THE HANGING MOUNTAINS

The Third Book of the Cataclysm

by Sean Williams

"Prologue"

Gray clouds hung low like damp sheets over worn stone buildings and streets that smelt faintly of shit. Habryn Kail wrinkled his nose. He'd never much liked cities, and Laure only reinforced that opinion. While he could forgive much on account of its recent flooding, his patience only extended so far.

"That's an exorbitant price," he told the stall owner, "to charge for a compass that doesn't work."

"None of them are working as they ought." The dirty, pale-skinned man pulled a sour face at the wavering needle on the dial before him. "I assure you, sir, that if north could be measured reliably, this fine piece would do a better job than any other."

The stall owner came out from his tent to pursue the sale, but Kail waved him away. Kail wasn't interested in compasses; there were other, more reliable means of maintaining a course. Food, however, he did require, along with a large hooded cloak. And a camel, if he could find one in his price range likely to live out the week.

Laure wasn't Tintenbar, where traders from all over the Interior gathered to meet their counterparts on the far side of the Divide. No need went unfulfilled in those markets, and for an assiduous purchaser obtaining anything of quality was not an issue. Laure's long isolation, on the other hand, lent the outpost city an impoverished air. Quality cost money--money he didn't have. He would have to work hard to stretch what he had far enough for the journey ahead.

At least, he thought wryly, water wasn't likely to be problem. Within days of the flood that filled the Divide from side to side, ominous clouds had swept in from the East, bringing with them rain unseen in those parts for generations. The Laureans had quickly familiarized themselves with the phenomenon. Where once they might have danced in the streets at every drop, now they muttered about flooding and cursed the threatening sky.

The yadachi sat atop their slender poles like crimson-plumaged, long-tailed birds, taking the measure of the weather in absolute silence. What they thought of it, Kail couldn't imagine. He didn't ask, either. His visit to Laure wasn't a social one. Once he had his supplies, he would be on his way.

A camel-herder relented under heavy coercion and sold him a barely adequate old nag for more than half the money he had. Half what remained went on the cloak. By the time he had filled his new saddlebags with dried meat, flat bread, and salted plums--a guilty pleasure he always indulged on long overland trips--he had barely a coin left in his purse.

A pawnbroker occupied one corner of the market, his grubby stall cluttered with the detritus of failed dreams and addictions. Kail briefly considered divesting himself of the one truly valuable item remaining in his possession. In the course of asking after his former companions, he had learned that the Surveyor Van Haasteren was organizing an expedition back to the ruined city known as the Aad, there to seek a marvellous, opalescent relic called the Caduceus. One piece of the Caduceus wasn't with the others; it currently rested in a cloth bag suspended from a thong around Kail's neck. Van Haasteren would want it, he knew, to complete the artefact, so it was bound to fetch a fair price.

A fear that he might regret too hasty a decision made him hold onto it. The Goddess only knew when he might need the money more or require something to barter with the Stone Mages. Or how much attention he might draw to himself in the process of selling it...

"You've got a well-travelled face," called a withered old seer as he stood with his hand on the camel's harness, running through a mental checklist to make sure he hadn't forgotten anything. Clad in a dusty shawl that might once have been brilliant blue and red, the seer clutched shaking hands in her lap and wore brass rings on hooked toes. "Why not let me tell you what lies on the road ahead?"

Kail almost didn't bother responding. Market seers were as likely to possess actual talent as the jewellery in the next stall along actual gems.

"If you can tell me what lies behind me, old mother," he said, "then maybe you can tell me what's ahead."

"A test, eh?" The seer cackled heartily, exposing more gaps than teeth. "It doesn't work like that, son. It's as hard to look into the past as the future, and few people will pay me to do that. They usually don't like what they learn."

That was an odd comment. Intrigued, he led the camel closer. It snorted and resentfully butted his shoulder.

He ignored it. "Why wouldn't they like it?"

"Some say the future is a book we haven't read yet." The old woman appraised him with one eye as he approached. The other screwed shut as though dazzled by a bright light. "The past is a book too, but not one we've read. It's one we've written. That's why I don't like telling the past. People object to hearing that their book contains lies of their own devising--lies they tell themselves to make sense of things, to make it all bearable, to go on living. No one likes being caught out in a lie. Do they?"

He smiled. Talented or not, she was no fool. "No, they don't."

"People lie about the future, too," she said, squinting even harder, "calling it hope or faith. I'm willing to bet I can't catch you out at that. A pragmatist like you lives in the moment. He knows that life is just a series of moments, one after the other. They come and go like beads on a string. If the string ever breaks you'll be lost, but until that moment--ah!" She leaned back with her mouth open in triumph. "Yes. Got you."

"What do you mean?" he asked, although he knew full well. He'd felt his face tighten at her comment about being lost, and she, trained charlatan and observer of faces, had spotted it.

"You're on a journey," she said. "A long one." Her expression sobered. "It may not be the one you originally set out on; your destination might not be the one you hope for. But a journey it is, and you will be changed by it in ways you don't expect." She paused. "Pull up a seat, son, and let's talk."

A light rain had started outside the tent-like covering of her stall. The weather didn't faze him, but it did unsettle the camel. His curiosity pricked, Kail tied the restless beast to a post and folded himself into the seat opposite the woman. Reaching into his purse, he produced a coin and put it on the table between them.

She waved it away. "Pay me afterwards. For now, just give me your left hand."

Kail did so, and she took it in both of hers. The skin of her fingers was rough with calluses as they explored his palm. Her eyes flickered shut.

He felt a tingle not dissimilar to pins and needles shoot up his arm. He almost pulled away, recognizing the feeling--she was Taking from him!--but curiosity held him still. If she genuinely had some facility with the Change, perhaps her other claims weren't completely false.

"You said I was on a journey," he prompted. "A journey that would change me."

"No great revelation there. Anyone could tell that much from your clothes; and journeys always change us, otherwise there'd be no point going on them." Her attention wandered as though she was concentrating on something distant and hard to make out. "Your home lies far from here," she went on, and he felt the tingle again. "The sea calls you, but you don't hear it. The ones you serve have lost your respect. You follow them no longer. You're seeking your own path. You--" She stopped. A sudden, indrawn breath hissed between her teeth. "You have been touched by darkness. A darkness I cannot see through. Not death. Not the Void. The darkness of--of ending. The ending of all things. I cannot--"

A deep menacing hum rose up as though an invisible cloud of bees were swarming around them.

