gurney lay empty. He must have made his own way out, but he couldn’t see, so maybe somebody was helping him – Churr, Alan hoped.

Something heavy landed on top of the Sanctuary and it released a thick cloud of the mind-altering dust. Choking on the stuff, he made his way back towards the trunk, wondering as he stepped between the praying Pilgrims where Ippil was, and Weddle. He wondered if he should just get down on his knees and pray himself – maybe that would be the best thing, to pray for himself, and for Billy, and Marion. Perhaps he should give up his own pathetic quest to save his son, and put his faith in …
something else
. It couldn’t be any more ineffectual than he was, even if it didn’t work at all. Besides, this wasn’t some abstract god; this wasn’t Old Green, or the Holy Toad. This was a real, living entity, with real, tangible powers.

No.
No
. He felt his knees bending and forced himself to straighten up again. He was nearly at the trunk now. He joined the queue, the devout all about him: a sea of bowed heads. And all around them was that awful noise: the screaming and crying; the inordinately loud wailing of a baby that was not a baby. Something was pattering onto the canopy above them.

The Clawbaby was the only opponent that Nora had
not simply neutralised, as far as Alan was aware. He didn’t want it to hurt her. And Spider; really, he didn’t stand a chance. He was almost overwhelmed with guilt. But the Clawbaby’s crying turned into Billy’s crying and he saw his son’s tear-stained face, and Marion’s bruises and he pushed his way through. He could see Tromo in his mind’s eye, sneering at him. He remembered Tromo’s face from the Modest Mills massacre – he remembered all of their faces, leering in the flickering light of the fires. There was something in his way and he struggled past it. He could hear shouting close by and he speeded up. When he paid attention he realised he was pushing Pilgrims off the narrow spiral staircase, though they weren’t falling far, and they were getting a soft landing – unlike the poor sods being pushed from the much larger wooden walkway by the Clawbaby.

Something inside him smiled at the echoes in action, but the smile did not reach his face. He could feel those hands clawing at his back as Pilgrims raced up behind him and he spun around, pulling his long knives from his boots as he did so. The Pilgrims behind him pulled back when he waved one knife at them. He held the other out the other way, pointing up the steps, and the Pilgrims in front of him moved faster now, trying to put as much space as possible between the steel and their bodies. Alan followed them, his weapons still drawn, keeping at a distance those who would grab him and throw him down.

He was getting there, but he’d soon be into the
branches, with Pilgrims coming at him from all directions – those who were not busy with their worshipping, that is. He had to get the mushrooms and get out before the Clawbaby got here, for it would.

And then it did. There was a hush, somehow; a not-quite-total silence falling. The screaming stopped, and the crying, until the only sound was the chanting, clean and pure, and Alan wanted very badly to fall down and join in. In that moment he believed in its power.

But the moment did not last long enough, and with a great ripping noise, the Clawbaby tore through the side of the Sanctuary and stepped in, its green eyes glowing, its black rags billowing, its bulk bringing with it its own darkness. Alan drew his breath and the Clawbaby’s green eyes found his. Nora and Spider were dead, then.

The thing started laughing. ‘Wild Alan,’ it said, its voice a whisper, yet loud enough to fill the Sanctuary. Its voice was a pollutant, and the Pilgrims all turned and the screaming began again. ‘It is a shame for you that those metal steeds cannot carry you up and down all of the stairs in the Discard.’ Its voice carried above all of the other noise – unless only he, Wild Alan, could hear it.

Wild Alan
.

The Clawbaby spoke like a Pyramidder
.

Alan threw himself up the stairs, forcing his way past the Pilgrims who were blocking his path. Many of them were now on their way down, trying to join the headlong rush out of the Sanctuary, and he tried not to knock
them over the edge, but in fact they were throwing each other off in their rush to save themselves. Evidently not even the Giving Beast’s influence could negate the natural instinct for self-preservation.

The Pilgrims whose role it was to guard the Sanctuary were rushing the Clawbaby, but their staffs were bouncing harmlessly off it. One started making his way to the bottom of the steps, having spotted Alan’s knives, but there were a lot of greycloaks between them and soon the stick-spinner was caught in a tide pulling him in the wrong direction.

Alan jumped from the staircase onto a wide branch and from there pulled himself up onto the next one, escaping the stampede on the walkway. He was nearly there. He could hear the Clawbaby laughing, and when he took a moment to look briefly over his shoulder he saw that the beast was spearing its attackers on one of the staffs, one after the other, like one of the Cavern Tavern’s cat kebabs.

