Mercy struggled across a short plateau of rock and found herself above the tree line. She looked back. Over the pines, the stormclouds boiled and writhed: she could see the tornado funnel of the winged demons, a black whiplash cracking against the sky. They had a clear few hundred yards of snowfield, before the rocks began.
“Ready?” Mercy said to Shadow, and they ran.
• Forty-Nine •
Deed stood in the cockpit of the Court’s airship, binoculars clamped to his eyes. Disir sight was not always so keen and he had enhanced his own over the years with a variety of judicious preparations: sight stolen from the youths of the Western Quarter, vision sipped from the eyes of cats and nightbirds. But the tundra was too wide, and he needed the binoculars to check the magic levels. The readings slid in a sequence of silver sigils down the sights of the binoculars, ticking away the fluctuating degrees of different magics.
As the airship slipped over the estuary, the first great curves of the World’s River came into sight. This river had been, in the true past, the first to reappear across Siberia once the ice had begun to retreat. Tales of the disir had first come from its banks, and so here it was in the nevergone. Loki’s land. Deed’s binoculars registered ancient sigils as they passed overhead, runes which were given by the land, not by man. He could taste them in blood and fire on his tongue; they spoke to him of the blast of the winter wind, of ice and the little flick of flame raised by a human hand, of the hunt and the long chase. Deed smiled, and then he saw the army of the disir.
Thousands of his kindred stretched out across the plain, milling far below the airship. Ahead, he could see the mountain wall: features so ancient their true names had been lost. The pines spilled down the mountainside like ink, black against the snow. In that forest, Loki was waiting for his freedom. Deed’s mouth was suddenly dry.
He touched the pilot on the shoulder.
“How long?”
“Before we can take them through the gap? Another few minutes.”
Deed nodded. “Good enough.” He lowered the binoculars. Around him, the cabin’s instruments were showing readings of their own, currently displaying height, pressure, speed—none of these things mattered to Deed. He was interested in the levels of power. He crouched by the brass-clad sigilometer and studied it.
Nehatz.
Rutine.
Gemart.
Each sigil appeared briefly, outlined in fire, and then fading. He knew where this was coming from—the runic invocations uttered by the disir shamans below, keeping the fighting mettle of their sisters up, appealing to their own spirits, preparing a battering ram to hammer down any tales they might encounter on the way in.
But there were other sigils, too, and at these, Deed frowned. A trace like a curling leaf: what the hell was that? It was blurred, as though whoever it belonged to had smeared their signature to prevent detection. And another—a name of God, unless he was much mistaken. Not the kind of magic he expected to find here, and Deed, ever the conscientious magician, did not take kindly to anomalies. He scowled as a hieroglyph chased fleetingly across the screen. The sigilometer whirred, spitting out a small roll of paper, its intermittent record of proceedings.
But these were tiny indications that all was not as predicted below. Deed was far more considerably taken aback some moments later when the sigilometer clicked, made a grinding sound, and revealed a cascading torrent of sigils, slipping too quickly across its screen for individual symbols to be detected.
“What—” Deed started to ask.
At that point the airship gave a dramatic lurch to the left. Deed was thrown against the bulkhead, his shoulder slamming into the iron scrollwork of the spell-protection system. He heard someone cry out, thought for a moment that it was himself, then realised it was Darya, sprawling against the sigilometer. Next minute, the ship righted itself, but the pilot’s face was pallid and drenched with sweat.
“What was that?” Deed demanded. “What was it?”
Darya was staring with horror at the sigilometer.
“Look!” The machine was beginning to smoulder, the sigils flashing at white heat over the little screen until the screen itself resembled a rapidly blinking white eye.
Then the steersman brought the ship around and they saw the stormcloud gap in the sky.
“Take us out!” Deed told the pilot. He did not know what this wrench in the heavens was, but he had no intention of sticking around to find out, whatever was happening to the army below. It seemed to extend right through the nevergone. The disir were not, essentially, a cooperative people. “Take us out now!”
“I’m not sure I can!”
The pilot hauled on the wheel. The ship swung, and something large and black like a blown umbrella smashed into the prow windows. It left a smear of green ichor on the glass as its grip was torn away from the ship by the sudden acceleration and its body was hurled up into the raging clouds.