She pulled free of him and clutched her hands to her chest.

"What's wrong?" he asked, shaken by her reaction.

"I don't want to see!" she said, shaking her head. Her voice quavered. "It's too close!"

"What's too close?"

"The darkness!" She took a deep, shaky breath. "I've seen it before, but never so near. Your shadow stretches before you, blacker than night. You're walking to the end of the world and do not know it."

"Where?" he asked. "How?"

She opened her eyes slowly, painfully. "That you'll have to find out for yourself. I can't see it. It is utterly beyond my ken."

Kail wanted to press her for more information, but he took pity on her. She seemed abruptly much older than she had before, and weary with it. Her gaze wouldn't meet his.

"My apologies," he said, adding another coin to the one already sitting on the table. "I didn't mean to burden you."

"That is so often the way, son."

He stood. The rain hadn't eased. It had strengthened, if anything, falling in hot, heavy waves over the market stalls. People scurried for shelter and covered their wares. The camel snorted and stamped his feet.

"Blood will run like water," the seer whispered, her voice so soft he could barely hear it over the downpour. "Blood will run like water ere the end comes."

Chilled despite the dense, humid air, Kail took his leave of her and made haste from the city.

#

Hungrily, in the distance, a wolf howled.

The twins shivered.

Do you think--? Hadrian started to say.

Best not to, his brother cut him off.

A clatter of stones made them jump. Their connection to the world was growing stronger every day, but details remained sketchy beyond a few metres from their unusual body. With four legs spread wide, they scanned the area around the campsite for any sign of trouble. It seemed to them that the light had dimmed, but whether that was because of cloud cover or nightfall they couldn't tell. A distant sound might have been rain falling or wind sweeping across the barren earth outside their shelter. They were fairly certain it wasn't anything more sinister than that.

The wolf's call sounded again, closer this time.

Hadrian shivered, making the Homunculus skin containing him and his brother ripple. Recessed under a stone slab as large as a three-story building, their campsite offered protection on just two sides. Despite this, Kail had assured them they would be safe, that no one would dare bother them. They had accepted the Sky Warden's assurance readily enough then. Nothing had prepared them for the sound of a wolf.

I don't feel secure here.

Seth agreed. We could move, I suppose--but where to?

Keep on going, Hadrian suggested. Northeast. Kail would follow us. He knows how to.

We'd be more vulnerable out there than we are here.

Do you really think if we stay still and don't move, it'll just go away?

Both Seth and Hadrian recovered the same memory at exactly the same moment. Their minds had been so intimately entangled in the void that they had started thinking as one. Independently, yet together, they reached for the words Pukje had spoken to them, a hundred lifetimes ago:

Wolves know how to wait.

Neither of them knew how much credence to give that particular fear. But the fear was very real, and so was their ignorance. They understood too little about the world as it existed now. Talking to their guide only made the situation worse.

The sound of rattling rock grew louder. They pulled back further into the shadows, instinctively raising their arms to present a more threatening figure. Their legs tensed to run.

"It's only me," called a familiar voice.

A large shape pressing out of the gloomy myopia surrounding them resolved into Habryn Kail, leading a camel under the overhang.

"We weren't sure," said Hadrian, letting down his guard. "We didn't know what you were."

Seth remained as taut as a bowstring. "Did anyone follow you here?"

"If they did, they're a better tracker than I am."

"You were gone a long time," said Hadrian.

"I had a lot to do." The rangy, tall man settled the camel and eased himself down to a squatting position. His dark skin blended almost perfectly with the shadows. "I found out that Marmion and the others have gone upriver along the Divide, looking for the cause of the flood and the man'kin migration. And you, I presume. They'd be fools to presume you dead without evidence."

"Are they still hunting us?" asked Seth.

"No. They have no trail, and no hope of finding one now. The flood has proved a stroke of good fortune for you."

Seth finally began to relax, allowing the Homunculus's many-limbed shape to move. Together they sat and addressed the tracker face-to-face.

"How are they travelling?" asked Hadrian.

"That's the interesting thing. Our maps become increasingly unreliable the further east you head, so overland journeys can be dangerous and slow. Given the resources of the Strand, I would've suggested following the course of the Divide when the initial turbulence of the flood died down--but Laure doesn't have boats, and probably lacks the infrastructure to make one in a hurry. So I assumed that Marmion had taken the hard road and wouldn't be far ahead of us."

Kail's words came with an unfamiliar bafflement, as though for once the long-limbed tracker's instincts had led him astray.

"Tell us," said Seth.

"Three days after the flood, Engineers in my former expedition found the skeleton of a hullfish in the torrent. They hauled it ashore, cleaned it, and tested its fitness. Apart from a couple of minor breaches, it held water. They must have worked amazingly fast to get it ready, but that's how they're travelling: exactly how I least expected them to."

"'Hullfish'?" asked Hadrian.

"Sometimes called an ivory whale." The tracker adopted a cautious expression they had come to recognize. "You don't know what that is?"

The Homunculus's head shook as both twins indicated their ignorance.

"It's a beast normally found in the deep ocean. Ten, twenty metres long, and almost impossible to kill because of their thick, bony hide. The carcasses are airtight, so occasionally they drift ashore when they die. Five of the largest ever found became Os, the Alcaide's ship of bone. You've never heard of that either? Well, you only need to know that one is enough to make a perfectly serviceable vessel, especially with the Change strong in the Divide."

The twins struggled with the explanation. Kail obviously thought it made sense, and they supposed it did, in a way. There had been minds to talk with in the void--desperate, dwindling things that had told stories among themselves in order to prolong their existences before the endless hum ground them down. The twins had moved among them sometimes and learned of the world outside through those stories. Their memories were confused, though; it was hard to disentangle the distant past from the stories of the lost, and even harder to distinguish either from an eternity of sensory deprivation.

The twins remembered skyscrapers and a world overflowing with people. They remembered machines and power grids and television and ballpoint pens. Now the world's inhabitants had buggies and airships and the Change, but only in great scarcity. The Lost Minds had told of empty ruins and depopulated wastes, and spoken cities of as fearful, haunted places.

It seemed utterly preposterous to the twins that the corpse of a fish as large as a whale could be fashioned into a ship--but Seth remembered an equally preposterous vessel called Hantu Penyardin, and Hadrian had used the Change to fashion a pencil into a spear in order to kill the energuman Volker Lascowicz. They could accept strangeness as fact if they had to. As far as they knew, Kail had no reason to lie.