‘Where are you going, friend Alan? Are you still hoping to escape me?’

‘What do you
want
?’ Alan raced up the trunk, clambering from branch to branch.

‘I want to take your life from you, as you took mine.’

‘What? You’re here, aren’t you? You are obviously not dead.’

‘Who do you hate, Alan?’

Alan froze.

‘You remember those words, don’t you?’ The Clawbaby was fighting as it spoke, and yet there was no trace of exertion in its voice. ‘How pathetic of you to pretend that you do not kill, when you have killed so many.’

Alan found that his cheeks were wet, but he forced himself to continue the climb. He was level with the Terrarium now, but there were still Pilgrims chanting in the branches around him: the most devout. They would not be happy with him. The Green Benedictions stood out, shone out, called out to him. He moved towards the glass.

A figure dropped down from a higher branch. ‘Halt.’

‘Ippil.’

Ippil was dressed differently; she was wearing trousers and her chest was bound. She held a wickedly curved blade in her left hand. She dropped into a fighter’s stance. ‘You are the lowliest,’ she said, ‘the most unworthy. You have brought horror with you and you would let it rip us limb from limb while you pillage our Sanctuary.’

‘I’m not arguing.’

‘You do not wish to defend yourself?’

‘You don’t know half of what I’ve done. You think I’m bad, but I’m even worse than you think. As for my intentions, you are absolutely right: I’ve come for the Benediction and I will not leave without it. I did not mean for that thing below to follow me, but I did not try to stop it. But I did not know you were here, Ippil – you Pilgrims, I mean – at our destination. I did not expect to find a safe haven and good people at the end of our journey. If
I had, I would have taken steps to throw the beast from our trail. And since arriving, I have been so fixated on the completion of my quest that I did not consider what would happen when it finally caught up with us.’

‘But it’s here now – and that doesn’t change your plans?’

Alan bit his lip and shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Ippil. If I had to choose between saving hundreds of Pilgrims and my family, I would choose my family. As it is, I don’t think I can save you anyway.’

‘You’re using us to enable your actions and your escape.’

‘Yes.’

Ippil swung at him and he parried with his long knife, then stepped backwards. Her face was full of hate, and she was trained, strong and careful. She moved slowly, purposefully.

More Pilgrims were running along the branches to the sides of the Sanctuary. She was forcing him to move backwards, away from the Terrarium, and further from the staircase and the Clawbaby too. If it came up now – he risked a glance, and yes, there it was, at the bottom of the steps, though it was moving slowly – then Ippil would be between it and him. But it would be between him and the Terrarium.

He didn’t want to fight. He was tired and weak. Then Ippil struck again, and he blocked her blade with one knife and tried to strike with the other. But he felt the block fail, and Ippil’s sword sent his weapon spinning
through the air as her blade bit into his knuckles. He jerked, shouting, and missed his target, instead nicking her shaven skull – not deeply, but enough to send her darting backwards. She clamped one hand to her head.

‘Ippil,’ he said urgently, ‘
behind you!
’

But his warning came too late; by the time he’d seen Churr appear on one of the ledges and spoken, she had pulled the trigger of the crossbow – the crossbow Alan had given her – and a bolt was erupting from the Pilgrim’s neck.

Ippil gargled and clutched vainly at her throat.

‘Fucking hell,’ Alan said. He watched Ippil’s blood flow and felt as if his own spirit was leaving him. The Pilgrim fell still and Alan was utterly emptied.

He found Churr’s eyes. ‘I wish you hadn’t.’

‘I didn’t do it for you.’ Churr grinned wildly, pointing the weapon at Alan. Her eyes were alive. ‘Dok is
mine
now. Don’t you see? This is how it begins! Daunt’s major supplier is gone and in their place is
me
. And I’m not going to fulfil that function.’

‘You killed the Boatman.’

‘That’s right: a major link in Daunt’s chain. I gave him a third mouth and spilled him into the swamp. Everyone else was too busy with the croc to notice.’

‘Somebody else will take his place.’

‘Eventually, I’m sure. But right now, the more disruption, the better.’

‘Alan!’

Alan didn’t want to turn his back on Churr so he moved backwards a bit more and looked down. He felt a kind of strength return: that was Spider’s voice – Nora and Spider had come back.
They were alive
. They were coming up the staircase – they were running. Alan didn’t know where they’d been and right then he didn’t care. They came up behind the Clawbaby, which whipped around, its bundled claws hissing through the air, all metal death, and battered them both from their feet.

‘Churr,’ Alan said, ‘how are you going to hold it? Against Daunt?’