The Horns Of Ruin Part 7

"We'll keep fighting, Paladin. Until we're out."

"That's not going to-"

The air cracked around me and I stumbled. The planks of the dock went crazy. The world was moving, sliding farther into the water. Away from the hatch.

The dock must have been damaged in the explosion, or the girl had cut us loose. I spun around, looking for her. Nothing. The dock twisted on its supports and pulled free of the wall, slapping against the water. We started to sink in cold water and earnest.

The wounded screamed, those awake enough to register the danger. Several rolled off and disappeared into the water, soundlessly. The coldmen didn't seem to notice, just kept fighting, pressing, coming. I fought on, because it was what I knew how to do. The water made it to my ankles, my knees, the shocking spike of cold into my crotch taking the breath from my lungs. The platform was tilting and I slipped, ashy water splas.h.i.+ng into my mouth and eyes. I hauled myself to my feet.

I lost sight of Owen, of the other Alexians, of the walls all around. A couple of the frictionlamps bobbed on the surface of the water, a couple more glowed dimly as they sank beneath the waters. I saw the girl, once, refastening the mask that she had surrendered, her eyes panicking as the water rushed up around her throat and into her still-open mouth as she slid beneath the surface. Hands clutched at me, and I cut them, unsure if they belonged to the coldmen or my dying companions. My attackers gabbled at me in staticky panic, falling beneath my blade or stumbling off the platform to disappear. The planks under my feet began to s.h.i.+ft as the whole structure lost integrity, forgot that it was supposed to be stable and flat. I was standing on a loose bundle of boards, and the bundle was coming apart. I tried to pick out the ruin of the hatch, but could see nothing but blackness and the swallowing darkness of the water. I picked a direction, lurched toward it, thras.h.i.+ng against the water to try to stay up, then stepped off into an abyss, into oblivion.

The water swallowed me, and the darkness, and the cold.

*he corridor was a tube of slimy brick with gutters on both sides of a narrow iron walkway. There was no light, other than the soft glow coming off the Healers' runed cuffs as they invoked over the bodies of the nearly dead. I was on my back, shoulders arched uncomfortably over the ma.s.s of the articulated sheath. The corridor ended in a waterfall that fell silently, held back by some hidden force. I sat up. Owen saw me and came over.

"Careful now," he said. He pa.s.sed a palm over my head, whispering some invokation of anatomy. He had put on his Healer's rings, a dull silver cuff for each finger, and they glowed a dim blue as he watched me with nervous eyes. "That was an unusual method of drowning."

"What happened?" I asked. My head felt like it had been stuffed with kindling and then used to start a particularly stubborn fire. The Justicar put his palm against my forehead, shook his head, then began to invoke. His skin was cool and wet, surprisingly soft. I closed my eyes and lay back against the damp tunnel wall. "Where are we?"

"Under the water," he said, then broke contact. The pain in my head dampened to a soft roar. "There's some mechanism in the water that dragged us in here. You should be fine until we get to the surface."

"A force?" I sat up again and looked at the waterfall. The water flickered light. I could detect a pulse in my bones now, not unlike the feeling I got standing on the monotracks, staring at the distant tower of the impellor. "This is how the Amonites got away?"

"Probably. Clever kids, those Scholars." He stood up, hunching under the curved brick ceiling. "We can talk about it later. I've got people to attend."

"Did our wounded get through?" I asked.

"Some of them. There must be a point in the water where the field is most effective. We just brushed it. Lucky, really." He started to turn away, then paused. "Some of those ... things came through, too. We cut them and threw them back."

"What about the girl?"

He nodded down the hallway. "Yeah. We've got her guarded, best we can. Took her toys away and made her drowsy." He rubbed his knuckles around the cuffs, like an old man worrying the arthritis from his bones. "She's scared, Eva."

"Yeah. I scare people."