"Could we travel that way too?" they asked.

Kail shook his head. "Even if we could find another hullfish, I couldn't make a ship of it on my own, not in time. No, we're best sticking to the original plan: I ride the camel while you walk alongside, disguised under the cloak. That way, we'll be slow but steady. And we won't have to worry about what the flood's left in its wake."

"What do you mean?" asked Hadrian.

"Well, the Divide was home to more than just man'kin. Home or prison--and sometimes burial ground as well for creatures that might not be completely dead, even now. The water will stir all manner of things from their rest."

Kail stood and went to the camel. He opened a saddlebag and took out a handful of small, nut-like objects. He picked at them, flicking seeds out into the darkness, and paced as he talked.

"I worry about the others. They're rushing into a situation for which they're ill-prepared. I know you've tried to explain what's growing up there in the mountains, but I still don't entirely understand what it is. It's dark and dangerous, you say, and it eats people. It comes from before the Cataclysm and isn't really part of our world. If I called Marmion with this information, he'd think me mad--and then he would be hunting you again, because he would have good reason to. So I can't tell him that he's putting himself and the others in danger--and I don't like that."

The twins let him think aloud. Their thoughts were full of dying cities and worlds rent asunder, of billions dead and more to come.

"They're too far ahead for us to catch up, even if we walk our mount into the ground," the tracker said. "We can't steal a buggy because it won't work with you aboard. There's no point calling Shilly or Sal, since Marmion won't believe them without evidence, either We don't have any other options that I can see, but to walk. Can you?"

Features blurred in the Homunculus's face as the twins shook their heads.

Kail nodded. "I've promised to get you to the mountains so you can deal with this thing, whatever it is. My path and my conscience are clear. I just wish there was more I could do to help the others. There has been, as you said, enough death already."

The howl of a wolf cut the air like a knife.

"What?" asked Kail, head snapping around as the twins jumped in fright. "What is it?"

"Didn't you hear it?" asked Hadrian.

"Hear what?" The tracker's brows crinkled.

Kail didn't hear it, said Seth, his internal voice brittle. We're not imagining it, are we?

Perhaps he can't hear it.

It's just for us, then? A warning?

Or a threat, said Hadrian. Another thought struck him. Perhaps the time isn't quite right yet.

For what?

For the gloves to come off.

"We think we should get moving," they told Kail. "Standing still for too long probably isn't a good idea."

"Want to explain why?"

Hadrian tried to explain. "There might be people out there--"

"Things," Seth added.

"--who remember us and the way the world used to be. Some of them good; some of them--less so. I'm not sure they count as evil, but they don't always want the same thing as us. And we hurt them, a long time ago."

Kail studied their strange, black features for a long moment. "You're not talking about this Yod creature, now. This is something else entirely."

"Yes."

"An ally of Yod's?"

"No." Hadrian's memories of Volker Lascowicz's brutal death and the snarling of Upuaut, the demon-like creature that had inhabited him, were painfully clear to both of them. "Not an ally, but just as deadly."

Kail nodded wearily. "Then I guess we need to get moving--and talking again. The more you tell me, the more I'm going to understand. And the more I understand, the better I'm going to be able to keep us out of trouble."

"We're trying," the twins said. "We really are trying."

"I know," said the tracker, pulling a thick cotton cloak out of a pack and holding it up for them to slip into, two arms into each sleeve. "Believe me, so am I."

"The Serpent"

"Things in nature change of their own accord. There is no mind in the flow of a river or the grasping of a tree. There is, simply, the Change. Yet minds as sharp as ours once believed in gods of nature, seeing the need for design where nature alone is sufficient. They could not grasp that mind can ride the crest of the wave of nature without itself driving the wave. A single breaking wave is the summation of an entire ocean and all the wind that blows across it; in one moment, it is more than a mind will ever be throughout a lifetime."

The Book of Towers, Exegesis 1:7

Skender saw it first, for no other reason than his face happened to be closest to the water. With his body bent over the boneship's rough, milky white side and a rope tied firmly tied around his waist, he had very little else to look at but the choppy, foaming water, relatively clear of debris since the flood eleven days earlier but still an impenetrable, muddy brown. He had no idea how deep it was, and preferred not to think too hard about that. It was bad enough not knowing anything about sailing or large bodies of water in general. All he knew was that with every sudden wave the boneship lurched from side to side and sent his stomach surging with it.

His face burned at the thought of Chu, whose sense of balance had in no way rebelled at the mistreatment and whose sympathy had, to date, consisted of slapping him on the back and telling him, unhelpfully, that he couldn't puke forever. He wasn't so sure about that. The nausea showed no sign of abating. He wondered if he would ever eat again.

His only consolation was the memory of Gwil Flintham, who had taken one look at the vessel bobbing precariously on more water than he had seen in his entire life, and sworn that he would never, ever set foot in it. If Skender thought like that, he wouldn't have been feeling so miserable, but at the same time he would have never seen anything, never met Sal and Shilly, and never flown.

Far above, riding the turbulent thermals rising from the surface of the flooded Divide, Chu glided as freely as a bird. With dark, crumbling cliffs looming on either side of the surging water and few places to dock, the boneship's crew had no way to see where they were heading. Chu had volunteered to survey the shorelines ahead as they went. Only her word and the growing shadow of the Hanging Mountains ahead reassured them that they were actually getting anywhere.

Skender tried his best to focus on the distant peaks--vast, immovable, and shrouded in permanent cloud--rather than the rocking, rolling boneship and the water beneath.

Goddess, he thought, feeling as though he might throw up yet again. If you're going to kill me, do it now!

At that moment, something glassy slid through the water not a metre from his nose. It resembled ice but moved with a sinuous muscularity that made him think of a lizard or a snake. Its surface was carved with scales as perfectly hexagonal as honeycomb and worn with age. One metre glided by, then two, before Skender, frozen with shock, thought to sound the alarm.

He hauled himself back into the boat, unable to take his eyes off the thing in the water below. It was still uncoiling. How long was it? He turned to shout a warning to where Marmion stood at the bow, bandaged arm held protectively to his chest, but the boneship shifted violently under him and he found himself dumped hard on his backside instead.

