Iron Angel

13

A wind from the south had picked up; it blew sand around their shoulders and into their faces, obscuring the trail they had followed from the last stone forest. Rachel blinked and rubbed her eyes, and for a moment the view ahead blurred.

Drenched in phosphorescent toxins, Cinderbark Wood lit the eastern skyline like a festival celebration, its tangled branches and boles throbbing with a furious mix of colour. To each hue Rachel tried to apply the name the chemists had invented for their creation: Hot-Mylase and S661, Sugarglaze and Arkspot, Lemonbrine-4, Red-Seven, Deadeye and Lossus Green, Asphyis-manganate and Crawling Peach. There were poisons to blind and to rot bones, toxins which hardened split flesh, rare psychotropics extracted from lizard’s skin and frogs, hog’s livers and anemones. Thorns glistened with black and red fluid, denoting venoms or accidents stumbled upon in a lab.

Originally a proving ground for the Department of Military Science, the trees had been used by Deepgate’s chemists as a canvas for their own imaginations. They had applied the caustic tars liberally, leaving no twig or patch of bark untouched, till ultimately this had become their greatest work of art. One careless touch might kill a man, or perhaps much worse.

For not all of the poisons were fatal.

The chemists had, of course, left the woodland’s spring unspoiled. It was the only clean water for leagues around, as many desperate nomads had discovered to their peril.

Rachel hesitated at the edge of the wood. Faced with its dazzling colours she reconsidered her plan. They could probably reach the northern edge of the forest well before dawn, head north to the caravan trail, and find one of the Acolyte springs by tomorrow evening.

But this would bring them closer to the Spine patrols, or possible attack from desert raiders. If they continued east they would reach a source of clean water in perhaps two hours, and then be clear of Cinderbark Wood before sunrise.

All they had to do was stay alert.

She turned to Trench. “Don’t touch anything, do you understand? Absolutely nothing. Most of the poisons in there are designed be absorbed through the skin. And stay close to me, for there are other dangers.”

She was thinking about the caches buried beneath the sands, the jars of rotting chemicals deemed too virulent to keep in Deepgate’s own fuming Poison Kitchens. Vapors regularly leaked from these hidden hoards and made colourful mists among the trees. It was a beautiful sight.

And so they walked into the vibrant hush of Cinderbark Wood. Overhead the branches clashed in a riot of pinks, greens, blues, yellows, a dizzying spectacle that resisted starlight and imbued the sands below with different, gentler hues. Something crunched beneath Rachel’s foot, and she looked down to discover the tiny skeleton of a bird under her heel, its fragile bones polished by erosion. Scattered hither and thither were the remains of hundreds of others, too: the chalky beaks and claws; the wings reduced to delicate spokes. Some of the larger specimens she identified as sand-hawks, owls, and vultures, but she couldn’t put a name to the smaller remains. The sight of those unidentified birds, those tough little harridans of the Deadsands, filled her with a profound sadness. How many had been attracted to this false oasis from the sand and scrub only to meet their death?

Silister Trench seemed unaffected by this miniature graveyard. Instead, he appeared to be afflicted with a kind of awe. Like a scholar in a rare museum, he moved between the gaudy boles with his hands clasped at his chest-a posture less instilled by fear, Rachel suspected, than reverence.

The petrified woodland seemed largely impervious to the gales blowing beyond its perimeter. Only the tips of the highest branches shifted, glassy thorns tinkling overhead, and these tiny notes only heightened the deep sense of stillness. Rachel kept a hand on Trench’s shoulder as she led him onwards, alert for sudden mists or exposed roots. She looked for poisons she recognized, trying to fit hue and texture to the incongruent names the chemists had devised. One bowed trunk had been daubed in Whooping-Silver and spattered with purple Sirsic Acid ember. She saw Blood-Lime and EM9 on the bark of another tree, fused with streaks of Raven Stain, Rosemary’s Throat, Blushlilly, Dogweed, and Generic 120. Nothing but the sand itself, and the tiny skeletons, had been left un-painted.

There was no path to follow, no stars visible to keep them on course. She relied on gut instinct and those few memories she retained from her one previous visit here.

She’d been seventeen when the Spine had brought her back from Hollowhill for punishment. Her hands were still bloody from the fight with the Deepgate reservists, and those hands had been manacled, chained to a line of Heshette pilgrims bound for the Avulsior’s justice. None of the other prisoners would speak to her, despite what she’d done for them. Rachel didn’t blame them. As a Spine Cutter, the most she could expect was a whipping, or to endure one of Devon’s toxic dreams. The other captives, all Heshette heathens, were bound for Sinners’ Well.

Seven leagues west of Sandport, the head Spine Adept had announced they would take the path through Cinderbark Wood. His pale face had given nothing away when he’d told her why. They’d take the southern route, he said, away from the busy caravan trails, to spare Rachel her humiliation.

Four Heshette had died among the poisoned trees. The first man had rested a hand against bark when the party stopped to rest. His screams and bleeding eyes had prompted a second, younger warrior to attempt to flee. This boy-he had been only a boy, she remembered-had tripped over a root in his panic. His feet had been bare, his death violent and stinking. A third, a greybeard at the end of the line, had breathed a lungful of pink air before the Spine Adepts had hastened the party away from the mist. The fourth had been a young woman, one of the maidens Rachel had saved from the reservists’ tents. Weeping, the girl had wrapped her arms around a colourful trunk and refused to let go. The Adepts had carefully unchained her and left her where she was.

