City of Torment

CHAPTER TEN

The Year of the Secret (196 DR), Xxiphu

The women walked away from the luminous face of trapped dreams. They pressed forward into a darkness that settled on them like layers of weightless black gauze.

Anusha gripped Yeva's shoulder. The metal of the woman's pauldrons bit her palm with a chill sting.

"Do you know where you're going?" Anusha asked.

"No," Yeva returned. "We walk until we find the far wall. Then we trace it around until we find the exit."

They continued forward through a gloom whose depths seemed more unfathomable with every step.

The woman she'd liberated from the ice dressed oddly, more so than anyone she'd previously known. At that thought, Anusha realized her own dream form was wearing the party gown she apparently unconsciously preferred.

Anusha imagined herself wearing the golden dream armor she had mentally fashioned to face down the watery hag aboard Green Siren. The smooth tumble of her gown stiffened, becoming steel hard. Solidity flowed across her body, encasing her in a Arm shell of protection. She flexed her gauntlets, articulated with flawless joints.

She was fitted in her golden panoply, a suit of armor that enjoyed, she imagined, breathtaking strength and beauty.

Anusha raised her free hand and called for her sword. Light burst upon them, glowing from the slender blade.

Its shape was the same as the one hanging over the fireplace in the great room of her family estate. In life, it was too heavy for her to wield. In her dream, she raised it as easily as a switch of hazel.

Yeva said, "Light! Why didn't you summon that earlier? And I see you've changed your likeness…"

Anusha asked, "Do you like it?"

Yeva laughed in her curt manner, then grew serious. "Your dream is stronger than mere fancy, I sense. What is the secret of your power, Anusha?"

Anusha said, "If I knew that, perhaps I could figure out how to get us out of here." Her thoughts darted to Japheth, and how he'd tried to pull her free. And failed. She knew his game, and it offered her nothing except her current circumstance. She wouldn't let her guard down again, regardless of his charm. And good looks. She frowned and tried to shove thoughts of Japheth from her mind.

They walked on in silence. Even their footsteps made no sound. Because we're not really here, of course, Anusha thought.

Then her sword's light revealed a wall. It was carved from obsidian, obsidian that was not merely glassy black but stained with reflective hues of red, brown, gray, and green. The wall receded to the left and right, and upward.

"Which way?" said Anusha.

Yeva trudged right. Anusha kept pace.

They walked along the slightly curved wall for some time, though it was probably much shorter than it seemed.

Suddenly the mottled woman stopped and said, "By Diomar's Black Ring. We're walking in circles!"

"What?" "This is the second time we've passed here. See how the red splotch on this outcrop makes a shape like a tree? I noted it last time we passed-it reminded me of an old shadowtop. And here it is again." The woman traced the line of color on the wall. Anusha saw that the pattern in the stone resembled a sprawling, shadowtop tree.

A new thought came to Anusha. She slapped her forehead. "Why are we letting a simple wall stop us? We've no bodies to be trapped!"

Anusha made as if to walk into the glassy surface, but Yeva grabbed her armored arm.

"Wait! What are you doing?"

Anusha smiled and said, "We're dreams, Yeva. We can pass through doors and walls as easily as thinking about it."

Yeva gave a half shake of her head but said, "I suppose that must be true. But isn't it dangerous? What if the wall is like the ice?"

Anusha paused. She said, "I don't get that feeling. Nor do I see any shapes of people stuck inside…"

Yeva took a deep breath and slowly nodded.

Anusha grabbed the woman's hand. "Don't worry. We'll go through together."

They walked into the opaque obsidian. She pushed through what felt like the filmiest of veils, drawing her companion behind her.

After just three paces, they were through.

There was no ground beyond the wall, and Anusha fell. She screamed despite herself. She released her hold on Yeva and her sword, scrabbling for purchase on the surface from which she'd just emerged. That turned out to be as easy as wishing it-Anusha immediately stopped sliding.

Yeva popped out of the wall and reacted similarly, though she didn't scream. Anusha had collected herself just enough to reach out and snag one of Yeva's flailing wrists before the woman dropped away. She yelled, "Grab onto the wall! It will hold you if you believe it can!"

Yeva slapped her other hand to the slick, obsidian surface. Whether because of her own force of will or Anusha's, the woman stopped sliding.

Anusha's shining sword was gone, but it would return if she imagined it. However, the area was illuminated by a dim, directionless light.

Open air stretched away around them. Grinding, scraping noises echoed through it, and after a moment, Anusha saw their source.

Long stone spans arched out across the area, many apparently extending from above. As each span curved outward, its diameter narrowed. A sphere hung at the end of each stone beam, attached by some sort of elaborate harness. Some spheres were large as houses. Most of the largest orbs sprouted smaller stone arms of their own, to which much smaller spheres were attached. Each globe seemed carved of a different material, some stony, others metallic. The golden sphere not more than a hundred feet from them looked like yellow calcite, while its smaller moon looked like sandstone. More distant spheres had textures and hues reminiscent of jasper, silver, and other minerals and metals.

