Worldsoul

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.

“Gremory!” Shadow cried, in a voice of startling loss. Mercy, futilely, brandished the sword, but the Duke was gone. A dove, Mercy thought. Aloud she cried, “Mareritt! Mareritt! Mareritt!”

A silver bolt flew out of the shadows of the mountain wall. It shot over her head and buried itself in the storm demon’s throat. Blood pattered down, burning Mercy’s skin; Shadow threw the torn veil over them both. The storm demon dropped Gremory. She fell, twisting elegantly through the air, and landed in the snow. Mercy heard a hissing sound that was unknown and yet oddly familiar: she turned to see Mareritt’s sleigh gliding swiftly over the snowfield.

“Well, get in.”

Mercy did not need asking twice. Shadow pushed her over the side of the sleigh, into the mass of heads, then followed. Gremory crouched on the sleigh’s side, knees drawn up; she appeared unharmed. The heads gaped, astonished.

“What is happening?” the Brass-bound head asked in a voice like a bell.

“Hush,” Silver-Bound said. “You ask such foolish questions.”

“It is the time,” Golden-Bound remarked. The others looked at him, their eyes rolling in their sockets.

“You never make any sense,” Brass-Bound complained.

The Bronze-bound head appeared to be sleeping, but Iron-Bound, the one who must have been a warrior, laughed, silently showing its bloodstained teeth. Its eyes, black and small, met Mercy’s for a moment: they exchanged a glance of complicit enjoyment.

Over her shoulder, Mareritt said, “Well done.”

“I found your book,” Mercy said.

“Excellent.”

“I’m just not sure that there’s still a city to read it in.”

“We’ll have to see, won’t we?” Mareritt said. She cracked the whip in a shower of silver bells and the sledge sped on towards the mountain wall.

Mercy did not wish to backseat drive, but she did want to know what the plan was. And even if there was one. She crawled to the front of the sleigh, behind the driving seat.

“Careful,” Bronze-Bound said, without opening its eyes.

“Sorry.” Cautiously, for the sleigh was travelling fast, she stood and found herself looking past Mareritt’s white-clad arm, all lace and frost, and over the silvery rumps of the running deer. “Where are we heading? For the gap?”

“Oh, no, dear.” Mareritt turned her head and grinned a feral grin. “I can’t take this through something that narrow-a person, perhaps, but not this sleigh. We came the long way round when I heard your call, along the Dead Road. I’m not going back that way. I don’t think you’d survive it.”

Mercy was aware of a cold lump of dread, lodged beneath her breastbone. “Then which way are we going?”

Mareritt pointed with the whip, to the lick of fiery cloud that was the newly opened Pass. “We’ll be going through there.”

Deed lay, face down, in snow. It was cold enough to have killed a human by now. He raised himself up on taloned hands. The airship rested several yards away. It was burning. A hard blue flame flickered throughout its exposed bowels and occasionally something shorted out with a hiss. He saw a small spirit, released from the mechanism, darting out across the snow, beak gaping, before it faded and vanished.

Deed was reluctant to stand, in case he got snatched by one of the storm worms. He looked across the river. The battle was over: he could smell blood on the faint wind and it was disir blood. He knew that scent very well. The demons themselves were amassing high up in the clouds; he could see the tornado funnel gathering. Deed forced himself to think logically-for that, human heritage was useful. The disir were not big on rational planning: aggression, rage, and death, yes, but not reasoned consideration. If the army had been destroyed, that meant that Deed’s own intentions would now have to undergo a serious revision. He did not have the requisite knowledge to repair the airship, even if it could be mended. That meant that, assuming he wasn’t killed in the next few minutes, he was stranded here for the time being, on the other side of the World’s River. He would have to cross the river, then make his way through Loki’s forest to the nearest gap back into the city.

Being disir, Deed was inclined to regard this as an opportunity rather than a challenge. To have the army destroyed was galling, true, but it also meant a lessening of competition. Now, if his understanding was correct, he and the female still loose in Worldsoul were the only disir left.

A breeding pair; how romantic. Deed did not consider himself to be ideal parent material.

He was still aiming at control of the city. He looked on the bright side. The Skein still had not come back. That left all sorts of opportunities to grab at power, assuming he could get back into the city without running into one of Loki’s wolves. And that was a rather big “if.”

“You must be mad,” Mercy said. Mareritt looked at her, apparently genuinely surprised.