When the party finally reached Deepgate, Rachel never received her whipping.

Now the assassin looked at the physical form of the young angel before her, at the bloody stains on the back of his shirt and the ruined fingers he kept close to his chest, and her breathing became suddenly heavy. Where was Dill’s soul now, she thought sadly. She inadvertently tightened her hand on his shoulder.

Trench glanced back at her and quickly away again.

The night stretched on. Thorns chimed like memories. Further in, the woodland grew even denser. Low loops and snarls of branch had to be negotiated with care. Poisons glowed softly all around. Occasionally they were forced to alter course to skirt wandering mists or solitary spires of clear hot vapor, or thickets where the trees blazed like colourful fire. Chemical smells constantly assailed them, queer sulphuric odors that stuck to the back of Rachel’s throat. Time seemed to move to a more solemn beat here, to belong to a different world entirely. Their footfalls were soundless as, unconsciously, they had both become light-stepped and adept at avoiding the skeletons underfoot.

It was Trench who found the spring first. The angel pointed through the wood towards a muddy hollow with a clear pool rimmed with red and lavender grasses. Silver fish, no larger than Rachel’s thumb, hovered in the water. The tracks of small three-toed beasts pocked the mire. But there was another larger and more familiar imprint, and the assassin stared down in wonder.

The queer trail they had followed previously resumed here.

Rachel instantly crouched down to inspect the wet earth. The imprints were clearer here: a shallow trench about the width of a person surrounded by other marks like scuffs. The tracks led off into the trees, becoming more insubstantial in the dry sand extending further away from the pool. She saw no foot- or hoofprints. Whoever or whatever had come here to drink had wriggled along.

Quickly she filled their water flasks, then, after a moment’s hesitation-the fish in the pool were alive, unchanged, therefore the water it contained should be fine-took a sip.

“We’re halfway through,” she whispered to Trench, offering him a flask. “But there’s still worse to come.” She eyed those strange tracks in the mud again…wondering.

Trench drank and handed the flask back to her. While she refilled it, he found a safe place to sit. “I think I recall this woodland from my previous life,” he said quietly. “Long before Deepgate’s poisoners changed it, my brother and I used to hunt here.”

“What did you hunt?”

“Heshette.”

Rachel stared at him coldly.

“You don’t approve?”

“I’ve done worse,” she said.

He grinned. “Crueller things happen on earth than in Hell. Perhaps the Mesmerists are afraid of mortals. They can only reshape souls into things they understand-machines, simple demons. They cannot forge people.”

“They understand destruction.”

“Even a child knows how to destroy.” He sniffed suddenly. “We should go. The air here is turning foul.”

Rachel noticed a cloud of pink gas drifting through the trees towards them. After a moment’s thought, she decided to continue along the existing trail. It led in roughly the right direction, after all, and by stepping on already disturbed ground they would hopefully avoid any traps.

Barely two hundred paces further on, they came across a sight so unusual that for a heartbeat Rachel wondered whether she had succumbed to toxic hallucinations.

A brightly painted wagon stood among the trees. It had yellow and green slatted sides, with red shutters and a red door, wheels with gaily decorated spokes. A tin funnel protruded from the roof. The long pole at the front had clearly been designed for horses or oxen, yet no such animals were anywhere in sight. Rachel recognized it from her time in Sandport before she even read the legend painted across one side:

Greene’s Magical Circus.

Beside the wagon a shack had been erected. If anything, it resembled a hand-puppet booth, but of much larger proportions, its planks all decorated with stars, rainbows, and grinning faces. A hatch in the front of it had been lowered to provide an opening, through which Rachel could see a stage with a painted backdrop.

Above the stage dangled two man-sized puppets, each suspended by a number of ropes dangling from the top of the booth. They looked frail and cadaverous, yet with wild glassy eyes and the drooling lips of madmen. Each had been dressed in garish motley: a black-and-white striped suit with a red bow tie for the figure on the left, a puffy blue quilted jacket and green rubber boots for the one on the right.

The trail, Rachel noticed, disappeared around the other side of the puppet booth. She was just about to follow it, when one of the marionettes spoke.

“Is that you, Mr. Partridge?”

The hideous thing was not a puppet at all. It was a living man.

“Mr. Partridge? We have waited an age for you to return.”

The second puppet said, “It’s not him, Mr. Hightower. I can see them from over here. It’s not him, I tell you.” Slack-eyed and slack-jawed, he peered at the two travelers from the end of his rope. “One of them appears to be an angel, although the wings beneath his shirt are naught but bloody stumps; the other one’s a Spine assassin.”

“Why do you insist on taunting me, Mr. Bloom?” the first man responded. “You’re becoming as bad as Partridge-and I find your choice of words vulgar.”

“I am not fibbing, Mr. Hightower. Look, here they come now.”

Rachel and Trench walked around the front of the booth, until both of the living mannequins could properly see them. Both men hung limply, their arms supported by ropes at varying heights. Something about their bodies seemed odd to Rachel: they were altogether too pliant, and only their eyes and lips moved.