All went crazy. The boneship shook and rattled. "Whirlpool!" the cry went up. A warden ran by, leather-bound boot narrowly missing Skender's face. Spray flew over the bows. Skender skidded from side to side across the slippery deck, unable to find purchase long enough to stand. Bilge water soaked him from head to foot.

Distantly, he felt a thunderhead of the Change building as the wardens concentrated on steadying the ship. Sal was in the blend of wills too, and Highson Sparre, bolstering the reservoir stored in the hull of the boneship itself. Skender cursed himself, told himself to get his shit together and stand up. The rope around his waist tangled in his legs and he went down again.

A large hand grabbed the neck of his robes and hauled him to his feet. Startled, he windmilled and kicked frantically until his feet had found something approaching a grip on the deck. The hand let go, and he clutched the tunic of the person who had rescued him. Kemp's broad, pale face beamed down at him, entirely too amused.

"Here." The albino pressed the rope into his hands. "Hold this and try to stay out of trouble."

Kemp went to move off, but Skender pulled him back. "Tell Marmion. This isn't just a current. There's something else. It--"

The boneship tipped under them, throwing more than just Skender off his feet. Kemp went sprawling, and so did half the wardens.

"Hold tight!" bellowed Marmion from his position at the prow. "Concentrate! We'll ride it out!"

Skender couldn't blame him for thinking it would be that simple. This wasn't the first patch of restless water they had encountered on their journey; nor was it likely to be their last. The Divide was a nightmare of capricious currents and barely navigable hazards.

Gripping the rope tightly with both hands, Skender managed to bring himself vaguely upright again. He didn't stop to wonder at the disappearance of his nausea. In the face of a concrete threat, he didn't have time to be sick.

Another powerful jolt sent people flying in all directions. A cry of pain testified that someone had gashed themselves on a bony protuberance. The bilge took on a reddish tinge.

"Listen to me!" shouted Skender, his voice audible heard over the cries of alarm. "Something in the water is trying to capsize us!"

Marmion, poised at the front of the boneship, glanced at him then at the churning water ahead. Skender couldn't tell what he saw, but he raised his bandaged hand above his head and waved for attention.

"Sal! Up here!"

Wardens parted for Sal as he left the tiller and moved forward. Skender couldn't make out the words he and Marmion exchanged. The boneship shook again, and Skender hoped the crunching sound he heard wasn't bone breaking. Hullfish owed their buoyancy to bubbles of air trapped in their feather-light bones. If their attacker shattered enough of them, the boneship would sink.

Skender broke out in a cold sweat. Watersickness and giant snakes were bad enough. Not being able to swim capped off the situation beautifully.

Marmion and Sal finished their hasty consultation. Nodding, they drew apart. Marmion called for his wardens to cluster around him. They made furious plans as the boat shook beneath them. Skender felt the flow of Change begin to shift into a new configuration.

Wind alone was insufficient to propel the boneship against the incessant current pouring down from the mountains. They relied on the efforts of the wardens to move anywhere but backwards. Following Marmion's instructions, the steady acceleration that had carried them from Laure suddenly ebbed, and Skender felt the boat give itself completely to the current.

The mental effort made by the wardens, however, didn't ease off. If anything, it redoubled. Skender looked around, saw their eyes closed in concentration. Some muttered words under their breath; some leaned with palms flat spread against the yellowish bone; others traced complex geometric shapes in the air with their fingers--employing whatever it took to focus their concentration.

A handful of the shapes Skender recognized; he had glimpsed them in books and, once seen, never forgotten them. A sign for mastery over water came and went, followed by one controlling the flow of heat. A cloud of steam rose up from the surface of the boneship when Sal leant his wild talent to the charm, giving Skender a hot flush.

A new crunching sound arose from outside the boat. Not bone this time, but ice. The boat spun through a slurry of half-frozen water that cooled even further as the charm stole its warmth and sent it billowing in clouds to the sky. The bone deck shuddered underfoot, and Skender clutched the rope, wide-eyed.

Suddenly all was quiet. The boneship sat with its prow slightly upraised in a miniature iceberg that bobbed and spun gently on the surface of the Divide. The snake had been locked in the ice, trapped in mid-squeeze.

"Good work," said Marmion into the uncanny quiet. Apart from the sound of water lapping against the ice and people regaining their footing, the silence was complete. "Now, let's take a look at what we're dealing with."

Wardens spread out around the edge of the boneship and peered carefully over the edge. Kemp joined them, and so did Shilly, emerging from the hollow cavity at the heart of the bony hull, leaning heavily on her walking stick. She looked as startled by what she saw as Skender felt. He had no intention of going any closer to the edge than he absolutely had to.

"Can you see it?" called one of the wardens.

"There's something over here," someone else replied.

"And here," said another from the far side of the boneship.

Skender pictured long, python-like coils entwined around the ship, frozen solid in the act of crushing it.

"What is this thing?" he asked.

"I've never seen anything like it before," said Highson, poised by the tiller Sal had abandoned to help with the freezing.

"Want me to cut off a piece?" suggested Kemp, raising one leg to hop over the side of the boat.

Ice cracked and the boneship lurched. Kemp almost tipped out as one of the frozen serpent's coil then another broke free of the ice. Hands clutched at Kemp and strained to pull his heavy weight back to safety. More cracking sounds came from all around the boat. Icy, translucent coils whipped and writhed. Cold splinters and cries of alarm filled the air.

The head of the snake appeared over the bows, a cone-like, tapering affair boasting numerous writhing whiskers that shook itself free of the last of the ice with an uncannily dog-like motion. Skender could see no eyes or nostrils--not even a mouth--but he had no doubt that it could see them. The whiskered head stabbed down at the boneship, narrowly avoiding Marmion. It emitted a keening, hissing noise more piercing than a whistle as it pulled back into the air.

The boat lurched free of the short-lived iceberg. Kemp had almost made it aboard, but slipped back again as the boat tipped under him. Wardens pulled at his arms. A glassy coil flailed over Skender's head, and he ducked barely in time. Remembering his despairing death-wish, he hastily retracted it. The last thing he wanted was to be killed by a monster.

The head rose up to strike again. Sal pushed forward, mouth set in a determined line. The air crackled around him, ripe with wild talent. Shards of ice flashed into vapour where he stepped.

The snake sensed him and its screeching grew louder. It hung poised overhead for a terrifying instant, swaying to triangulate on its intended victim before lunging downwards.