“What was it?” Darya echoed.
“I don’t know.” An event of massive proportions, the cataclysm foreseen by the Crown divinators was clearly in the process of unfolding; Deed swore. That should have been
his
cataclysm.
“They’re all over the sky!” the steersman cried. The ship rocked as if struck by a hammer. Deed flung himself into the neighbouring seat.
“Strap yourself in,” he told Darya. He brought the prow cannon around so that it was pointing directly into the storm, now below and off to the left. Then he began to hit the sigil keys, one after another, two or three in combination, invoking spells of destruction and sending it down the prow cannon in a blast of white fire. The recoil reverberated throughout the ship. Deed saw the spell strike down into the heart of the storm; black shapes were flung outward, shrieking. This was not, Deed thought, a moment for subtlety. He reloaded the cannon, bypassing any demonic invocations. From the look of the things in the stormcloud—teeth, spines, spikes, claws—that was likely only to add to the problem. He kept to the runic, therefore: ancient magic, weather magic, conjuring up the deep cold of winter, the spirits of blizzard and gale, the spirits of the deep and bitter air.
And for a few minutes, he almost thought it was working.
But Deed recognised that he did not know what he was dealing with. He didn’t know where these entities had come from and that ignorance, combined with the fear that the army would be overwhelmed—for there were far more demons than there were disir and any army that has the advantage of flight will have the edge over one that does not—caused a bitter constriction to rise in Deed’s throat and start to choke him. He flung spell after spell, and for some moments watched with satisfaction as the demons that soared in front of the ship froze and cracked, blasted apart in the wake of cold magic, falling like showers of fiery snow to the curving world below. Some, but not all. There was a thunderous crack to the rear of the ship. The little vessel once more rocked before stabilising.
“Darya,” Deed said pleasantly, turning to her. “Go and see what that was.”
She shot him a look of mingled fear, resentment, and loathing, but she did as he asked. That was good, Deed thought, that she still found him the most frightening thing around. But for how much longer?
He fired another spell. Born of wind, it snatched the demons ahead and scattered them like leaves, but shrieking they rode the spirals of conjured air with glee before they regrouped, and one did not disperse at all, but hung with a hawk’s confidence upon the battering storm. There was a crash from the back of the ship.
Deed unclasped the leather seat strap and, clinging to the bulkhead, went to the cabin door. The moment he opened it, he was smacked by a gust of wind, roaring in through a hole in the hull. A white snarling face turned on him: Darya. She had let go of the human in her as someone might release a soap bubble into a hurricane. Her skin was stretched taut over jutting bones and her face was a howl of teeth. The thing that had caught her resembled a lamprey: an oval taper of greying flesh with vaned white wings, beating with a steady rhythm above the storm. It had no eyes. Its mouth, a round series of needles, was wrapped around Darya’s leg. She was tearing at the thick grey skin with the talons of one hand, whilst the other clung to a stanchion.
“Jonathan!” she cried, but the name was barely recognisable, coming from that teeth-filled mouth. Deed was quick to react. He kicked out, crushing her hand against the stanchion and causing her fingers to release it. With a soundless cry Darya was pulled through the gap and into the whirling air. Deed saw the final whisk of a pale wing and then she was gone. He spoke a command to the hull and the ragged metal began to seep back together, until only a tiny whistling hole remained.
It was surprising what a relief it was to have got rid of Darya. No more competition? Fleetingly, Deed recognised that his ego would not allow him to entertain that thought and he pushed it away. No more Darya, at any rate.
And what was happening to the army? Furious, and facing the wreckage of his hopes, Deed fought his way along the plunging airship to the cabin.
• Fifty •
All the way across the snowfield, Mercy expected to feel the plunge of talons into her back. She struggled through the thick drifts, occasionally hauling Shadow along, occasionally being hauled in turn. The demon and Perra ran lightly across; Gremory with impatience, Perra with a
ka’s
usual impassivity. The Duke made no attempt to help. Mercy suspected that it simply did not occur to her.