“Whatever makes you say that?”

“A look up ahead?” Shadow said, coming to stand by Mercy’s side. The sleigh was now skirting the mountain wall, running along the air just above the surface of the snowfield, like a skimming stone. The stormcloud was gathering over the bony wreckage of the disir army, whipping upwards in a mass of teeth and stinging tails. Beyond, the Pass was clearly visible, a wound in the air.

“All you have to do,” Mareritt said, “is keep your heads down.”

“Oh, that’ll be all right, then,” Mercy said.

“Your friend has a veil.”

“It got torn,” Mercy told her. She could still feel Shadow’s pain: an invisible rent, seeping invisible blood.

Shadow gripped her hand. “It’s all right. I’ll be all right. And we have to do this. I’ve realised why now.”

“I don’t want-” Mercy began, but by this time the sleigh was sweeping up, up towards the tear in the sky.

Deed leaped. The ice rolled beneath his feet, nearly sending him down into the swift dark water. He jumped to the next floe, which was more stable, a shelf of ice carried on the current. Deed clung to it as it took him around one of the ox-bow curves in the river: using the ice to carry him as far as possible from the scene of the battlefield, away from the attention of the gathering aerial force.

But he could not let it take him too far. Ahead lay the estuary of the World’s River and then the sea: eternal, ice-locked, ancient, and cold. He’d seen its slow oily heave from the airship’s maiden voyage, the tidal sway of a sea that is on the perpetual point of freezing, and he had no wish to be carried out into the waves. That meant judging his movements across the ice. Deed crouched, sprang, and landed once again.

Shadow’s veil may not have been able to protect them from demonic attack, but it did save them to some extent from the noise. Up here, the shrieking of the horde that had come through the Pass was close to unbearable: a starling flock magnified a thousand fold. As the sleigh approached the edges of the tight formation that was the swarm, Mercy saw a dozen lamprey heads turning in their direction. She clung on as the sleigh veered, taking the turn around the edge of the funnel. But several of the worms had already broken away and were sailing down, their wings gilded by the light of the Pass into eerie transparency. There was a snap above Mercy’s veil-shrouded head as Mareritt cracked the whip, urging the deer on. What struck Mercy, even with the demons soaring down to meet them and the Pass coming up fast ahead, was how hot it had become. The upper air above this ancient land should have been freezing. Instead, a bead of sweat was trickling down her nose and the point between her shoulder blades had become unpleasantly damp. The air smelled of musty spice, the odour of stale musk that was, she realised with nausea, generated by thousands of demonic bodies. Across the sled, Gremory was managing to look superior. The ka sneezed.

“Kindly get out of the way!” That was Golden-Bound.

“Yes, how can we act when your soul is all over the place?” Brass-Bound chimed in. Mercy saw Shadow’s eyes widen, and she whisked the veil down so that it covered Mercy and herself closely, like a pair of snoods. Brass-Bound made a prim face, as if about to utter some distasteful truth, then spat. A gobbet of liquid fire shot out and struck an oncoming demon in the middle of its lamprey jaws. Mercy saw the flame travel all the way down its long throat, illuminating the demon from within, and then it exploded. Brass-Bound allowed a faint smugness to show across its face. The Duke gave a brief, I-am-reluctantly-impressed nod.

Silver-Bound followed suit with a plume of blue-white flame. A demon fell like a singed eel out of the sky, bursting into a brief flare as it sank towards the tundra. As a demon screamed with rage, all of the heads swivelled in the direction of the swarm and spat in unison. A rainbow arc of flame coreolised in the sled’s wake as Mareritt whipped the deer on.

The movement of the swarm had sung up the wind. Ice-laden branches of fir lashed against Deed’s face. But the disir thought things were looking up. He was far from the swarm now, and into the treeline. He was at home in these forests-for a moment, it occurred to Deed that it might be an option to remain here, run wild through the forests of the night rather than returning to Worldsoul and its tedious politics. A little vacation… He rejected this as coming from the disir-self, the feral-self. This back-to-nature business was all very well, but he still had the old god’s wolves to contend with and besides, there was too much of intrinsic interest in the city. Deed took a gasping breath of arctic air and trudged on.