Sal blocked the strike with his arms crossed in front of his face. The snakehead ricocheted away and, with a piercing snarl, struck at Kemp instead, impaling him on its whiskers as though they were the spikes of a mace. Kemp roared with pain and would have been thrown from the boneship entirely but for the wardens holding him fast.

The snakehead pulled free, dripping blood from its deadly whiskers. Kemp fell limp. Sal leapt over him and caught the snake about its throat. Although unable to get his fingers completely around the slippery body, the Change made up for what he physically lacked. With a loud cry, he wrenched it down and smashed its head against the boat's bony bulwarks.

A silent concussion pushed Skender off his feet and turned the day momentarily dark. The boneship skidded sideways, missing the cliff on the starboard side by the smallest of margins. With one startled squawk, the snake shattered into a cloud of fine sand and blew away on the wind.

Skender blinked dust from his eyes and hurried with Shilly to where Kemp lay on the deck. The albino bled thickly from two wounds, one to his abdomen and the other to his thigh. Sal had dropped like a stone after killing the snake and lay next to him, unmoving. Shilly brushed long, mousy hair out of her lover's eyes and made sure he was breathing.

"Is he--?" Skender didn't know how to finish the question.

"He's still with us," she said. Her brown eyes brimmed over with concern, but there was hope there too. "He'd never go that far again."

Skender didn't hide his relief. Every Change-worker knew that the Void Beneath awaited those who took too much of the Change at once. That Sal had drawn so deeply as to knock himself out was a concern, but Skender believed Shilly without question that he would recover. She knew Sal better than anyone, even Sal himself.

Kemp was a different question. The healer among the wardens, Rosevear, had stooped to examine him. A young man with dark skin and thick, curly hair, he was already sweating from exertion. "The wounds are very deep," he said. "We need to stop him bleeding before I can do anything else."

Rosevear Took from three of his colleagues to staunch the flow of crimson from Kemp's side. Afterwards, the albino looked even paler than usual. Skender sat by him, waiting for good news and wishing there was something he could do. Remembering the albino helping him stand during the attack of the snake, a new sickness filled his stomach.

Rosevear's will moved deep in Kemp's wound. A glassy shard as long and sharp as a toothpick emerged from his side and fell to the deck with a faint, almost musical sound. Marmion, closely watching the healer's ministrations, ground the fragment underfoot.

"Please, give me space," Rosevear pronounced, leaning back on his heels and breathing heavily. His hands were bloody. "A steady surface to work on would help, too."

"Understood." Marmion stepped back and waved at the wing circling above. "I'll see what I can do about that."

At his signal, Chu dropped like a stone, tilting her wing and alighting at the last minute on the broad deck. A breath of air rippled across the boneship. Wardens took the weight of the wing from the Chu's back as she unclipped her harness and hurried forward, brow wrinkled with concern.

"Skender, what happened? I couldn't see clearly from the air."

"It's Kemp," Skender explained. "He's been injured."

"Kemp? Goddess." For the first time, she seemed to notice the albino splayed on the deck. A complicated series of emotions played across her face. "Will he be all right? What can I do to help?"

"Tell us there's somewhere to pull in not far from here," said Marmion. "Or at least to find shelter from the current."

She nodded. "There's a subsidence ahead, just around the bend. I don't know how stable it is, but it could give you what you need."

"Good. Thank you." Marmion snapped orders to those wardens not assisting Rosevear. They moved off to rebuild the charm that had propelled the boneship upstream while Rosevear worked on Kemp.

"You're okay, then?" Chu asked Skender, her deep, half-moon eyes studying his face closely. "When Marmion called me down, I thought--" She hesitated, seemed to gather herself. "Well, I didn't know what to think. That you'd puked your guts right out in all the excitement, maybe. I mean, this is the longest I've seen you upright in days. Could you finally be empty?"

She clapped him on the back, and went off to collapse her wing.

All right, Goddess, he thought with a wince. I've changed my mind again--but this time I'm sure of it. You forget one little thing, and you pay and pay and pay. Spare me this torture!

If anyone heard him, Goddess or otherwise, no answer came.

#

Shilly barely noticed the exchange between Skender and Chu as she tended to Sal. Everything had happened so quickly: the turbulence, which she had learned to endure by staying well out of the way; then Skender's cry that there was more to it than simply wild currents; by the time she had emerged, Marmion had frozen the snake and solved the problem--or so it had seemed.

She had been too slow to help Sal when he'd rushed forward to save Kemp. Frightened, she hadn't been able to show him how to refine the charm he'd used against the snake. What he lacked in subtlety he had made up for with sheer grunt, turning a simple rock-crushing mnemonic into a powerful weapon. As a result, he lay unconscious before her, and there was nothing she could do about it.

His reservoir of the Change was empty. There was no strength left in him on which she could call to help him return. She would just have to be patient, to let him come back to her in his own time.

Make it soon, my love, she whispered in her mind. Make it soon.

Beside her, Rosevear worked hard to save Kemp's life. He moved quickly, assuredly, binding the less serious gash in Kemp's massive thigh with thick cloth bandages and concentrating primarily on the stomach wound. His expression was grim but not hopeless.

"He's going to be okay, isn't he?" she asked.

"I'm not sure." Rosevear glanced at her mid-ministration. "I'll need to watch him closely. If the poison spreads, there might be nothing I can do."

Poison? she wanted to echo, numbly. The sides of her mouth turned down at the thought that Kemp might die. She had known him since her childhood in Fundelry. Just moments ago he had been strong and lively. That he could be so suddenly lost to them cast everything around her in a new light. She felt as though the bottom had fallen out of the boneship and they were falling free.

Beneath her, the vessel surged ahead, released from both ice and snake, seeking the shelter Chu had promised. The sun swung in the sky as Marmion ordered the course changed. Highson, Sal's natural father, still recovering from his pursuit of the Homunculus but determined to contribute any way he could, swung the tiller hard to port. The rudder acted more on the Change filling the boat than the water surrounding it, glowing a faint pearly white at night and leaving behind a trail of tiny bubbles during the day. She had watched its attachment to the boneship in Laure, and wondered at how so delicate a filigree of threads and filaments could possibly help the ship stay on course. Wardens had an entirely different method of watercraft to the fishers she had known in Fundelry.