“My apologies, Mr. Bloom,” said Mr. Hightower. “I see you have spoken the truth for once. She over there is indeed one of the Spine.” One of his eyelids twitched. A trickle of saliva fell from his chin and soaked into his blue quilted jacket. “Tell me, Spine, have you seen our Mr. Partridge? He’s gone off and left us again.”

Rachel considered the trail. “I suspect he’s hiding behind the booth,” she said. “Is he…in a similar condition to you?”

“Greene never strung him up,” said Mr. Hightower. “So the lucky sod goes off wandering all the time.” His face creased in odd places. “Unfortunately he enjoys these bright poisons too much. He has become an addict, and has no consideration for his friends. He abandons us frequently. When he does show up, it’s only to mock us.”

“Do you mean Mina Greene?”

“That’s her, the puppeteer. She went for a walk last week and never came back. I hope she stepped in something nasty. Now there are only the three of us, and Mr. Partridge is hardly ever here, either. It’s tremendously dull for us. Would you mind terribly cutting us down?”

“Don’t ask them to cut us down,” said Mr. Bloom, managing somehow to huff. “Now they know we can’t get down by ourselves, it puts us at their mercy. You should have tricked them, Mr. Hightower, by making them believe that cutting us down would be to their great benefit.”

“But it isn’t.”

“I know, Mr. Hightower. But they did not realize that.”

“Oh, I see.” Mr. Hightower’s gaze returned to Rachel. “Would you mind cutting us down?

We’d be awfully grateful, and it would be to your enormous benefit to assist us.”

Mr. Bloom sighed.

Mr. Partridge, Mr. Hightower, and Mr. Bloom? Rachel thought the names sounded familiar. She wracked her memory. Where had she heard them before? Suddenly her breath caught.

The Soft Men?

Were these the three scientists who had discovered angelwine, long before the master poisoner Devon had attempted to re-create their elixir? How did they get here? Hadn’t the Spine removed their bones and…?

“They buried you,” Rachel said. “The Spine buried you under the Deadsands more than three hundred years ago.”

“And Miss Greene dug us up,” said Mr. Hightower. “Six days ago, it was. She claimed to be an entrepreneur. She cut our hair. And then she abandoned us, leaving that ragged little pup to guard her wagon.”

Rachel recalled the show-woman’s pet dog from Sandport. It wasn’t exactly much of a guard dog.

“Don’t keep giving them information,” snapped Mr. Bloom. “Information is power. How many times have I told you that? Now they know who we are, and what we are, they’ll be less likely to help us.”

“I thought you said knowledge was power.”

“It’s the same thing, Mr. Hightower.”

“Well, I don’t see that it makes a difference,” said the other man. “You’re just being crotchety as usual.”

Mr. Bloom harrumphed. “You weren’t the one buried upside down.”

And on it went.

Rachel listened to their ranting for a while longer, and then interrupted. “Where is Mina Greene now?”

“In Hell, I suppose,” said Mr. Hightower.

Rachel and Trench exchanged a glance.

“Mr. Hightower!” exclaimed Bloom.

“I don’t care to listen to you anymore, Mr. Bloom.” The scientist’s damp eyes turned back to Rachel. “There’s power in this forest, places where Hell bubbles up close to the surface. It’s because of all the heathens who have died here-the sands have drunk a lot of blood, you see.” A strand of drool extended from his lip. “Miss Greene is a collector of horrors, and she became quite animated when we explained all of this to her.”

“When you explained it,” said Bloom. “You couldn’t keep your mouth shut then, and you can’t keep it shut now.”

Mr. Hightower looked peevish. “I thought she would let us go if she realized that there were more interesting specimens to be discovered nearby.” He stared down at the sand with a pitiful expression. “But she didn’t. She simply swanned off in the direction of a particularly nasty toxic cache to look for ghosts. She said she’d be gone an hour or two.”

“And this was six days ago?” Rachel asked.

“The whole forest is riddled with little holes into Hell,” said Mr. Hightower. “I suppose something terrible must have happened to her.”

“He’s like this with the phantasms, too,” said Mr. Bloom. “He won’t stop talking at them. And now they’re so completely bored with him they don’t even haunt us anymore.”

“That’s unfair, Mr. Bloom.”

Rachel decided to leave them to it. She didn’t have to go far to find Mr. Partridge. He was, as she had suspected, lying right behind the puppet booth itself. Looking at his slack body, bundled into a black suit and white frilled shirt, she couldn’t help but think of an oversized slug. Partridge had a shock of white hair and glazed eyes which looked in two directions at once. He was licking the red-and-black-spattered root of a tree.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she said.

By moving in a series of jerking motions, Mr. Partridge somehow managed to swivel himself around. “This particular toxin,” he said gruffly, like a schoolteacher reprimanding a pupil, “happens to be one of my favorites. It helps me think clearly, while relieving the itching sensation in my backbone.”

“You don’t have a backbone.”

“Are you mad?” he said. “Of course I don’t have a backbone.”

He shuffled back around and went back to lapping at the root.