When they reached the rocks, Mercy pushed Shadow ahead of her and dived into the stony clefts. Something shrieked overhead. She looked up to see a shadow moving fast above them. It was enormous, perhaps forty feet long. A hammer-head snaked down to a serpent’s tail and as they cowered between the rocks, a stinging lash shot down, raking through the cleft. Mercy felt it whistle past her hair. The thing shrieked in frustration and turned. The sky above the rocks grew dark as it veered and shot back, its small ball-bearing eyes glittering with malice. Mercy ducked. A black-and-scarlet shadow leaped onto the rocky ledge ahead of her. There was a thin hissing sound as a lash whipped overhead, was flung upwards to tangle itself around the storm demon’s throat. The Duke, knocked off balance, fell into the rocks in a tangle of metal; the whip blazed up, a bright necklace around its throat, and its head fell severed to the snowy ground. A moment later, Gremory was back, red eyes alight.
“I can’t take all of them.”
“Aren’t they your kin?” Mercy asked. The demon bared her teeth.
“No kin of mine.”
They fled up into the mountain wall. Once, Mercy glanced back and saw the storm demons falling on the disir. The shamans were plucked from their mounts and carried kicking into the sky. Mercy saw a demon drop one of them onto the rocks, splitting armour and carapace as a thrush beats a snail against a stone. Then another demon whisked down out of the heavens. They cowered down between the rocks, Shadow’s veil billowing out across their heads. Mercy felt rather than saw it rip; it felt as though something had scratched her own soul. She heard Shadow cry out in pain and understood at last what the veil was: part of Shadow herself, a visible part of her spirit. Mercy whispered an incantation, flung it upwards at the writhing white form. Grooves of bloody fire appeared on the thing’s flank, but although the demon shrieked it did not fall. But then, as if something had summoned it back, it wheeled away and flew towards the river.
They hurried on through the rocks, emerging onto another plateau of snow. This was much wider, with the black rock wall rearing jagged at its further side. To Mercy, the monochrome landscape was a nightmare fairy tale. What had Nerren said, the day the monorail blew up?
White as snow, black as night. Red as blood.
There was no blood there now, at least, not yet.
She looked back. The disir army was a struggling mass at the river’s edge, with the storm a locust cloud above it. When the demons had finished with the disir, they would come after straggling prey. The only reason, Mercy knew, that they had not yet been devoured had been accident, and that only a couple of demons could be bothered. That situation would not last. She shouted to Shadow, “We’ve got to get across the snowline now. In a minute it will be too late.”
But in this she was wrong.
• Fifty-One •
Deed had just returned to the cabin when the windscreen shattered. There was a heavy thump on top of the airship, and a moment later the glass imploded as a stinging whip-like tail burst through it. The pilot, impaled, did not have time to cry out as he died. Deed ducked as the demon withdrew its tail, then sent it back inward for another lashing thrust. He was unable to reach the controls: the tail filled the cockpit. The airship’s engine began to emit a high mosquito scream. Its nose veered sharply downwards. Deed would have slithered uncontrollably towards the shattered windscreen had he not grabbed onto one of the wall stanchions. Didn’t matter, though, did it? Deed thought. He was going to die anyway, because the airship was going to crash. He hurled an incantation at the demon, blasting it away from the stricken ship, but by now the engine was making a noise like a tortured tomcat and the ship was corkscrewing down towards the river. He could see the ice-flecked water spinning up in a series of loops and coils as the ship plummeted down.
He was not conscious, for once, of changing. It happened fast: bones jutting out from his skin, his vision altering, teeth extending. The hand that gripped the stanchion now had long iron-coloured talons and the bones stood out like knives. Deed snarled as the ship skimmed over the surface of the river, the breath of ice blasting cold through the shattered glass, and ploughed into the bank.
• Fifty-Two •
Mercy ran, slogging through the deep snowfield. It had an icy crust like a loaf of bread, but her feet were plunging into the depths beneath and the Duke finally had to help both Mercy and Shadow, seizing their hands and dragging them along. From above, Mercy thought, they must look like three children, little dark figures toiling over the snow. It was with a terrible sense of despair, but no surprise, when the demon swooped down out of the sky, a hawk hunting. Gremory’s hard hand was torn from Mercy’s grasp and she was whisked up into the storm as easily as a captured dove.