The demon was on fire, but this did not seem to deter it. It came over the backs of the racing deer and struck Mareritt on the breast, ramming her backwards over the lip of the sleigh and into the well of heads, where it exploded. The heads cried out in a unison of disgust. Mercy and Shadow both scrambled for the reins; Mercy, due to position, was a fraction quicker. She clambered up into the driver’s seat and steered the deer towards the Pass.

She had driven a horse buggy, once or twice, in the parks of Worldsoul on holidays. This was different. Taking the reins was like taking hold of something living; they twitched quicksilver in her hands and she felt electricity dance up the bones of her arms into her spine. For a second, it was as though she looked through the ice-dark eyes of the deer, seeing a web of connections spreading out between demons and air, a way of seeing which she could not understand and which momentarily disoriented her. The reins fell slack in her hands, but she grasped them more tightly, bringing them up. The deer turned.

“Is she all right?” A spit of fire shot past her ear, singing her hair. “Careful!”

Shadow was leaning over Mareritt. “I think so. She’s trying to speak.”

Mercy risked a glance over her shoulder and saw the gaping hole in Mareritt’s chest was beginning to knit together: blood, tissue, lace and bone all forming a seamless whole. Mareritt’s mouth was open so wide, she looked barely human. Well, she wasn’t, was she? Mercy reminded herself. She concentrated on the Pass ahead.

Deed was expecting the wolf when it came. He had heard it coming through the trees; soft footed, it had nonetheless betrayed itself by the single rustle of a twig. He pretended to be lost, glancing nervously around him, adjusting his appearance to partway human. It would not fool the wolf entirely-they knew disir when they smelled one-but it might confuse it. Thus he was, deliberately, facing away from the wolf when it sprang. Then he turned, falling backwards, reaching up with taloned fingers to rake the wolf’s throat. Its own momentum ripped out its jugular. Deed, exulting, was covered in a bath’s worth of blood. He drank it in, an indulgence, for it was the wolf’s spirit that he was lapping up, stealing its strength, its wildness, its ferocity. At the very bottom of its animal soul lay something that might be compared to a bright jewel: a shining pearl which Deed recognised as its imprimatur from the old god. A berry of mistletoe. This he did not touch, and it fell snowflake silent to the ground and dimmed away. There was a chance that Loki would be conscious of it, a little candle going out, but hell, animals died all the time. He hadn’t been aware of any tugs on the wyrd-web, but he’d taken good care to shut himself off from it, severing any connections that might have curled out, vine tendrils from his spirit. Old Loki was subtle, though. Deed still wasn’t planning on taking risks.

It was now obvious that Mareritt would not be mended by the time they reached the Pass. Mercy estimated this to be another thirty seconds or so. The Pass filled the sky: it was like flying into the sunset. As a child, and sometimes now, Mercy had hung out of the back windows of her house, looking into the shining crimson sky above the Western Sea and its the golden clouds of islands, wondering if she would ever visit them. A whimsical notion, but now here she was. These clouds were moving too fast to be islands, however. They were like boiling clouds of golden steam, laced with lightning fire. Mercy couldn’t help feeling if she took the sleigh into the middle of that, they’d all be fried.

Then the clouds parted and she gasped. There were gates in the Pass. They reared up in the form of columns of black cloud, soft as ink or soot, then hardening to the resemblance of stone. On a ledge on the left hand gate, someone was standing, holding a sword of flame.

“You’ll have to-have to-” That was Mareritt, from the back of the sleigh. Her voice was a reedy gasp, almost inaudible.

“What’s she saying?” Mercy called.

“You’ll have to stop the sleigh!”

“But what about the demons?” Mercy looked back. They were still being pursued, but the bulk of the swarm was still amassing, readying to pour through the Pass. The heads continued to spit fire. Shadow leaned over the lip of the sleigh. Her gaze was intent.

“Mercy, you’ll have to take us down to that ledge. We’ve got to go past the guardian.”

“Do you know who it is?”

“No, but I’ve got some suspicions.”

The sleigh soared downwards. Close up, Mercy could see that the columns were akin to basalt: if this was an illusion, it was a remarkably realistic one. Both the ledge, and the figure, were far larger than they should have been, but as the sleigh grew rapidly nearer they, too, adjusted in size.

Shadow said, “Guardian.”

He thought he’d been careful. He’d thought, too, that he knew these woods, and so he had, but that had been when the god had been kind, if you could call it that, still held him in grace. The world was a reflection of the mind of God, after all, and what kind of world can that be, when a god is cruel? Outcast from Loki’s dubious benignity, Deed found that he was lost.