Rachel could not see how further conversation with these men could improve the situation. All three of them were clearly unhinged. If these toxins couldn’t actually kill Mr. Partridge, then what did it matter if she left him to enjoy them? She shook her head, and returned the way she had come.

Hightower and Bloom were still-as she could hear-arguing with each other. “They seem harmless enough,” Rachel said, stepping down from the wagon. “We should cut them down.”

Trench was staring at the two hanging men with contempt. “What would they do then?” he grunted. “Flap around the place like fish? Would that be any better than leaving them where they are? Once they leave this wood, someone will only find them and abuse them.

They have no way to defend against that.”

“They want to be free.”

He shrugged. “As you wish.” He helped lift each man down from the stage in turn while Rachel severed their ropes. Meanwhile, Mr. Hightower and Mr. Bloom did not stop arguing until their limp bodies were stretched out lying side by side on the sand.

“We are down, Mr. Bloom.”

“I see that, Mr. Hightower.”

Both men’s glances moved rapidly about them, as though assimilating the view from this new and strange perspective. Mr. Hightower tried to move first. By flexing the muscles in his shoulders, arms, and legs, he managed to squirm an inch forward. His hat fell off.

“Did you see that, Mr. Bloom? I am mobile.”

“You are indeed, Mr. Hightower!”

“Then let us race!”

“A race, Mr. Hightower?” The other man sounded excited. “Yes, yes, but to where?”

“To Mr. Partridge, of course. I intend to murder the scoundrel for leaving us to rot up there all this time.”

“Not before I do, Mr. Hightower. Not before I do!”

With much exciting grunting and wriggling, the two Soft Men headed off just like snails without their shells.

Their numbers had grown again since nightfall. In addition to forty or so riders, the Heshette raiders had now acquired a further dozen men on foot, three hags who claimed to be seers, two dogs, and a herd of goats.

News of a sighting reached the party when they were less than half a league from Cinderbark Wood. One of the outriders returned, his mount steaming in the fog, to tell them that he’d witnessed the Spine assassin and her companion entering the grove of poisonous trees.

Ramnir frowned as he spoke to John Anchor. “This woodland is a dangerous place,” he said. “Deepgate’s chemists went to work on it with every poison in their arsenal.”

Anchor shrugged his massive shoulders. “It is no big problem for me,” he said. “I don’t die so easily.”

“Yet your rope might become entangled.”

“It happens often.” The giant gave him a huge grin. “I just keep walking, no problem.”

Ramnir laughed and clapped the black man on the arm. “Then our elders and women will bring the livestock to the eastern fringes of the wood while our warriors accompany you into the trees, John Anchor.”

Jack Caulker scowled. He didn’t like the way these heathens had attached themselves so closely to the giant. They’d obviously seen profit in this situation and they’d stuck to it like bone glue. No doubt every one of them had an eye on Anchor’s soulpearls. This display of jovial camaraderie they had put on for the giant’s benefit was clearly faked. Now they were going into Cinderbark fucking Wood of all places. Everyone who’d ever gone there left it insane-if they left the cover of the trees at all.

Well, Caulker wasn’t about to join them. “We’ll ride with the livestock,” he announced from the rear of his shared gelding. “We shall be waiting on the far side in case the two of them get away from you.”

At this the remainder of the horsemen snorted and laughed, and called him a coward. The rider in control of Caulker’s mount laughed as loud as the others. “Not all the livestock will miss this hunt, then,” he cried. “I’m carrying one of them here on my horse. Did you hear it bleat just then?”

Caulker fumed. Where was Hammer Eric now, when the cutthroat needed some muscle to emphasize his point of view? These idiots would kill themselves in Cinderbark Wood. But he smiled gracefully. An idea had just occurred to him-a way in which he might change the situation to his favor. He swung his leg over the horse in order to dismount. But just at that moment his horseman twitched the reins, urging their shared mount forward. Caulker lost his balance and fell clumsily, landing on his rear in the sand.

A chorus of laughter and hoots went up from the gathered Heshette riders.

The cutthroat scrambled to his feet, his face hot with rage. “If any one of you is man enough to fight me,” he cried, “then-”

A dozen blades rasped from their sheaths all around him.

Caulker felt the blood leave his face. “Then I would obviously refuse,” he said quickly. “The desert folk are not my enemies. We’ve shared fire and water, for which I am grateful. And if you’re ever in Sandport, look me up so that I can return the favor.” He prayed that they would. Hammer Eric knew a dock official who collected Heshette ears. “But it seems to me that we’re facing a great deal of danger ahead. We’re all weary after the long trek here, and a man needs all of his wits in Cinderbark Wood.”

“We are not weary,” Ramnir said, sheathing his blade. “That trek, as you call it, was naught but a gentle excursion to us.”

“Then I admire your stamina as much as your generosity. But I’m a sailor, unused to horses and sand.” He stretched his legs and winced. “My bones ache and my flesh is raw. I fear my presence will be a burden to you all.”

One of the Heshette spat.

“You are my guide,” Anchor said to Caulker firmly. “I need you with me.”

“You appear to have found some better guides,” Caulker retorted.

“But I like you, Jack Caulker.” The giant’s smile now seemed to have a slightly sinister edge to it. “We are good friends. And you are still…ah, indebted to me, yes? You would not break our deal?”