"Not sure it's you. Not sure it's any of us." He pulled one of his cuffs off, buffed it against his s.h.i.+rt, and put it back on. "Anyway."

I nodded, and he returned to the row of bodies lined up along the center of the corridor, checking pulses and invoking his rings. I eased myself into a more comfortable position and did a quick inventory of the meat. One of the Healers had already patched me up, Owen or one of his boys. I felt pretty good, for a girl who had just fought off a horde of dead men, followed promptly by a short period of drowning and unconsciousness. My sword was in its sheath, either returned by one of my fellow survivors or plucked out of the water by the articulators as it fell out of my hand. Watching the sheath do its thing could be creepy sometimes, like watching a spider pounce across the tense strands of its web. But it was good at what it did.

"How much of the city is like this?" I asked myself, quietly. The waterfall at the end of the hallway looked like a living painting, an artifact from the time of the Feyr. Might even be that old, though most of their ancient city had been torn apart after the siege. "How many burrows are there, for our little Amonite friends to hide in?"

"He did build the city," Owen said. He was sitting against the curve of the wall behind me, still rubbing his hands. "Who knows what Amon laced between the walls?"

"These guys do, obviously." I looked up at him. "If I can't get the girl to talk, maybe we should have a chat with your friends in the Library Desolate."

He shook his head. "We've found places like this before. Hidden rooms, empty tunnels. Sometimes evidence that someone had just left, or maybe provisioned the place like they intended to come back. We've interrogated the captive Scholars about it. Nothing."

"There are no plans for the city, somewhere?"

"Sure. They were in Amon's personal library. The one you guys burned to the ground."

"Ah. Well." It had happened in the angry days between Morgan's murder and Amon's capture. "Sorry about that."

He shrugged, then pulled off his Healer's rings and dropped them into a satchel on his belt. "We should get going. A lot of these guys can't be moved, and they're beyond my abilities. We'll have to bring a real Healer down here."

"Sure." I stood, then looked around the corridor. "Can your guys watch the girl?"

"Ca.s.sandra. She said her name is Ca.s.sandra."

I looked at him in the dim light of the waterfall. He wouldn't meet my eyes.

"Can your guys handle her?"

"Sure. She's out. Come on."

I nodded and checked my pockets. "I think I lost my gun. You see it?"

"Nope. Then again, I lost ten guys and whatever evidence those monsters destroyed on the way. So maybe I wasn't looking too hard for your gun."

He spoke quietly to one of the Healers he was leaving behind to watch the injured, then pulled a frictionlamp from his pack and started down the corridor. I followed, balancing my way past the line of dead and injured that took up the center of the path. We walked that way longer than I expected. Ca.s.sandra was at the end of the row, three Healers crouched around her, taking turns touching light fingers to her temples, her wrists, her ankles. She was out. She looked a lot paler in the frictionlight than I remembered. Once we were past all the quiet bodies, Owen and I walked in silence and shadows.

The brick tunnel led to a series of ladders that ended in a monostation on the city's inner horn. It was pretty clear that these were maintenance tunnels. There were doors that led to rooms that were nothing but machine and conduit, loud, hammering rooms that looked as if they'd been running for generations and could run for generations more. Several times the tunnel filled with vented smoke or steam, only to ventilate just as suddenly through hidden ports.

Also plenty of signs of recent traffic. Someone had bled all over one of the ladders, someone else had thrown up in a cubby-room off the main drag. There were abandoned clothes, a bag of dinnerware thrown to one side, even a muzzleloader that probably hadn't been fired in years, propped up between two pipes. There was plenty of dust, too, but it had been disturbed. This pa.s.sage was ancient and hardly used. It was an easy trail to follow.

"How many people know about these places?" I asked. It was the first thing either of us had said since we'd left Owen's people behind. "Amonites come down here for maintenance, remember it when they get away from your zero-escape-rate Library?"

He shook his head thoughtfully. "Probably not. Maintenance is a problem. We know these pa.s.sages exist, we just don't know where they are. Long as something doesn't break, we don't worry about it."