Night had fallen some time before. He could still see the rift in the air, a sunset slash, far away to the west, but he was relying on his nocturnal vision in order to make his way through the trees. He was heading up into the mountain pass, the one that led, ultimately, to the mistfall bridge, and he had been on track until, suddenly, he wasn’t.

The forest had closed in. Even Deed was finding it difficult to make his way through the trees and it was first with relief, then a chilly dismay, that he stumbled out into a clearing.

But not just any clearing. He knew exactly where he was. The tall spires of trees, motionless despite the wind which had been whipping the branches of the pines into a shower of snow, the basalt rocks. The two wolves came out from the trees, closing in from different directions. Deed knew as soon as he saw them that they were not wolves at all, nor were they from the wolfhead clans, who paid allegiance to Odin. These were men, transformed into the semblance of beasts, and the process had not been painless. He could see the anguish and rage in their trapped eyes; knew, too, that they would not be able to do anything except the god’s bidding. They moved as stiffly as automata over the snow. One wolf’s mouth moved.

“Hello, Deed,” a voice said.

For a few minutes, Mercy was afraid that the sleigh might actually melt. The rock on which she stood was hot; she could feel it through the soles of her boots. She cast a nervous glance towards the sleigh, but although its runners had hissed and steamed as they landed, to her relief the sleigh remained intact.

She noticed that Mareritt, now apparently healed, took care to remain seated on the sleigh, or perhaps it was just that she did not want to relinquish her hold on the reins and the deer, whose silver-black eyes rolled in panic. Gremory, however, had joined Shadow and Mercy on the ledge, and the demon looked as though she was enjoying the change in temperature.

But it was the figure ahead of them who was worrying Mercy. He was tall, with pale fiery hair that streamed down his back, and teeth as long and sharp as a disir’s. His beautiful face was remote and sometimes it flickered, changing into fire. He wore robes as white as snow, but the sword he carried was a burning gash in the air. Mercy had never met an angel before, but she had a sudden apprehension of all that filled-with-awe business. Or make that fear. She swallowed hard and sheathed the Irish sword, which had become very quiet and still in her hand.

“You would pass through the gate?” the angel asked.

Shadow was staring not at the angel, but at Mercy. Meeting the other woman’s eyes, Mercy read the message in them: Don’t trust it.

“Will you let us?” Mercy said. Mareritt was staring at her, too, but Mercy could not read her expression. Perhaps she realised that an appeal from her would do no good. The demon appeared to think the same. She, on the other hand, was watching the angel, her eyes narrow red slits.

“Of course.”

Gravely, the angel inclined his head. “If you pay the fee.”

Mercy sighed. There always was one of those. “And what would that be?”

The angel looked her directly in the face. It was hard to withstand his gaze; Mercy felt her face grow hot, as though she stared into the sun. “A life.”

“What?” She was shocked into rudeness. “You’re an angel. You’re not supposed to ask for that sort of thing.”

“To do him justice,” Gremory said, as if commenting on some abstruse theological point, “it’s not really his decision. He’s just the enforcer. The gates run on older rules. Mind you,” the demon added, “I can’t say that there’s any love lost.”

“Do you know who he is?”

“I don’t know his name. I do know one or two of them.”

The angel’s gaze did not waver. “You have to choose.”

“May I have a word with my friend?” Shadow said to him.

The angel nodded.

She stepped over to Mercy and threw the ripped veil over them both. “I don’t think this will stop him hearing us-but anyway. The thing is, I’ve worked it out. The swarm’s hard behind. When they’re ready, when they’ve formed their fighting formation, they’ll come through here. It won’t matter to them if they have to sacrifice one of their number.”

“No, but it matters to us. Perra can’t die: the ka’s a spirit. Gremory won’t and anyway, she’s a demon. Mareritt’s a story.”

“So that leaves you and me. If someone dies, maybe they can ask that the gap be closed. We could have it both ways. We’ve got rid of the disir. Now we have a chance to close the Pass behind us.”

Mercy took a deep breath. Then she nodded. “I’m vowed to the Library. I swore I’d give anything to protect it, including my life. This counts as that. I’ll do it.”

At first, she thought that Shadow was going to protest, but then a change came over the woman’s face, rendering it unreadable. She said, “If that’s your choice.”