The cutthroat remembered the glass bead he had smashed, payment for services he had yet to provide, and he smiled as Anchor mentioned it now.

“John Anchor’s generosity almost matches yours,” he said to Ramnir. “He was kind enough to give me a soulpearl, a bead with the power to bestow great strength upon any man who consumes it.” Now he shrugged sadly. “Foolishly, I broke the pearl.” He sighed. “Such a waste of power is especially galling now. I think we’d all benefit from a boost to strength and endurance if we are to follow Anchor into the dangers ahead.”

He caught Anchor’s eye and, for an instant, saw a shadow pass across the big man’s face. That’s right. Not so willing to share your power with these heathen bastards, are you?

None of the Heshette spoke. Several eyed the pouch at the giant’s belt, then looked quickly away. The horses whickered. Finally Ramnir said, “John Anchor has already offered us much. We do not need to be bribed with power.”

But Anchor beamed suddenly. “No, no. Jack Caulker is right. I have souls aplenty, and any man who wants one is welcome to it.” He untied the pouch from his belt. Now the Heshette looked abashed. Not one of them would step forward.

Jack Caulker wasn’t so modest. He reached into the bag and plucked out one of the glass beads. It glittered in the flat grey light, as though illuminated by an interior glow. “I thank you, Anchor.” He popped the soulpearl into his mouth and swallowed.

Wild cackles of laughter assaulted the cutthroat’s ears, as though the ghost of a madwoman had been let loose inside his head. His vision blurred and eddied and suddenly the view before him changed. He found himself standing before a parapet on the edge of a sickening drop, peering down into a fog-shrouded valley of green conifers. Great eagles circled in the air below him, drifting in and out of the mists. He smelled cold mountain air and pine needles. A gust of wind made him shiver-he was wearing a thin, floaty garment.

A dress?

But then two huge hands grabbed his shoulders. Caulker had just enough time to turn around and see a face he recognized-the massive wooden harness, the rope leading up into the heavens, and the thick black lips split into a huge grin-before John Anchor shoved him out into the yawning precipice.

The cutthroat plummeted down towards the misty trees, his ridiculous dress flapping wildly about his ears-his screams now mingling with the feverish laughter of the madwoman in his mind. Green branches rushed up to meet him…

He hit sand.

Caulker opened his eyes to see John Anchor and a ring of Heshette riders staring down at him. A horse snorted nervously somewhere nearby.

Anchor grinned. “You ate the soul of an old midwife,” he said. “And you died her death at Rockwall Fortress.”

The cutthroat groaned. “I died her death?”

“Yes. With Cospinol’s soulpearls, you experience the soul’s death. Now, her…” He frowned, thinking. “What is the word? Essence. Yes, her essence lives inside you.” He laughed suddenly. “Makes you as strong as she was.”

Caulker’s arms and legs were trembling; his heart hammered in his chest. The scent of that cold mountain still seemed to linger around him. “It was horrible,” he said. “You killed her. You threw her off a cliff.”

“From the Rockwall battlements,” Anchor admitted. “Count Lat of Grenere asked me to dispatch this woman. So many infants had died in her care. All very suspicious.”

With some effort, Caulker rose shakily to his feet. He certainly didn’t feel any stronger than before. “I never want to experience that again,” he said.

“But you will,” Anchor said brightly. “Her last thoughts are yours now. When you sleep, I think you will dream this death many, many times. It is a small problem with Cospinol’s soulpearls-these nightmares.”

Caulker felt sick, trapped, beaten. Of all the gods and archons and warriors the giant claimed to have in his horde of ghosts, why had Caulker chosen that soulpearl? A murdering midwife! Had Anchor tricked him? The thought of reliving that fall again and again filled him with despair. Would he ever sleep peacefully again?

The Heshette declined to take soulpearls for themselves. Indeed, they now seemed to carry themselves with a degree of righteous aloofness.

Caulker silently cursed them all. The more he thought about it, the more sure he became that the big man had deliberately tricked him into choosing that worthless pearl. Anchor wasn’t nearly as stupid and garrulous as he pretended to be. He clearly had some plan for Caulker-and Caulker didn’t like that idea at all.

But if Anchor thought he could manipulate Jack Caulker, then he had seriously underestimated the cutthroat. Caulker hadn’t survived as long as he had without good instincts. He would find a way to turn the tables on the giant.

The seed of a plan began to take shape in the cutthroat’s mind.

The Heshette left their women with the elderly folk to steer the livestock around the eastern edge of Cinderbark Wood, while the mounted warriors accompanied Anchor and Caulker onwards, towards the trees. Soon the snarl of phosphorescent branches loomed before them in the fog like a toxic dream. At the very edge of the forest Anchor halted and addressed the others.

“I will go in first,” he said, “and clear a path for the horses, yes?” He bulled his huge shoulders then slammed his fists together. The huge rope quivered behind his harness.

And then he marched headlong into Cinderbark Wood.

A small smile tugged at one corner of Jack Caulker’s lips as he waited for the first poisonous thorn to bite the tethered giant.

Anchor’s rope snagged in the canopy above him, but he did not pay it any notice, dragging the rope onwards, further into the woodland. The petrified branches could only bend a little before snapping, showering down upon the big man like fragments of brightly glazed crockery. Anchor brushed this debris off his shoulders and harness without any apparent concern, kicking the larger branches aside.