"It moves!" Yeva exclaimed.

Anusha saw the woman spoke true. The great arms advanced slowly, ponderously, but noticeably around the immense space, transcribing great circles. The smaller stone spans protruding from the largest spheres visibly spun so that the least orbs nearly whipped around the larger ones like… moons, in truth.

Encompassing the entire vast space were walls that extended from a pit of darkness below up to more indefinite gloom high above. The walls were illuminated by huge patches of what Anusha guessed might be mold that glowed pale and icy.

She looked at the obsidian surface they'd emerged from. It curved away in all directions.

"We're on a sphere too," Anusha said. "The largest, around which all these others spin."

They watched the stately rotation of the great mechanism. They were like flies on a waterwheel, and just as ignorant of its function.

Yeva said, "It seems like a god's orrery. But it doesn't track the motions of any stars or heavenly bodies I'm familiar with."

"An orrery? What's that?" Anusha asked.

"It is… an apparatus that shows the positions and motions of objects in the night sky, usually through clever wheelwork, though I've seen versions, that move through magical or psionic impetus. But this one… This orrery dwarfs all others I've witnessed or heard tell of. And by the random way the arms of this mechanism rotate, I almost suspect they do not correspond to heavenly shapes at all."

"Mmm," responded Anusha. She'd never spent much time studying the points of light in the night sky, other than to remark from time to time on the beauty of Sehlne's Tears.

"Look at that," Anusha said, pointing. One of the orbs, this one bluish red, wobbled violently. As she watched, her mouth falling open in surprise, three stone arms sprouted from the orb's elaborate harness. The new-birthed stone spans reached outward like plant seedlings nuzzling up from the soil, but far more quickly. As the stone lengths unfurled, a "fruit" swelled and ripened at the end of each, fiery red at first, but cooling even as growth ceased.

Newly minted globes began to rotate around the larger sphere, each on its own connecting arm. One seemed mottled quartz, the other two dull copper.

"What's that?" said Yeva.

Wormlike glyphs crawled across the newborn orbs, then faded to invisibility.

Anusha said, "Writing of some kind?" She turned her gaze from the echoing spectacle to Yeva.

The woman's yellowish skin was noticeably paler. She gave a sharp nod. "I saw it. The glyphs were of a script that seemed familiar, but they faded before I could read them. But I think-"

A screech ripped through the chamber, jerking their attention toward the ceiling.

Three unsupported shapes materialized from the gulf of darkness enshrouding the air overhead. Anusha immediately saw the newcomers were not birds-they were too squat and lacked wings.

As the objects grew closer, they reminded Anusha of fish. They undulated through the air as if swimming. One's coloration was mottled quartz, and the other two were dull brown… like copper.

Anusha said, "What-"

"Aboleths," whispered Yeva "but not close kin of those I'm familiar with. And these fly." She said the last as an accusation.

Anusha said, "They have the same color as-" Yeva put a finger to her lips and shook her head. She whispered, "We might live if we remain beneath their notice."

Anusha considered reminding the woman they were intangible. They were probably invisible to the approaching creatures. Probably. Of course, she didn't know what abilities an aboleth possessed. Uncertainty made her hold back.

The things spiraled down with languid grace. Their descent stopped when the aboleths reached the newly formed orbs, each choosing the one that most closely matched its own hue.

Gorge tried to rise in her nonexistent throat as she studied the hovering monsters.

A fine haze of mucus hung in the air around their soft, gelatinous skins. They looked half primeval fish, half enormous slugs, with four muscular tentacles sprouting from where pelvic and pectoral fins would have protruded from real fish. Instead of having tail fins, their bodies tapered to slimy, sluglike conclusions.

The two coppery monsters had three eyes that blinked from beneath bony ridges, one below another. The mottled quartz creature had five eyes scattered randomly across its blunt head.

In near unison, the aboleths extruded tooth-studded tongues from lipless, tri-slit mouths. The tongues coiled and rasped across their chosen orbs, bestowing brutal kisses.

Having paid their gruesome respects, the creatures shot upward, moving five or six times as fast as they'd descended and with far greater stability.

When the aboleths were no more than dots high above, Anusha whispered, "What just happened?"

Yeva shook her head, her face slack with worry.

"Up is the way we need to go too. We should follow the aboleths," continued Anusha.

"Follow how?" Yeva gestured at the titanic orrery that dangled unsuspended. Then her face softened. "Ah. We are not bound to the world or its laws, lacking the flesh of our making. I should have learned that when we passed through the wall."

Anusha grinned. "That's right! I haven't tried this before, but I'm sure I can pull it off. You can too, if you concentrate hard enough!"

"So long as you focus on both of us rising upward, it may be possible. Otherwise, you'll leave me behind and I'll gutter out. I don't believe I have an independent existence outside your attention, Anusha." "Oh, I don't know about that," said Anusha. "You know things I don't, so I'm sure you're not a figment of my imagination"

"I didn't say you are imagining me. Just that my consciousness only persists while yours does. You are my anchor."