Voices called. She craned her neck to see over the bulwarks. The Divide wall closest to the boneship had subsided under the raging torrent of the flood, spilling boulders into the water. Some had been carried away in the initial rush; enough remained to form a bulky spit that even now, days later, the water continued to shape it. The relatively calm space behind its jagged leading edge gathered sediments and debris in growing mounds. Scrapes and bumps on the underside of the boneship made Shilly nervous, thinking that creatures perhaps worse than the snake were trying to get in. Nothing came of them, however, and her fear abated.

"There." Marmion pointed with his one remaining hand at a suitable mooring spot, and Highson guided them in. Two wardens leapt the closing gap across the water and tied ropes to secure-looking stones, anchoring the boneship in place. Sheltered from the relentless current, the boneship became, for once, mercifully still. While not as sensitive to watersickness as Skender, she had no love for the endless rolling of the deck underfoot. Sleep came with difficulty, even in the dark, rounded cavities of the boat's hollow interior that reminded her of the underground workshop she and Sal called home, far away. She would be glad when they returned to dry land.

"Wh--" Sal stirred on her lap. His eyes fluttered. "What--?"

"Easy." She stroked his face to soothe him. "Everything's all right. The snake is gone. You don't have to worry about that any more."

"But--" He tried to sit up. She helped him turn and lean into her, so his head rested heavily on her breast. He took in the boulders and sundered, yellow cliff face looming over them. "Where are we? How long was I out?"

"An hour or less. We're stopping so Rosevear can work on Kemp."

Finally he took in what he hadn't, perhaps, wanted to see. Shilly felt him trying to reach out to take the measure of Kemp's injury through the Change, but he was still too weak. She explained what she knew: that the injury was deep but not fatal, depending on what happened with the poison from the snake's crystal barbs. Much would hinge on the coming moments, as Rosevear worked hard to secure what advantage he could over the spreading sickness.

They had a clear view of Kemp's face and upper chest as the wardens worked on him. His giant rib cage rose and fell reassuringly with every breath, but the skin of his face, so pale it bordered on transparent, hung loosely from his cheeks. Half-open eyelids showed only white. What little colour he had had utterly drained away.

Skender came to check on Kemp's progress, leaning with a worried expression over Rosevear's shoulder.

"It's my fault," he said. "If I'd sounded the alarm sooner--"

"Don't," said Sal. "If I'd killed the snake sooner, or the wardens had frozen the snake more tightly, or Kemp hadn't tried to take a piece off it--then maybe things would've been different. Or they might have been exactly the same. There's no point blaming anyone, including yourself."

Skender nodded, but didn't seem reassured. When Rosevear irritably brushed him away, he hopped over the edge of the boneship to explore the rocky spit against which the boat had moored. Several of the wardens were already climbing the uneven slope up to the top of the Divide wall, there to take the mission's bearings and estimate the distance they had travelled. Shilly wondered what they would see.

Ahead, when the Divide and the Hanging Mountains were perfectly in line, she made out a glimpse of green below the ever-present pall of clouds. Chu's talk of fog forests and balloon cities smacked of fable, not fact--yet the hint of verdancy remained, suggestive and alluring. In all Shilly's life she had never seen vegetation thicker than low saltbush.

She wasn't about to leave Sal's side. Even when he stirred again and successfully managed to sit up on his own, she didn't suggest they move far. He needed to recuperate, not reconnoitre.

"What were you doing when the snake hit?" he asked her as she led him by the arm into the boat's central cavities. Smooth bubbles of bone opened up around them, providing a cabin large enough for six people to lie comfortably besides supplies purchased in Laure. "Were you asleep?"

Shilly shook her head. She had been awake since mid-morning. He lay down on the thin mattress at the rear of the space and she showed him what he had been working on, to distract herself from thinking about Kemp.

"The dream again?" he asked, examining the sketches she'd made: page after page of intricate scribbling; vain attempts to capture the complexity of the patterns she saw in her mind.

"It won't let me go," she said. "Always the same things: sand and something buried; a pattern I'm supposed to transcribe; being outside my body, looking at myself. I think it's important, if I could only work out why."

"Have you talked to Tom about it?"

She shook her head. Since the flood, she had avoided the young seer for fear of what he might tell her. Already, the dream that he had revealed to her in Fundelry was beginning to come true: You and I were riding a ship of bone up the side of a mountain... The rest, about frozen caves and the end of the world, didn't bear thinking about any sooner than she had to.

"This doesn't feel like prophecy," she said. "I'm not seeing what's going to happen, but something that needs to happen, I think."

"Could it be a message?"

"Who from?" She frowned. "The only person I can think of is Habryn Kail, if he's still alive--but if he had something important he needed me to know, he could just tell me outright."

"Could, yes."

She dropped her chin to her chest. Thoughts of Kail provoked equal parts sadness and anger in her. The nephew of Lodo, her first teacher and guardian, the tracker would have been the closest thing to family she might have had, had he only revealed himself to her before being swept away by the flood.

"You saw through his eyes, at the end," she said to Sal. "If you'd learned something through him, or felt something, you wouldn't keep me in the dark. Would you?"

"Of course not," he said instantly.

And she could tell that he wasn't telling her the whole truth.

She sighed. What was it about Sal and Kail? Ever since Marmion had told her the truth about him, Sal had been on edge. Whenever the tracker's name came up, he did his best to change the subject. She didn't want to believe that Sal was keeping something from her, and she had no actual reason to believe it, apart from a gut feeling--but that feeling wasn't going away in a hurry, and she had learned to trust her instincts.

She opened her mouth to ask him outright.

"How are we doing in here?" Highson Sparre's stocky frame filled the circular entranceway, casting them into shadow. "Need a hand?"

"No, we're fine," said Sal. "Thanks."

Sal's father didn't take the hint. Light returned as he came to join them. Sal's wiriness had no origin in Highson, whose broad shoulders looked as though they carried more than their share of worries. Deep lines around his eyes and mouth combined with dark hair running rapidly to grey to complete the impression.

"I actually came to ask you--" He stopped when he saw Shilly's drawing. "What're these?"

"I don't know," Shilly said quite honestly. "Have you ever seen anything like them before?"

"I don't think so. You should run them by Skender. If they're in the Keep library somewhere, he'll have seen them."

Shilly had thought of that, but Skender hadn't been much for intelligent conversation since leaving Laure.

"You were going to ask...?" she prompted.

