Worldsoul

Thirty-Five

Being a partial ifrit was, Shadow was discovering, a step up from being merely possessed. Perhaps the demon had not been so sarcastic after all, in her talk of an upgrade. The voice in her head had gone, and she was conscious of another dimension, opening around her. She could see the lines of shimmering light around things, their essences and souls. She could hear the faint song of the stars, the whispered incantations of the moon. And the desert was busy, filled with flickering, darting spirits and the ghosts of small creatures.

Another star was falling. Shadow stood on the roof and watched it descend: it was slower than the other meteorite, and the flame it trailed behind it was a sunset pink… Shadow dived, straight off the roof. She hit the ground in a curl, arms folded over her head, and rolled under a lip of rock. The flower burst soundlessly, the world illuminated with a searing blaze of flame. She saw the rocks through her eyelids, imprinted in silhouette, and then her head rang.

“Well,” Gremory said, into her ear. “That was exciting.”

The angel’s beehive hut had gone, obliterated into a thousand shattered fragments of stone. Like the spirit, Shadow thought, cascading outwards into the desert of her flesh. Slowly, she uncurled, thinning the veil as she did so. The demon was standing beside her. Gremory wore a cloak and it billowed out behind her in a wind that Shadow could not feel, snapping like a banner. Her eyes blazed like garnets and her hair was free: it streamed out. She said something in a long string of syllables which should, Shadow felt, have hurt her ears, but did not. She remembered demon speech and it was like fire in the ears-this new possession seemed to mitigate it. She whispered a prayer.

Some distance away, Shadow could see the stamen-core of the flower, burning molten into the sand, which fused around it. Runnels of vitrification spread outwards. Shadow got to her feet and stood beside the demon. She would have taken action herself, but the stamen was cooling, more rapidly than it should have, fading into blue and then growing ashen and black.

“That’s all I can do,” Gremory said.

“What about Elemiel?”

“What about him? He isn’t here.”

“His house was.”

The demon laughed. “He doesn’t need a house. It’s just an affectation. What interests me is the target.”

“I was in a flower attack a few days ago,” Shadow said.

“I heard. In the Medina.” The demon smiled her slanted smile. “Looks like you’ve attracted someone’s attention.”

Shadow sighed. “That’s been happening a lot lately.”

She waited out the rest of the night with the veil at maximum thickness. No point in tempting fate-she felt she’d done quite enough of that lately. The demon squatted on her heels nearby, her gaze fixed on the crumbling ash of the stamen. She did not move; as before, she might as well have been carved from stone.

Towards dawn, a faint wind rose up, stirring eddies of loose sand and scattering the ash of the stamen. Shadow watched it crumble, flaking away and skittering across the desert floor. Apart from the glassy sand around it, it might never have existed, a brief, violent dream. With a rustle of robes, the demon stood. Rather to Shadow’s relief, she did not appear in search of breakfast.

“So,” Gremory said. “The angel has not returned and it looks like someone’s trying to kill you. I suggest we return to the city.”

Shadow gave a slow nod. She was reluctant to let matters stand, but they seemed to have reached a dead end. “What about the possession?” she asked. Gremory gave her a long, contemplative look.

“I’ll see what else can be done. For the moment, make the most of it.”

From the sound of it, Gremory was in a terrible mood. There was an eyeblink flicker. The demon sat before her, riding in state on the back of the black camel.

“Hang on,” Shadow said. “Which one of those are you?”

The demon looked puzzled. “Both.”

The camel knelt, looking at her out of a knowing eye. “Which eyes do you see out of, then? Both sets?”

The camel nodded. Unnerved, Shadow climbed up behind the human half of the demon and the camel wheeled around, heading out of the rising sunlight.

They had been travelling for about an hour, with the sun strengthening at Shadow’s back, when the mirage first shimmered up on the western horizon. At first, Shadow thought it was the city itself and frowned, wondering how they’d covered so much ground so quickly. Then, as the image grew clearer, she realised it was an illusion, conjured out of heat and sand and air.

It appeared to be a fortress, rising sheer out of the desert floor. She could see the castellated turrets, the massive battlements. It looked like something the crusaders might have left. A flag, bearing a device like a spiked golden wheel, snapped above the fortifications and she saw the glint of metal-armour? weapons?-on the battlements themselves, catching the sunlight for a moment before flicking out of view. The walls were of sandstone, a warm ruddy gold.

The demon slowed. Her gait became sidling, circuitous, but then she moved on. As they drew closer to the mirage, Shadow began to understand the reason for her hesitation: this image, out of air, looked very solid. Then, as they grew nearer still, she saw that it was solid. Her new senses, borrowed from the spirit, caught sight of wisps and curls of mist moving with purpose along the terraces.

“What the hell?”

“We’re too visible,” Gremory said. “Get down.”

Shadow slid off. Next moment, the demon was standing beside her, this time in her human form alone. Gremory took hold of the cloak and cast it outwards. It billowed on the air, a pale, transparent red, covering them both.

“It’s like your veil,” the demon explained.

Shadow nodded. They walked down the slope towards the fortress. Up close, she could see the immense blocks of stone from which it had been fashioned. It was far larger than it should have been, and she could only presume that it was some relic from a story, inexplicably made manifest here in the middle of the desert. There were still no signs of life, only the faint traces of mist above them. But Shadow could not help but feel they were being watched.

Any question as to how they might get into the fort was rendered immaterial by the fact that the great doors at the base of the rock were wide open.

“Hmmm,” the demon said. Shadow laughed.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m not the trusting sort.”

“This reminds me of something.”

“It’ll be a tale of some kind. I’ve been trying to think-it’s familiar, but I don’t know where it’s from.”

By now they were immediately under the archway. Soot-black curves of rock stretched above them and there was a sudden cool damp breath, out of the morning heat. Shadow saw a courtyard immediately ahead, sunlit, with a splashing fountain. The sound took her back to the Shah’s courtyard and she shivered in the coolness. The demon shot her a sharp red glance.

“What is it?”

“Memory. I don’t think we should go further.”

“I want to see,” Gremory said.

They walked on, cautious. Shadow hesitated, but it seemed that the demon’s mind was made up and Shadow did not want to risk heading back to the city without her. She could see diamonds of light about the fountain; they reminded her of the spirit, fracturing. It was not a welcome recollection. The demon’s veil cast a rosy light over everything, a distraction. But the courtyard was empty of everything except the fountain and a small striped cat, washing itself.

“Hello,” Shadow said.

“Don’t talk to it. You don’t know what it might be.”

A fair point coming from a shapeshifting camel, Shadow thought. The cat glanced up incuriously and rose, sauntering into the dark colonnade which surrounded the courtyard. This was the middle of the building. Above the low colonnade the walls rose straight up for several hundred feet. Looking up was like looking down a well, and gave Shadow a moment of vertigo. They followed the cat under the colonnade. Here, in the shadows, a series of doors and steps led upwards. At the top of the stairs, the demon suddenly hauled Shadow back so hard that she stumbled.

“Sorry,” Gremory said, perfunctorily. Ahead, a landing opened out into a high, airy room, with unglazed windows which should have been open to the sky. The entire room was filled with sticky red strands, undulating faintly as if in a draught. They glistened.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. Don’t touch them.”

Shadow did not need to be told. They moved on, finding the same strange threads filling other rooms, and stretching out above their heads to the ceiling of the passages. There was no discernible smell that Shadow could detect, but the threads looked alarmingly like bloody sinews-fibrous tendons connecting bones to tissue more properly found inside a living creature, not inhabiting a fortress.