"And if something does break?"

He shrugged. "We dig to it."

Once we were on the surface, Owen disappeared to coordinate the rescue party. They closed off the monotrain station and filled the newfound tunnel with men carrying lamps and shotguns. I waited until the girl was brought up, arranged an escort for her back to Alexander's royal court where she could be questioned about the Fratriarch's disappearance, then lost interest. I had been gearing up emotionally for a h.e.l.l of a chase, and it had just ended in a flash. There was still the Fratriarch to find, and these coldmen to figure out, but for now I was between tasks. I caught the last mono the Healers let stop at that station and began the long series of circular orbits and exchanges that would get me back to the Strength of Morgan.

I sat alone in the plush cabin of the mono, staring at the pendant Ca.s.sandra had left for me on the dock. It was the Fratriarch's, though not something a.s.sociated with his office. More accurate to say that it belonged to Barnabas, the man I knew, rather than the Fratriarch I served. He had been wearing it as long as I'd known him, which had been forever. As long as I can remember, at least.

Did this mean that she knew where he was? If her compatriots were holding him captive, he would be bound and nearly naked. The icons of the faith are powerful tools for channeling the invokations of Morgan. My sword was an obsessively precise mimic of Morgan's own blade, the Grimwield. Same with the revolver. My armor, the pauldrons and gauntlets and greaves, all mirrored Morgan's battle dress, at least in style and spirit. At the higher levels of the faith, the icons became more obscure and more genuine. The staff Barnabas carried had at its core the driftwood staff that Morgan had carried with him into the mountains during the Thousand Lost Days. Many of the pendants and charms that the Elders wore or had stamped onto their robes reflected some aspect of Morgan's personal life. Some were genuine, some were decoy, to protect the secrets of Morgan's life. It was only knowledge of these things that powered them, and that knowledge was carefully guarded by the ranks of the initiated.

So they would have stripped the old man. Of his robe, his jewelry, even that ancient staff. This pendant would have been taken from him, too. The girl could have lifted it from the stash of his belongings, feeling some regret perhaps over her involvement in his kidnapping. It didn't make any sense.

Soon enough, the Chanters of the Cult of Alexander would find their way into the girl's brain, and then we'd know. It was a slow process, but she didn't seem the type to give it up to fear or intimidation. I sighed and rested my head against the gla.s.s of the window. I'd know, soon enough.

The invisible fingers of the impellor swept through the train, setting my bones to vibrate like fine crystal for the briefest of moments. I remembered the feeling in the tunnel, of something lurking in the water producing the same wave under my skin. Pus.h.i.+ng me out of the water and into that tunnel. Out the window I could see the impellor tower, set in the middle of our perfect-circle track. I imagined the impellor itself, like a battle hammer, rotating swiftly through its cycle, giving the train a little push and then pa.s.sing on, each little push building up momentum until the whole mono moved. I had no idea how it worked, how the impellors from the other towers didn't interfere with this one, how the transfer from one circle track to the next was handled. None of it. No one in the city understood it. Except the Amonites. The wave pa.s.sed through my bones again, and I sighed and closed my eyes.

I didn't like the idea that was forming in my head. It wasn't the Amonites, or at least not the local breed that I knew. The people I had seen lived in squalor. They lived to survive, and they lived with their families. They didn't have the kind of technology needed to take down the Fratriarch. And I'd seen no sign of the coldmen, until the end. Certainly I'd seen no sign of the Cult of the Betrayer, no one who would have carried the icon we had recovered melted into the cobbles at the crash site. And the coldmen showing up ... what did that mean? Why had they shown up? Were they reacting to my attack, coming to defend their masters, or did our paths just run parallel? Were they looking for the girl?

I pulled the pendant on over my head and tucked it into my s.h.i.+rt. It was warm against my b.r.e.a.s.t.s. I held my hand over it for a while, and stared out the window at the towers that moved us around the city of Ash.