"Oh, yes." Highson turned to Sal and lowered his voice. "When you were holding the tiller, did you feel any trace of the Homunculus?"

"No," said Sal.

"Are you sure?"

"Why? Did you?"

"I don't think so." Highson's broad forehead creased. "But I'm not a water-worker--none of us are, and why would we be? The Alcaide would hardly send someone like that inland." He laughed softly at the irony that a river now flowed where just a week ago, and for centuries beforehand, only dust-devils and man'kin had roamed.

Sal and Shilly exchanged a glance. She was glad to know that she wasn't the only one obsessed with her own personal mysteries.

"Perhaps you should talk to Marmion," Sal suggested. "He might've felt it."

Highson shook his head emphatically. "Not until I'm sure he's come around to our way of thinking. We don't want the Homunculus or the twins dead. He's tried to kill them once already and would've left them to the flood without second thoughts. I want to know why they saved me before I'll hand them over to him."

Sal nodded but had nothing to add. He lay back on the bed and closed his eyes.

"This isn't the best time," said Shilly, trying not to be too harsh. At least father and son were talking.

"Of course. I'm sorry." Highson backed away until he was blocking the light from the entranceway once more. There he hesitated long enough to say, "That was a powerful move, and bravely done. On the deck before, I mean. You've grown so much since the Haunted City."

With that, he was finally gone.

Shilly felt the coolness of Sal's scalp and whispered softly when he went to speak. "No, my love. Sleep. You've done all you need to for one day."

"Kemp?"

"I'll check on him later. He'll be okay. I promise."

Her gut niggled at her, telling her not to be so sure of that. The depth of the wound and the poison spreading through Kemp's body made every prognosis uncertain. As Sal's breathing deepened and became gradually slower, she wished she'd been less nervous of Tom. He rarely offered his visions unasked. If he'd seen the attack on the boneship ahead of time and told her about it, she might have found a way to avert the situation they now found themselves in.

#

Sal woke to the sound of arguing.

"I'm telling you: he could die!"

"That's a risk we have to take."

"Is it? I don't understand how you can be so cavalier about this."

"I'm not being cavalier. I'm being practical. Kemp's life means as much to me as it does to you. I simply have other concerns to weigh against it. Kemp may not die; there may be resources ahead that we can use to save him. On the strength of those possibilities, I say that we will forge ahead."

Sal recognised the voices. The second, arguing for the mission to continue, belonged to Marmion. The first was Rosevear. Such was the concern in the young healer's voice that Sal feared gravely for his friend. Alive, yes, but for how long?

He sat up. His ears still rang from the effort of bringing down the snake that had attacked the boneship, but he could live with that. Ringing was better than the hum that always rose up when he dipped too deeply into his wild talent, a deadly, droning warning that if he went any further the Void Beneath would take him.

Swinging his legs off the thin mattress, he stood and took a moment to recover his balance. His head no longer felt as though it might shatter at the slightest touch, so that was an improvement. Kemp lay in one of the other cots, haggard and labouring under his injuries. Shilly had gone out onto the deck, presumably to observe the confrontation. He followed in her footsteps, weaving only slightly.

"If he dies," Rosevear said, "it'll be on your conscience as well as mine."

The sun had moved during his recuperative nap, and now hung far to the west over the cliffs of the Divide. Even so, its light was still bright enough to dazzle Sal as he stepped out of the bone enclosure. The entire crew had gathered: Marmion and his wardens, standing in ones and twos across the long deck; Chu and Skender sitting side by side on a coil of rope, their thighs not quite touching; Highson and Shilly near the entrance to the boneship's interior. Even Mawson, the animated stone bust of a man with high-temples and brooding expression, watched from the sidelines, propped up against one of the bulwarks and surrounded by knees. He out of everyone, arguably, had the most to lose if Kemp succumbed. The immensely strong albino frequently acted as his arms and legs.

"If Kemp dies," Sal said, speaking loudly so all could hear, "there's only one proper place to lay the blame."

Heads turned to face him. Marmion's eyes narrowed. "And where might that be?"

"On the snake, of course. That's not to say we shouldn't do our best to care for him; he deserves no less than that. But we can go only so far in providing that help. Our mission was always going to be a dangerous one, and he knew that. He wouldn't want us to turn back just for him. I'm sure of it."

Marmion looked relieved, and perhaps a little surprised that Sal had sprung so readily to his defence. "Thank you."

Rosevear wasn't to be mollified. "You don't know the full situation, Sal. I can't treat Kemp with the limited resources I brought with me."

"We've been over this," Marmion said. "There are forests ahead, less than a day's journey from our present location. Even if they're uninhabited, there will be all manner of herbs and fresh water at your disposal. Kemp will be better off there than here, or perhaps even in Laure."

"And if he dies before we get there?"

"Tell me honestly: how likely is that?"

Rosevear looked crestfallen. "I don't know. The poison has spread throughout his body; there was nothing I could do to halt its progress. It hasn't proven immediately fatal, but he has a fever and the wound will not close. Either of these factors could lead to unexpected complications." He sighed and examined his hands, front and back. "A day might make all the difference in the world, or none in the slightest. To be utterly truthful, I'm not sure that anything I can do will help. No matter where we are."

The news was sobering. Sal felt for the young healer. He had tasted impotence in his time, and found it bitter and lingering. They would all feel bad if Kemp died from his wound, but none more so than Rosevear.

"We will make all haste," said Marmion soothingly. "You are absolved of any blame should your worst fears be realized. I will take that responsibility."

Rosevear nodded, but clearly took little comfort from the warden's words.

"Right." Marmion put the matter behind him with a brisk round of instructions. The Wardens set to work, preparing to cast off from the rugged shore by tightening cables, building charms and stowing the remains of a hasty meal. By the look of things, Sal had missed dinner. His stomach rumbled at the thought, and he was heartily glad when Shilly joined him, pressing a sandwich of flat bread and of salted meat into his hands.

Wary of getting in the way, they retreated back into the heart of the boneship, where Rosevear had returned to sit with Kemp. The healer looked tired. Sal's sensitivity to the Change hadn't recovered, but he could imagine what a toll saving Kemp had taken.

Rosevear glanced up as they entered, then away.

"I'm sorry that didn't go the way you wanted it to," said Sal. "If it helps, remember that agreeing with Marmion doesn't come naturally to me."

