The Shadow Master (30 page)

He felt his valves opening and then could feel the tremor of movement filling the chambers of the large pistons. It was water. He could feel it. An underground river of it. More dust and sand fell as the large pistons creaked and groaned. Then he felt the first piston move slightly. Those massive ancient cogs were moving. Then he understood it fully. The force of the maelstrom was going to drive the machinery. The ancients had harnessed the power of nature to drive this gigantic wonder. He could feel water running through pipes and tunnels all about him. Those tunnels were a part of this machinery.

Stone now creaked loudly upon stone as the pistons started to move a little faster. Small rocks rained down in the chamber as the world of the ancients came slowly back to life. He tried to detach himself from the metal wheel, wanting to see this with his own eyes. Wanting to witness the transformation. But his body had trouble stepping free, as if the wheel and the whole machine did not want to let him go. He broke one foot free, and then another and slowly pulled his body out of the metal. He tried to take a step away from the machine, but his feet would hardly move. And his arms felt like they were made of lead or stone. He felt his breath laboured in his chest and he looked up at the statues of the ancients standing around him and he suddenly understood what the true cost of using the magic of science was on the body that Galileo had tried to warn him of. Finally he understood that the ancients had never died out at all, for they had been standing around them in the city the whole time.

 

 

LXII

Lucia was torn between wonder and fear. She was flying. Above the Walled City in the arms of this angel-like being, looking down at the many red-tiled rooftops and grey-stoned streets below them. The feeling was simply incredible. She could feel nothing under her feet but air, and each breath she took in she imagined was filling her with lightness. This was how the ancients had surely seen it, she thought, to paint the city they way they did in many of the frescos they had left behind, as if seen from the air. She could see the streets that she had walked as a child, and could see the tower where her own bedchamber was, and she could see the Council building and the cathedral and the shops and chapels and every nook and cranny of the city. It was wondrous, and she could feel the first faint touches of being as powerful as the ancients, if not as powerful as the gods.

The angel-being turned his flapping wings a little to bring them to a halt in the sky and said to Lucia, “Look upon the world, for you will never see it the same again.”

That sounded ominously as much a curse as a promise, and she looked about to see what he might be referring to. “Behold,” said the birdman, turning her around so that she could see, “The armies of the darkness have arrived.” She drew in a deep breath that no longer felt light. Hundreds of men were at the city gates, with more coming across the plain from the mountain pass. The city was under attack. They would never be able to hold so many back. “So a new era begins,” the being said to her. “They will take over the city and we shall rule over them.”

Then, before she could even protest that, she saw a flash of fire and heard the distant shriek as the main gates exploded in flames. She saw men on fire running to and fro in the streets and saw the plague army gather around the gates, waiting for the flames to die down a little. Then they would push through and be into the city. She saw men running along the streets by the walls to defend the gates, but could also see they would be hopelessly outnumbered. The city was going to fall to this army of the darkness, whoever they were, and she would witness it from above.

A few of the plague army approached too close to the gates and she saw flames reach out and touch them and turn them into stumbling and running fire-men. One even ran through the open gates to be cut down by swords and axes. She tried to turn her head away, but the angel-being kept turning in the air so that it was before her.

“You must behold,” he said. “This is how the ancients watched their own world come to an end.”

“I refuse,” she said, and closed her eyes. She did not want to see this, perched up in the sky, unable to do anything to save her city. Unable to warn her father or mother. Unable to save a single person from the attacking army and the end of their world. Then she suddenly felt the weightless feeling desert her as the angel-being dropped a little in the sky. She shrieked and opened her eyes. She immediately went from wonder to horror. If he dropped her she would fall and fall and fall until she struck the hard streets below and splattered like a melon dropped from a high window. “No,” she called, but she could see the look of confusion on his face. His wings were flapping harder now but were awkward, as if he had been wounded or something. They dropped further. She felt her weight suddenly grown in his arms as he struggled to hold her.

“What is happening?” he asked her, as if she could somehow tell him. Then he answered his own question. “It must be because I did not put the harness on fully to complete the transformation. I must become a giant eagle.” She saw him struggle with something around his arms that she now saw was a harness that had previously seemed to be a part of his body. But the more he struggled with it the greater trouble he had remaining aloft.

“No! I am a god,” he called, and she felt his arms trying to open and release her. “You are too heavy,” he said, no longer wishing that they should be married and rule over the new world. She could feel him trying to drop her, but his limbs would not move how he wanted them to. She clung to him tightly and screamed at him. Cursed him and told him to fly down to the ground, but he was losing the control to even steer them in how they dropped. They would both plummet to the streets below, she knew. They would be crushed together. Lorenzo would find her dead in his arms. She would rather die alone than that, she resolved, and tried to slip herself free, but could not wriggle out of his unyielding arms.

She looked down and screamed again as the ground started rushing up at them, and then, with a sudden awkward turn of his wings, they tumbled about and she felt them strike something solid, although they were still high in the air. The wind was knocked from her and she took some time to understand what had happened. They had landed on the peak of the domed cupola of the cathedral, as improbable as it might be. He had taken the full force of the collision, and was lying beside her, back broken, like a statue dropped from the heavens.

His eyes were moving slowly as if he was searching for something, possibly an understanding of what had happened to him and his dreams, but they passed right over her. She reached out one hand and tentatively touched him. He felt like stone, but there was a slight movement in his limbs still. She pulled her hand back. He had turned to stone while he held her, but a part of him was still human with blood spilling out. How was that possible?