"Well, we can see if that's true later," Anusha said, shaking her head to clear it of Yeva's implications.

Anusha raised one hand and imagined she held a rope, a rope that ascended to the limit of her sight, but one firmly attached to a support. A length of elven cord dangled down. She gave a few experimental yanks. It seemed solid enough.

She lifted her other hand from the sphere's side, and the faux rope held her. Yeva watched her a moment longer, then reached out and grabbed the rope herself.

Anusha looked up and imagined the rope being winched upward, slowly but surely.

"Here we go," she said, even as their feet lifted away from the great black sphere.

They rose higher. The sphere they'd emerged from was revealed as a colossal obsidian globe whose circumference Anusha couldn't even begin to guess. It was easily as large as a castle.

Anusha and Yeva rose higher in the dim light. From the increasing vantage, it was easy to see that all the stone spans and spheres were one vast mechanism-a mechanism infused with magic enough to grow new components.

As they watched, four new arms sprouted from yet another orb.

"Look, at the edges,*Yeva said.

Anusha glanced away from the newest growth to see what Yeva indicated. Three gargantuan metallic hoops circumscribed the entire assembly of large and small spheres. The rings seemed forged of brass or perhaps gold.

Each hoop rotated in place, their edges barely avoiding the four walls that encapsulated the entire incredible device. Or perhaps it wasn't that the hoops rotated, but instead that the glyphs scribed upon them squirmed round and round. The idea made Anusha slightly sick.

She returned her attention to the four newest arms. Each disgorged a globe. One was pale green, another coal black. The last two were a mixture of dark blue and red. Each flashed with a unique line of symbols-

The imagined rope in her hand thinned, and they stopped rising.

"Better concentrate," Yeva said.

Anusha gave a quick nod and envisioned the rope in her hand anew. She strained to feel its solidity and uncompromised connection to the ceiling she hoped was somewhere above.

Their ascent resumed.

"Sorry," Anusha said. "I was thinking-last time we saw the orrery expand, aboleths were drawn to investigate." "I had the same thought."

Their steady rise finally pierced the indefinite gloom to reveal a flat ceiling. It was apparently composed of the same stone as the distant walls. It also hosted patches of glowing mold. A circular hole pierced the ceiling's center. Brighter illumination streamed through the hole.

"I'm going to take us through," Anusha whispered, pointing at the opening. Yeva nodded.

As they approached, Yeva pointed to a nearby patch of "mold." ft wasn't mold-it was a patch of irregular ice.

The same kind of glowing ice she and Yeva had escaped from!

Yeva said, "Apparently the Eldest's memories have condensed out of the ether in more than one place in this putrid city."

"Oh gods," breathed Anusha. They had come close enough that she saw a shape frozen in the ice. A little boy looked back at her with wide, blue eyes.

Then they passed through the opening into a new space damp with a fetid, oily stink.

Aboleths pressed around the hole, leering at them with too many red eyes and reaching tentacles. Anusha swallowed a cry of alarm. Her arm jerked as the imagined rope snapped them another twenty feet upward in only a moment. Her head spun, and she lost her bearings. She kicked her legs, unconsciously looking for purchase, but she did not let go of Yeva or her imagined lifeline.

Nothing immediately attacked. Anusha got control of her breathing. They dangled thirty or so feet below a sl ick ceiling of rough stone. She turned and stared at the tableau below, trying to make sense of the scene. Aboleths clustered around the hole from which they'd emerged. The creatures huddled in discrete rows radiating away from the circular gap. The rows contained differing numbers of aboleths, one line had just three, another at least twenty.

Most of the aboleths had bluish backsides the color of darkened bruises, with reddish underbellies. Some claimed distinct colorations from their brethren, and of these, some were noticeably smaller than average, others larger.

All possessed too many red eyes, and all voiced a screeching, chantlike rumble that wove through the air like a swarm of blood-seeking insects. She hadn't heard the sound from below. Had they just started? None of the creatures seemed to be looking up at her or Yeva dangling above them.

Four of the rows convulsed. A ripple of movement pushed four creatures from their perch on the hole's edge.

They dropped, tentacles flailing, like stones into a well, into the orrery chamber.

"Those four-did you see their color?" Yeva said, loudly enough to be heard over the vocalizations. "Green, black, and two blue-red. Like the globes just born below. It means something. The symbols, the colors… I think these beasts are conferring on themselves the power of flight!"

Before Anusha could comment, something moved to her right.

Ari aboleth hovered just ten feet from her and Yeva. It was the mottled quartz one with five eyes they'd seen below, rasping a newborn orb with its toothed tongue. Four of its eyes roved around, searching. But one was focused directly upon Anusha.

The creature loosed a questioning tone like the chirp of a curious crow. Simultaneously, a voice devoid of personality echoed in Anusha's head, Is it of the body? Is it of Xxiphu? Is it benign? Is it a parasite? What is it?