“I’m sure,” Mercy said, thinking, Fuck. All the things that she couldn’t now be able to do… but if they let the swarm through, she probably would have died anyway. “Let’s get it over with. See if it works, for a start.”

She ducked out from under the veil and began to walk across the ledge. The hot stone baked up beneath the soles of her feet and the air scorched her lungs. She opened her mouth to say, Take me…

… and the world disappeared beneath an enveloping blue. For a second, she thought that this was death: an azure drowning, sky fall. Then she realised that Shadow had thrown the veil over her head.

“No!” Mercy cried. She fought the veil, pushing back the cascading folds, but it tripped her and she fell, bruising her palms against the hot rock. The fall tore the veil from her face and she saw Shadow walk forward towards the fiery sword.

“If I die,” Shadow said, “will you let my friends through and close the Pass?”

The angel looked at her, his head on one side.

“If I do that, it’s not just your life,” he said. “It’s your soul. You’ll have to stay here, until someone else comes along. You’ll have to become the gap.”

“Shadow,” Mercy whispered. A favourite debate among Librarians involved the nature of the ultimate story. Is it the person who triumphs over insurmountable odds? Is it the child who seeks and finds their own destiny? Watching Shadow now, Mercy thought she knew the answer: the greatest story involves willing sacrifice, the person who gives up their life for others. Christ. Ishtar. Aslan.

Shadow began walking forwards and did not stop. Mercy saw the fiery sword come down and bathe her in light. She was a silhouette, and then she was gone. Around Mercy’s kneeling form, the blue veil shimmered and disappeared.

“Get in the sleigh!” Mareritt cried. The demon hauled Mercy up and bundled her over the lip of the vehicle. She tumbled down among the heads, blinking as the brightness of the light that had encompassed Shadow started to fade.

The angel stepped aside. Mercy looked up as they sped past his standing form and he was now a statue, changed to silent stone like the bird-faced spirit that had once stood vigil above the Library. Mareritt cracked the whip. The sleigh shot over the edge of the column into the Pass. Mercy struggled to her feet and looked back over the rear of the sleigh. Behind them, the two basalt columns were grinding together. The Pass was closing.

“Come closer, Deed,” the wolf sang out and Deed found he had little choice. His dragging feet took him unwillingly forwards, a zombie shuffle through the snow. “Not too successful, were we?”

“No,” Deed croaked.

“I tell you what,” the wolf said, in Loki’s voice. The long lupine muzzle twisted around the human words. “I’ll give you a sporting chance. After all, there were a few unforeseen spanners in the works, weren’t there? So this is what I’ll do. If you unchain me, we’ll see if you can outrun me. After all, I’ve been chained up for a very long time. Haven’t had the exercise I should. Bit stiff.”

“Very well,” Deed managed to say. If he declined, the god would simply order the wolves to kill him where he stood.

“I’ll even take the wolves away. How about that?”

Next moment, both the animals were whisked up into the air. Deed blinked. The wolves were hanging on the whalebone arch, sheaves of bloody meat and fur.

“Didn’t like them anyway. Now. Unchain me.”

The god pointed to a nearby boulder. Set into it, in a runnel in the rock, was a rusty iron key.

“It didn’t look like that originally, of course. Changed with time.”

Deed tugged at the key. Even disir talons couldn’t make much impact on the imprisoning stone.

“A little joke on the part of my captors, putting the key so nearby. But no one’s been able to get it out. You see, you need magic for that.”

Gritting his teeth, Deed infused the rock with power. It was hard, harder than any natural stone but at last, when he was almost drained, the rock burst apart and the key fell to the ground.

“Oh, well done, Abbot General.”

Deed took the key across to where the old god stood. He moved cautiously; there were eyes in the shadows, yellow and shining. If he just made a run for it, there were more wolves waiting.

He fitted the key into the lock that secured Loki’s chain.

“I’ll count to ten.” The old god closed malevolent eyes. “One… ”

But Deed was running, disir speed, leaping through the grove. He brushed aside ancient rotting corpses, thrust away skeins of necklaced bones. And then he was on the road itself, the stone hard beneath his pounding feet.

He made it as far as the crossroads before the god pounced. His last thought was that this was at least appropriate: crossroads had always been a place of sacrifice. Loki’s long talons closed around his throat and ripped it out, releasing a gush of blood and magic, steaming into the winter air. Deed’s spirit, sinking down into the earth, listened to the god’s laughter and saw no more.