Caulker watched and waited.

But the giant was unstoppable. He marched on into the fog, apparently immune to his toxic surroundings. His rope rent the canopy above him, snagging great colourful nests of branches, twigs, and thorns before ripping them free.

Caulker jerked backwards, just as the Heshette horsemen spurred their mounts forward after the giant. “Don’t take us in there,” he hissed to the rider in the saddle before him. “You’ll kill us both.”

“Where John Anchor goes, we follow,” the rider replied. “Hah!”

His gelding picked up speed, and a heartbeat later they were inside Cinderbark Wood.

The twelve riders formed a line with Ramnir in the lead. The Heshette leader kept a sensible distance behind the tethered giant to avoid the debris falling from the canopy, but he was often forced to leave the giant’s trail and choose a snaking route through the surrounding trees to avoid those tangles of painted stone which had already fallen.

Countless twisted branches reached out of the fog, but the Heshette riders guided their horses skillfully between them.

Anchor crashed on through the wood like a boar through a hedge, picking up pieces of the broken trees and tossing them aside. His hands and arms soon became stained with different-coloured gels, yet none of the poisons had any apparent effect on him.

Had the toxic forest lost its potency?

Caulker was soon to find out.

The party had traveled less than a quarter of a league inside Cinderbark Wood before they lost their first rider. He was one of the Rook Clan nomads the party had picked up during the previous night: a willowy young man with cynical eyes, barely older than a boy. Led onwards by Anchor, the Heshette had reached the apparent safety of a glade, an oasis amidst the riotous colours where thick dark roots wormed in and out of the cool white sands. The nomad’s little tan mare lost its footing in the soft sand and faltered, shifting two paces out from the Heshette column while it regained its balance. The beast’s front fetlock brushed momentarily against a glutinous dark blue root.

The poison acted quickly and violently. From the saddle of his own mount, two positions further back along the line, Caulker watched in fascination as the afflicted mare suddenly reared.

The young Heshette rider kept his seat while he fought to control his panicking horse. Somehow he managed to stop it from bolting, but nothing could be done to save the animal. Tiny red blisters swelled on its fetlock, turning black and hard even as Caulker watched. An odor like spoiled meat filled the glade, accompanied by the sound of crisping skin. The bucking mare let loose a hideous scream. With its eyes wild with fear and froth spraying from its mouth, it spun around and then lunged drunkenly towards a dense thicket of pale lemon-and-peach-coloured branches on one side of the glade.

Rather than leap free, the young rider remained in the saddle and tried to steer his mount away from the toxic trees. Hearing the commotion from his position at the far end of the glade, John Anchor turned and bellowed out a warning. He rushed forward to help the stricken horseman, but it was already too late.

Horse and rider plunged into the thicket.

The young Heshette’s mount collapsed, and both horse and rider fell amidst the sharp glowing branches. Black blisters now covered most of the mare’s forelegs and breast, corpuscles which burst and streamed milky fluids across its hide. It snorted and kicked wildly, smashing up the petrified thicket around it.

The rider had been thrown clear, but not of the thicket. He managed to stand, and then to stumble back out of the branches, shards of broken twigs protruding from his naked arms. He managed five steps before the poisons began to change him. Yellow-and-peach-coloured welts bloomed on both his arms, spreading across his skin more rapidly than Caulker would have believed possible. He gasped and fell forwards into the sand, clutching his throat as he struggled to breathe.

A bulky warrior with long black hair dismounted and rushed to aid his fallen comrade, but Ramnir barked a command: “Don’t touch him-his skin is coated with poison.”

The warrior hesitated.

Ramnir wheeled his own mount and took up his bow. He loaded an arrow, aiming it down at the gasping horseman.

Strangled screams came from the poisoned man. A black, swollen tongue lolled amidst yellow froth in his mouth. The skin on his arms hardened and began to split like cracked leather, revealing white nodules in the open wounds beneath.

Ramnir loosed his arrow, piercing the fallen man’s neck.

The young Heshette gave a pitiful gurgle, then went still.

The glade fell silent, but for the nervous snorting of the warriors’ horses. The poisoned man’s mount lay dead among the broken thicket, its corpse still steaming in the cold fog. Hard black blisters covered its hide like rook’s eyes.

“Don’t touch the corpses,” Ramnir warned.

John Anchor turned to him. “This place is no good for your horses. A man might still avoid the trees, but the animals are skittish and unpredictable-it is not so easy to warn them of the dangers, I think.”

The Heshette leader shook his head. “Our animals stay with us.”

“Then we must hurry.” Anchor pointed to where a faintly glowing bank of dense yellow cloud was drifting through the glassy trees towards them. “A mist approaches.”

With Anchor leading, the party of warriors tightened their grips on their reins and urged their horses deeper into Cinderbark Wood.

A soft growl greeted Rachel as she swung open the circus wagon door. There, on an empty sleeping cot, sat a small dog. A pathetic little creature with a scabrous coat and ragged, chewed ears, he glared up at Rachel with tiny black eyes.

“Poor thing.” Rachel scooped the dog up.