The disa.s.sembled bullistic revolver shone golden in the heat of the forge. It was spread out on an anvil of trueiron, each piece set with ritual precision. A row of bullets lay below it, balanced on their casings, like tiny soldiers at attention. I had looked down at this spread a thousand times. At my side, my hands itched to go through the motions of a.s.sembly. Not yet.

Tomas stood behind the anvil, dressed in the leather robe of the Blacksmith. He held the ornate hammer of the role in both hands. We were both sweating hard. Tomas looked uncomfortable behind the anvil. This was usually Barnabas's job, but he wasn't around. Tomas lifted the hammer and weakly struck the anvil near the barrel of the weapon. Still, the metal pieces of the weapon jumped.

"Eva Forge, Paladin of Morgan, why have you come to the Blacksmith?" the old man intoned.

"To arm myself," I answered.

He struck the anvil again, a little harder.

"For battle?"

"Forever."

Again, hammer to anvil, again a little harder. The anvil sang and the pieces of the revolver jumped. They would have s.h.i.+fted if they had not been locked in place by ritual and rite.

"Do you swear yourself to the struggle of Morgan?"

"I swear myself to the battle, the blade, the bullet."

Hammer. Anvil. Light runes glowed faintly across the sh.e.l.l casings of the bullets. Lines of arcane light began to itch their way across the pieces of the revolver. My fingers ached to answer them.

"Do you swear yourself to your brothers of Morgan and to your sisters of the Champion?"

"I swear myself to the monastery, to the legions of the Warrior, until the grave."

Tomas lifted the hammer over his head and struck again. The room was filled with the music of the anvil, and the arcane lines of the revolver nearly outshone the molten gold of the forge behind him. When he struck I could feel the echo of it in my feet.

"Bind yourself now to this weapon, the Terrorfel of Morgan. With it, you must carry the battle, follow the hunt. You must serve the scions of Morgan-"

And I realized he was off script. I looked up. His eyes were full of furious rage. He stared through me, glaring with such hatred that I nearly staggered back.

"You must serve your Fratriarch, whatever the cost."

I was lost for a response. Words left me. I put a hand against the anvil to steady myself and was shocked at its chill in this place of fire.

"Forever," I finally managed.

He raised the hammer high above his head and struck as if he meant to shatter this anvil that had stood here for a thousand years. The head bounced off the smooth black surface, the shaft leaving Tomas's hands and rebounding to fly up and drag the hammer back up into the air. It scattered the pieces of my new revolver. The runes of binding screamed through the air as they were bound to my soul.

"Forever," he said, quietly, then walked out of the ritual chamber. I did my best to avoid Tomas after that. Not sure what his problem was, whether he was angry with me for failing the Fratriarch, or if he was trying to impress upon me the gravity of the situation. As if anyone understood it better than me. Then again, the more I looked into this whole thing, the less I understood. Bull on, I thought, and the clarity will come. Bull on.

I didn't like what I was finding with the Amonites. Everything about the Amonites' little hiding place was incompatible with a secret conspiracy committed to overthrowing the city's religious hierarchy. So while it was my first inclination to blame the Betrayer's feral children, I just didn't see it in that group. The only thing I wasn't sure about was that escape route. Awfully sophisticated. Even Scholars would be hard-pressed to throw together an impellor on the fly, especially one that could move people. Near as I knew, the technology didn't work like that. The monotrains had some kind of receiver in each car that was specially tuned to the impellor. You could feel the waves go by, but it wouldn't push you around. Not like that thing had.