Rosevear managed a wan smile. "The worst thing is: he'd expect no different if it was him here, not Kemp. He may look as though he's recovered from losing his hand, but I can assure you he hasn't."

"No," said Shilly, rubbing absently at her stiff leg. "You don't lose something like that easily."

"It just pains me to be so helpless. Look." Rosevear peeled back the bandages covering Kemp's stomach. Bluntly geometric, black tattoos stood out against the albino's pale skin, one of them half finished. "Have you ever seen anything like this?"

Sal winced at the sight of the wound. Ragged and round, its lips were inflamed and red. A clear, thin liquid trickled freely from it.

Rosevear dabbed at it the ghastly puncture with a clean white cloth, and held it up for Sal and Shilly to examine. The fluid possessed no colour at all.

"This could be anything," said the healer. "I can tell you what it isn't, though. It's not blood or bile, which you'd expect from a wound of this sort."

"What about the other wound?" asked Shilly. Her dark skin had paled, but she didn't look away. "Is that the same?"

Rosevear nodded. "I've never seen an infection like this. Even with access to better herbs, I'm not sure what I should do to treat it."

"We'll keep our fingers crossed someone else will, then," said Chu from the entranceway. The flyer moved gracefully to join them, her patched leather uniform creaking stiffly. "There must be people in the forest. Where else could my ancestors have come from? And the snake too, if you think about it. There's a good chance it was swept down-stream, so whoever's up-stream might have seen its like before."

"That's true." Rosevear seemed slightly reassured as he rebound Kemp's wound. "I was talking to Warden Banner this morning. She's been trying to work out where the hullfish came from. They're not river creatures, and they've never been found inland before. It's possible that someone brought it all the way from the coast, perhaps traders intending to sell it."

"Who would they sell it to?" asked Shilly. "The best market for something like this is right back where it started."

"Exactly. And the carcass was fresh, when the meat should have rotted completely from the bones before it reached anywhere near the Divide. Maybe your mysterious forest people can tell us about that too," Rosevear said to Chu, "when we find them."

The deck moved beneath them, not enough to signal casting-off, but a sure sign it wasn't far away.

"Excuse me," said Chu. "I'd better get back to work."

"Good flying," said the healer. "Keep your eyes peeled."

"I will." She hurried off. The wings required a degree of elevation for her to make it safely into the air. In order to gain that elevation, she would have to climb the Divide wall until she found a suitable launching point. Sal had watched her take off on a number of occasions. Each time brought back giddying memories of his one, brief flight with Skender, and the near-crash his friend had called a landing.

"How are you feeling now?" Rosevear asked him.

"On the mend." He had no physical symptoms of over-using the Change, beyond exhaustion and a mild headache. His major discomfort lay in his disconnection from the rest of the world; until his full potential returned, he would remain cut off from the usual ebbs and flows of life around him. "Marmion had better keep us well away from monsters for a while, or he'll be on his own."

"Have you seen Tom anywhere?" asked Warden Banner, sticking her curly head through the entrance and looking around.

"No," said Shilly. "Why?"

"He's gone missing."

Only then did Sal realize that the young seer hadn't been on deck during the argument. Everyone but him.

"We can't leave until we've found him. Come and help me look. Everyone else is busy getting us underway."

What the unnamed boneship lacked in sophistication, it more than made up for in size. The main cabin area was just one of several bulbous spaces nestled inside the bony hull. Most had been filled with gear the wardens had brought with them--including collapsible tents, food stores, and all manner of cross-country equipment. Few such spaces were large enough for a person to stand upright; some barely measured a metre across.

"We're actually sailing the boat backwards, you know," Banner said as they moved aft-wards, where the bony chambers joined to form cramped tunnels and dead-ending tubes. Sal was too big for most of them. "These used to be the hullfish's sinus cavities."

"Great," said Shilly, her voice muffled. She had just wriggled headfirst into one of the smaller spaces. "But I suppose it could be worse."

"Much worse," agreed Sal, thinking of the prow where Marmion perched. He didn't want to know what part of the hullfish's anatomy that corresponded to. "Tom?" he called. "Are you about?"

A faint movement came from deep within a tunnel too narrow for him to squeeze into. He craned as far as he could, and saw the hem of a blue robe peeking out from around a corner. "Tom? What are you doing down here? There's no reason to hide."

The hem pulled out of sight.

"Come on. What are you frightened of? Is it something you've seen?"

The reply came in a tiny whisper. "I know he's dead. I saw it."

"Who?"

"Kemp."

"Is that what you're worried about? Well, it's okay now. I killed the snake. And Kemp is just injured."

"I could've warned him, but I didn't. He died because of me."

Sal retreated to tell Banner to go back and inform Marmion that Tom had been found. While the boneship's journey resumed, Sal and Shilly would sort out what was going on.

"Listen to me, Tom. No matter what you saw, Kemp isn't dead. He's sick, but he is still with us."

"No, he can't be. He has to be dead. That's the only way it'll work."

"The only way what will work, Tom?"

No answer. Shilly elbowed Sal out of the way and had a go.

"Why don't you come and see Kemp for yourself, if you don't believe us?"

"I know what I've seen."

"But so do we, Tom. And you can't stay here forever. We're casting off any second."

The boneship moved beneath them at that moment, and Sal felt the slight hollowing in his stomach that came whenever they moved on the open water. The shouts of wardens came distantly through the bone walls.

"We're going forward," said Tom. It wasn't a question.

"Yes."

"Into the ice."

"If you say so. The mountains, anyway."

Shilly pulled backwards out of the opening so suddenly that Sal couldn't avoid being poked by her walking stick. She unfolded from the cramped space to reveal that Tom had decided to emerge as well. Long and thin--so long it amazed Sal that he had fit into such a small space--with a shock of black hair and worried eyes, Tom shepherded them ahead of him until there was room in the hullfish's sinus cavities for the three of them to crouch together.

"Kemp is really alive?" he asked, looking from Sal to Shilly and back again.

"We wouldn't lie to you about that," Sal said.

"Will you tell us what you saw?" Shilly asked him.

Tom sat heavily and put his head in his hands. "I saw the thing under the ice again," he said. "The dark, ancient thing. It's stirring, getting stronger. The thing that attacked Kemp is frightened of it, like the man'kin, and the golems--like everything in the world. I'm frightened of it too." He looked up and took Sal's arm in a strong grip. "Kemp