He tried to bite her, but lacked the strength to do any harm.

“Where’s your mistress?” Rachel ruffled the pup’s ears. “Has she abandoned you, eh?”

Of the puppeteer there was no sign, yet all of her possessions remained undisturbed within the gaudy carriage. The wagon was much more spacious than it had appeared from outside. The front half had been given over to living space: the narrow cot, some wall-mounted cabinets full of clothes and books and pots and pans, a small sink and a bucket, and even a neat little potbelly stove for heating and cooking. Beyond this, a door opened into a storage space at the rear where Mina Greene kept the treasures of her trade. Rachel moved towards it.

Trench took one look inside and said, “Check for provisions. There’s nothing to be gained by searching through that junk.”

“I saw this circus in Sandport,” Rachel said. “I just need to check on something.” She squeezed into a narrow aisle between a wall of packing crates on the right-hand side and shelves on the left. The shelves were crammed with all manner of strange objects-hound skulls and monkey paws, beads and carved wooden figurines, glass spheres and bottles, and bell jars in which floated bizarrely misshapen creatures. On display were dead fish with jaws full of needlelike teeth, tiny skeletons, and grotesque creatures with too many eyes or limbs. Some of them even looked partly human.

“Even in my day,” Trench observed from his seat on the cot, “Deepgate received its fair share of showmen and tricksters. These are nothing but the fetuses of camels and other beasts. There’s no magic here.”

“This wagon came to Sandport,” Rachel said. “The show-woman displayed something…” She shrugged. “Something I’ve never seen before. It looked like a living demon.”

Trench shook his head. “Unlikely,” he said. “Hell’s creatures can survive as shades for a while, if they keep themselves in darkness, but for them to physically walk upon the earth they require another source of power. That’s why I required your friend’s body to carry my soul beyond Deepgate, and why the Mesmerists must spread their Veil over the lands they plan to conquer…” He hesitated, as though considering another option, and then finally said, “No, this show-woman simply tricked the crowd.”

Rachel continued to search through the packing crates, looking for the one Greene had displayed to the Sandporters. And then she saw it, stacked on the top of the pile. “Help me down with this, will you?”

Between them they lowered the crate, and carried it back outside where they set it down upon the white sands. Rachel pried the lid off with her knife to reveal the wretched creature cowering within.

Trench hissed when he saw the contents of the crate. “I had hoped not to see one of these things here.” He rubbed a hand across his furrowed brow. “I would advise killing it quickly, but that won’t be easy.”

The creature in the crate was breathing in wet gasps. It had assumed the same form Rachel had first seen in Sandport: a knot of flesh and muscle and wood combined. White eyes peered up at them from a bulbous lump which might have been a head. It made a pitiful whimpering sound.

“Then it is a demon?” Rachel asked.

“The term ‘demon’ is meaningless-it applies to all of Hell’s creatures. All demons are simply physical incarnations of souls on earth.” His eyes narrowed on the creature. “By rights they require a bloodmist to survive in this realm, but this…no, not this.”

“What is it?”

“An abomination. A Mesmerist experiment. King Menoa has long been trying to construct a form for his warriors that could survive on earth without relying on the Veil. He had limited success with shape-shifters such as this one, part living and part dead. However, they lack the will to maintain a single physical shape for long because they are unable to resist persuasion.”

“Greene turned it into a chair before the mob.”

The angel grunted. “It will assume any shape you order it to, within certain limits. Smaller objects must be denser, larger ones less substantial, as it can only stretch its flesh so far.” He inclined his head at the thing. “Try it and see.”

“No,” the creature wailed. “It hurts. Send me back to Hell.”

“Mesmerist filth,” Trench spat. “Menoa sent you here to spy.”

The thing’s bulbous head shook. “No,” it moaned. “I have been the victim of sorcery. The mortal woman who owns this wagon summoned me here. I was powerless to resist.”

“Mina Greene is a thaumaturge?” Rachel asked.

“One of the greatest.”

Rachel cast an instinctive glance around the forest. “And where is she now?”

The demon’s many muscles flexed and glistened. “She left six days ago to look for a door into Hell. This forest is riddled with them: old doors through which many phantasms have passed.”

Trench scoffed. “Yes, phantasms. Portals like those are useless to anything except ghosts. No human could pass through such a vaporous gate.”

“But she has help,” the demon said.

The puppy in Rachel’s arms gave a low growl.

The shape-shifter’s eyes widened momentarily. “I have said too much,” it said. “Please change me into something small and quick-a hare, perhaps, or a bat. Let me go to the Veil.”

Rachel studied the puppeteer’s dog. Its growl had been…opportune, if nothing else. Could this mangy creature also be a shape-shifter? But the pup ignored her stare, lapping at the assassin’s thumb instead. Rachel sighed. This forest was making her paranoid.

Cinderbark Wood remained deathly still. Nothing moved among the painted boles and soft sands except a few wisps of fog creeping in from the north.

Fog?

In the desert?

“Ignore everything it says,” Trench said. “Menoa’s creatures can’t help but lie. If you don’t wish to kill the thing now, I propose we put it to use.” He leaned over the crate.

The demon cried out again.