Then she looked at the wings and the harness. Another marvel of science. Or an abomination, depending on how you looked at it. His eyes looked around him once more and his mouth opened just a little. Deep red blood showed inside the pale mouth. It made her shiver. She wanted to get as far away from him as possible but looked around her in despair. There was no easy way down from the dome. It was built of intricately shaped tiles that interlocked together and she knew if she started trying to climb down she would simply slide off the dome as the angle steepened. Workmen undoubtedly had some tools they used to scale the dome, but she had no idea what they might be.

She looked down and found the curve of the roof pulling both her eyes and body towards it, making her feel more vulnerable to be perched on the dome's top than she had felt to be high in the sky over the city. She looked back and saw the man – for he was just a man after all – trying to reach a hand out towards her. She was tempted for a moment to roll him off the roof and let him crash to the streets below, but felt it would somehow be tempting her own fate and she would follow him if she did. She had to get off the roof somehow though. She looked again at the harness wings. It would be dangerous, but what hadn't been today?

It took her some time to get the harness free from under the man's body and then fit it to herself as he had worn it. As soon as she had it strapped tightly to her body she felt the transformation happening. This was something monumental. She stood up and felt the wings move at her commands as she flexed muscles she had never previously possessed. She looked down at the man at her feet and lifted slowly into the air.

It took a moment to gain control of her flying, but only a moment. She had intended to descend quickly to the ground and free herself from the harness, but the feeling of power and freedom that filled her compelled her to fly higher. She would circle over the city and find Lorenzo emerging from the catacombs and fly down to him. She might even take him up in her arms and fly the two of them away from the city to freedom. She turned now to look down at the city gates, to see that many of the plague army were now rushing through the gates as the fires had died down. This was the start of the end, she knew.

But then something entirely unexpected happened. The city started moving. She thought at first it was an illusion caused by her perspective. But the city was definitely moving. She saw one of the taller towers start descending into the ground. Not like it was collapsing, for it was sinking straight into the ground. And she saw another tower nearby rising up higher.

She watched streets disappear and buildings reshape before her eyes. Staircases wound their way up into the air and buildings grew around them. She saw the cathedral descend into the ground, taking the half-statue half-man with it, and then another larger cathedral rose up nearby, with a huge ornate domed roof like nothing she had ever seen.

It was like watching one of those little cogged toys that changed shape after you'd wound the key, she thought, as parts of the city rose up or fell away. Towers that had been erected over years disappeared in an instant and others that had never existed rose up in their place. New streets appeared where none had previously been and then she saw the city walls grow taller, at least twice their previous height and then new branches of the walls started growing, snaking around the invading army of darkness, enclosing them, trapping them.

Then she felt her wings falter a little. She gave a small shriek and tried to concentrate on flapping more furiously, but she could feel them separating from her. “What is happening?” she asked, just as the man had asked when he felt he was no longer an angel, and his wings were becoming nothing but a mechanical set of feathers bound to canvass and wood on a harness on his back. As he fell from the sky.

 

 

LXIII

Lorenzo re-emerged into a city in chaos and wonderment. The streets were filled with people walking around looking about themselves in confusion. Some people's houses were gone and new buildings were in their places. Some had run outside and seen towers rise up about them and others had stayed where they were and had new walls and floors rise about them. One woman found herself standing atop a high tower that rose up from the street beneath her, and she shrieked for help, her voice joining with the cacophony of shouts and calls now filling the city. Others had found themselves in cellars or rooms of unfamiliar buildings that they had to search their way out of. Some awoke to the din to find themselves sharing a bedroom with another astounded couple.

Some unfortunates were crushed under the moving parts of the city and others were wandering about, bloodied and dazed. Lorenzo had barely made it to the chamber that carried him to the surface of the city, where once the Council Chambers had been, and staggered out onto the streets, his limbs still awkward and hard to move. But as the city kept moving and changing about him he found feeling returning to his body.

He stared around him in awe. Grand new paved streets spread out before him. Long rows of pillars ran down one side of a building. Large staircases led up into some buildings and small doors hid others. He looked up at the thin windows and the distressed or amazed people staring out of them. He watched people knocking their fists against new walls to test whether they were real. He saw many in their night clothes wandering the streets like sleepwalkers. Others were gathering in one of the new city squares with their belongings, fearful of any more changes that might occur about them. Only the statues of the ancients seemed to remain the same, watching down on the city that had created itself anew. And it was a new city. The imposing palaces of the two Houses were gone. The old order was gone. It was not the end of days, but rather the beginning of them. And he had done this!

Lorenzo pushed his way through the lost crowds; nobody really knew where they were going, nor which streets might take them there. He did not fully know where he was going either, but he had a purpose. He had to find Lucia. And, amongst this chaos, that probably meant finding the Shadow Master – though that meant waiting for the Shadow Master to find him, he knew. He could be watching him now, laughing to himself at Lorenzo's plight. Or he could be battling that mad cleric. He was more a mystery than any of the secrets of the ancients. Lorenzo was then stopped by two bewildered-looking city guardsmen who asked him if he knew where the City Council Chambers might be now found. They looked about themselves like men awakening from a drunken dream and told him how the very streets had bent and moved and the towers of the city had sunk around them while others rose up, and then, almost as an afterthought, told him that the army of plague people were on the far side of tall walls that had risen around them. They were saved, they told him, though they did not understand how.

Lorenzo told them he was unable to help them and continued along the street, like the two guardsmen, not sure where he should be looking. Then he remembered the compass that he had been given and took it out. The compass needle pointed north, like any compass should. He walked in that direction, waiting for the needle to move and show him which streets to follow, but it did not waver. It was not working any more. He cursed and put it back into one of his pockets. He was, in actuality, as much undressed as he was dressed, having just gathering up a few of his clothes from the floor before he stumbled into that tiny chamber that had carried him to safety. But all about him people were similarly in states of half-dress, having rushed out of their houses or beds in alarm.