I had nothing else to do. Alexander's Chanters would do their weird little trick to Ca.s.sandra, and we'd know what she knew about the Fratriarch and the free scions of Amon. It wasn't the fastest process, and took a great deal of energy from the G.o.dking, so it was not a rite that was lightly used. Until I heard from them, though, I had no other leads to pursue. And the Fist of Elders was locked away in the Chamber. Well, three of them at least-I could hear voices behind the door, Simeon and Tomas and Isabel arguing and reasoning and just ... yelling. Elias was missing when I gave my initial report and the others had been in no mood to answer my questions. Wherever the h.e.l.l he was, he doubtless had his reasons, and it didn't seem likely that the rest of them would grant me even a brief audience for a while.

Getting back to the cistern was easy. The whites.h.i.+rts were all over that hideout now, taking lithos and cataloging the debris. Not as much debris this time, though. The coldmen had come through here on their way to killing a bunch of Owen's men, and they had done their share of damage. The whites.h.i.+rts were heavily guarded, two guys with bullies for every one scratching in a notepad, and even then they looked nervous. I waved my way through and went downstairs.

The spiral staircase was dented and b.l.o.o.d.y. Everything smelled like blackpowder and burned metal. Where the hatch used to be there was a crosshatch of yellow opening out onto the water. Two guys in a collapsible raft were beginning to dredge for bodies. They came over at my signal. Probably glad to have a break from dragging the bodies of people they knew out of the water.

"What have you found so far?"

"Six of us, two of them," the guy with the hook said. "It's not as deep as we thought."

"What about the machine?"

"Keeps fouling the hook. Pus.h.i.+ng it around in the water."

"You know where it is?" I asked.

"Sure," he said. "At least, I know where we're avoiding."

"Good enough. I want it up."

"The machine? That's, uh ..." He looked around at the raft, his length of rope, the crude, b.l.o.o.d.y hook. "That's a little more than we can manage with this equipment."

"Then get some better toys. I want that thing on the surface."

"Okay, okay. Soon as we get the rest of our boys up-"

"They'll still be dead, whether you fish them up now or let them marinate overnight. Get on the rig to your boss and get whatever equipment you need down here. That machine's going to be dry and tight in the next hour, or I'll know who to yell at."

"Lady, listen-" he started.

I stopped him. "No, no, not worth it. Trust me, it's not worth getting on my bad side. You're a tough guy, I get it. They don't give this kind of duty to a softie. But I'm the last Paladin of Morgan, and for now that's the highest authority you've got." I pointed at the water and then jerked my thumb in the air. "Up. Now."

He sighed, gave his partner a b.i.t.c.h look, then pulled the raft ash.o.r.e and clomped up the stairs. The other guy looked at me for a while, then shrugged and lit a cigarette.

"I was tired of dragging up bodies," he said. "This is fine with me."

"Glad to be of service."

He laughed and nodded, then leaned back in the boat and closed his eyes.

"Anything's better than fis.h.i.+ng for your friends, lady. Don't mind us.

It wasn't what I expected. They sent a couple divers down, hooked the machine, and then dragged it up onto a temporary platform of rafts, lashed together and anch.o.r.ed next to the ruined hatch. Owen must have heard my name going through the static of the communication rigs because he came down just as they were dragging it out of the water. The impellor waves kept fouling the lines, pus.h.i.+ng the whole load into the wall. I stood on the slowly bobbing platform with my arms crossed, waiting.

"You cause a lot of trouble," Owen said.

I nodded. "I get things done, though. Covers for a lot of bad manners."

"If you say so. But listen, maybe next time give me a call when you're going to change people's orders and requisition Alexian equipment," he said, standing next to me on the platform and watching the work. "I can get this stuff done without so many ruffled feathers."

"Is that your job, now? Make sure Eva doesn't p.i.s.s off too many of your fellow Healers?"

He shrugged, and then we were quiet for a while as the machine was finally pulled free of the water. It spun crazily on the lines, like a bottle rocket on a string. With a little effort and a little luck, they got it down on the platform. The rafts immediately began tugging at their anchor. I stepped away from the stream of force echoing out from its side and moved closer for a better look. The impellor wave was rippling the air like a heat mirage.