Before Rachel could stop him, Trench had whispered a word into the demon’s ear. The thing in the crate screamed as its shape began to change. Its bones folded inwards with cracking sounds, and its flesh turned from pink and red to the colour of raw steel. With every heartbeat it grew smaller and its cries became more distant.

“What are you doing to it?” Rachel cried.

“We’ve walked far enough without a decent weapon,” Trench growled. He reached inside the crate, and then withdrew his hand.

He was holding a sword: a shining steel weapon with a plain leather-bound hilt and copper-coloured pommel. Rainbow colours swept across the blade as the angel examined it by the light of phosphorescent branches. “This is an example of one of King Menoa’s first experiments to fuse the souls of the dead with corporeal materials,” he said.

Rachel stared in horror. “Is the demon conscious? Does it still feel?”

“It does,” Trench replied. “But do not pity it. It is more deceitful and cunning than it appears. It has intimate knowledge of the shapes of many weapons and can change between them in a heartbeat. Such creatures were once given to Pandemerian nobles as gifts-they can be far stronger than normal steel or glass, and capable of adapting to any combat situation. Shiftblades, we call them in the Maze.”

Rachel dragged her eyes away from the strange sword. A thought occurred to her. “Menoa’s first experiments?”

Trench grunted. “He moved on.”

Rachel was about to ask him to expound, but she suddenly noticed that the fog had grown much denser. Whorls of mist drifted through the trees like the tentacles of some creeping monster. She could barely see ten yards to the north of them. A sudden chill gripped her. “We’d better get going,” she said.

But Trench didn’t move. He was staring intently into the grey pall that seemed to roll through the trees towards them. “Is such weather normal for this time of year?” he asked.

“Not this deep in the Deadsands,” she replied. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.” And then she noticed an odd briny odor in the air. “That smell…” she whispered, suddenly on edge. Her senses were tingling. “Trench, this is a sea mist.”

The angel grinned, and for a heartbeat Rachel could almost believe that it was Dill. Despite his ruined hands and missing wings, Trench’s expression was so unexpected and natural that it seemed to Rachel that her old friend was back before her.

“Cospinol,” Trench said.

Throughout the trek through Cinderbark Wood Jack Caulker prayed for another accident-a fetlock brushing against a protruding root, a poison cache cracked open by a clumsy hoof, a rider failing to duck in time below overhanging branches-anything to make these heathens appreciate the utter insanity of this adventure.

He dwelled on the vision Anchor’s soulpearl had given him-that terrifying plummet from those airy heights into the mist-chilled valley below-and he shuddered. Caulker had experienced that woman’s death. He had been punished for her crimes, and each time Caulker slept, the tethered giant would become his judge and executioner once more.

Up ahead, John Anchor laughed at something Ramnir had said. Despite the dangers of this hideous stone forest and the stench of these heathen riders and the great weight of the skyship he dragged behind him-and the countless souls he had eaten-the tethered man had laughed. What terrors did those consumed souls bring to Anchor’s slumber? If the giant relived the deaths of those he had murdered, then how could he laugh?

Caulker felt small and weak and bitter, and he hated Anchor for that feeling.

He considered the Mesmerists, imagining himself striding through the halls of some glorious castle in Hell. And why should Hell not have castles as glorious as any of those in Heaven? Ayen had spurned mankind, but now Hell sought to embrace it. He pictured John Anchor in chains-real chains, not just this greasy harness he carried on his shoulders.

For the first time in days, the cutthroat smiled.

The horse lurched, bringing him back to the here and now. The Heshette horseman sharing Caulker’s saddle had pulled sharply on the reins to steer his beast around a clutch of violet branches. Caulker realized he had been staring at Anchor’s pouch of soulpearls.

All those dreams of death. These were ghosts trapped in glass-every one of them murdered by Anchor. Caulker recalled the battle-archon’s spirit he had released from its pearl amidst the ruins of the Widow’s Hook, and now he began to understand exactly why that apparition had attacked the tethered man so vehemently.

What would happen if all of those soulpearls were broken at once?

The woodland thinned as they crested a shallow rise. Ancient trees loomed at the limits of the fog like gaudy harlequins, their painted claws reaching out to each other as though frozen in dance. Anchor took advantage of wider gaps between the poisoned boles, steering his rope so that he avoided the worst of the branches overhead. Behind him the rest of the party moved in silence but for the rustle of tackle and the clinking of the horsemen’s fetishes. The air filled with the steaming breaths of their mounts, the occasional snort.

Anchor halted and raised his hand. The Heshette reined in their horses behind him. A moment passed in which every man strained to see through the fog.

Caulker stared into the grey gloom, moistening his lips. Had Anchor spotted the scarred angel, or one of her companions? Perhaps even a Spine patrol? He failed to suppress a smile. A diversion might prove fruitful.

And then a cheerful voice came out of the mists. “The Adamantine Man! By the Seven Gods, I am glad to see you.”

Caulker watched in disbelief as a figure in tattered mail approached them through the coloured trees. He held before him a naked sword, but slackly, without any apparent intention of using the weapon. A second figure-a female Spine assassin-followed behind him.

Caulker ground his teeth and spat. He could not believe this turn of events. It seemed that even Anchor’s supposed enemies, the very companions of those he was here to kill, were welcoming him.