Worldsoul

Thirty-Eight

By now, Gremory and Shadow had climbed to the top of the fortress. They avoided the red threads filling every room and snaking along the passageways, and kept to the stairs, which were bare of the red material and made of stone. Narrow slit windows, the kind from which arrows could be fired, pierced the staircase at intervals and Shadow glanced out of these as they climbed. She realised, from these glimpses, that the landscape around them was changing.

“Look at that,” she said to the demon. Gremory came down a step or two and stood beside her.

“What do you see?”

“The desert’s not the same.” She did not think it was the sight that the spirit’s presence had lent her.

Gremory smiled as if a theory had been confirmed. “You’re right. It isn’t.”

They had come across pale golden sand, from the ridges of Elemiel’s shattered beehive hut. Looking back, however, the desert was now made of black and red grit, with high undulating ridges of dark shale. Shadow could see some kind of equipment in the distance from which they had come, like a mining rig. It was not moving, but it had certainly not been there when they’d crossed the desert the day before, or that morning. Further away, a huge metal wheel stood, also unmoving, below one of the ridges.

The demon, to Shadow’s alarm, appeared nonplussed. “This is new to me. Although I’ll confess it’s why I came up here. There are stories… a fortress, from which you can see different times. I’ve never seen this kind of country before.”

“Not even where you come from?”

The Duke of Hell gave a snort. “My country is nothing like this. It is magnificent-the oceans of fire, the iron cities, the massed legions with their banners. Nothing like this little landscape.”

“I do not think I would last long in Hell,” Shadow said.

“You are not a demon or a devil, an ifrit or a spirit, it’s true. But do not be too sure. Your new passenger might give you some immunity.” Gremory’s red gaze slid to Shadow’s face. “Perhaps I will take you there.”

“We’ve got to get out of here first,” Shadow said, concealing alarm.

They climbed higher, checking on the changing land through the windows. Two storeys up, it had altered again, becoming darker, the ground changing to a plain of slate. The machinery had gone but a second fort stood in the distance, as grey as a great ship and with the spires of radio masts at its summit. Shadow had never seen anything like it before, either, and said so. The demon was silent.

Eventually, they reached the top of the fortress. Here, it was blisteringly hot, but the wind occasionally lashing the summit in eddies was cold as ice. Shadow shivered. This was no place for humans and she wondered anew who had built the fortress, or whether it was the outer carapace of something living. The red threads reminded Shadow of seaweed, drifting in the world’s tide.

The top of the fortress was a flat paved surface, surrounded by battlements. Shadow and the demon walked across to the edge and looked down. Gremory did not seem to suffer from vertigo, but Shadow was obliged to hold on to the edges of the stone, warm under her hands, and reassuring. From here, the view was once more very different.

She was looking out over a garden. The desert had retreated and was only visible at the edges, where a line of ochre stone showed above the foliage. Beneath, at the foot of the fort, radiating lines of trees reached outwards like a wheel, and it was only this symmetry that told Shadow she was not looking out over a forest. But the trees were not saplings; they were fully mature, their canopies arching up towards the sky in full leaf. From this height, however, they looked as tiny as toys. Shadow could see something moving methodically between them: a small dark figure.

Beyond these trees stretched others, but they did not seem to have been planted with planned regularity. She could see groves and clusters, with lines of pale grass in between. These trees, too, were in full growth, with high arched branches and scatters of green, gold, and flame-coloured leaves. The air, drifting up from the garden, smelled warm and fragrant, heavy with pollen. Shadow thought she could almost hear the distant humming of bees. She did not know if it was the spirit’s senses that made the colours so vivid, the scents so strong. It was as if every colour contained a thousand shades within it, too rich for a human to comprehend. Shadow took a breath and felt dizzy. She stepped back.

“Where is it?”

“I-” the demon stopped.

“Gremory. Do you know?”

“I think so. But I’m not sure.”

“Where, then?”-but the Duke shook her head.

“I won’t name it. If I say its name, it might secure it-like an anchor.”

“It looks pretty secure already to me,” Shadow said. “And there’s someone down there. But if we go down, will it change?”

“I don’t know.”

A thought struck Shadow.

“Tell me what you see.”

“I see a garden. It’s full of decay; everything is rotting. The trees are dying and I can see bones in the grass. It’s quite magnificent, actually. An excellent place to spend a quiet Sunday afternoon. Why? What do you see?”

“Not the same thing.”

“No,” the Duke said. “I didn’t think so.”

On the far side of the fortress, they found a flight of steps, leading down. There must have been a thousand or more.

“After you,” Gremory said.

Rather sourly, Shadow lowered herself over the little break in the battlements and began her descent. She half expected the landscape below to alter, reversing itself back into desert, but to her surprise the garden stayed put. She was now worried that they’d become stuck: there had been no sign of the city from the other side of the fortress and given its height, there should have been. Nor had she been able to see the Devil’s Ears, or Ator’s hut, beyond the limits of the garden.

But as they descended, the garden became more vivid, its features more pronounced. She could still see the figure moving between the trees but it showed no signs of having seen either her or the demon. Just as well. The scent rising from the garden was still overpowering: Shadow detected roses and lilies, the heady musks of jasmine and frangipani. She wondered, from the demon’s description, whether it was somehow designed to be appealing to whoever beheld it: perhaps Gremory was assailed by the odours of blood and forges and smoke. She asked.

“You would not wish to know,” the Duke said, her eyes glittering.

“I was just curious.”

Soon, they reached the final flight of steps and Shadow could feel the muscles of her calves vibrating as though they were the strings of a harp. She was in good physical condition, but even so, it had been a long way up to the top of the fortress and it was a long way down again, too. She felt she would be lucky to be able to stand once she reached the ground and, indeed, her first step was a stagger. Gremory caught her arm in a grip like a steel band.

“Take care. This is not a good point to show weakness.”

Grimly, Shadow nodded. She could see a shape moving beyond the trees: that distant figure. It would have been nice to think that it was just a gardener, but in Shadow’s experience, things rarely worked out under the category of “nice.”

There was no sign of desert sand beneath her feet. Instead, thick grass covered the ground, a dense vivid green and somehow unnatural. Shadow was not sure whether this could be attributed to her new senses or to something about the place itself. She could see cushions of moss and small starry flowers in the grass: there seemed to be a richness of species, as if different ecological layers had folded themselves into one particular space. Then her vision, quite suddenly, narrowed down so that she could see a tiny ant labouring up one of the blades of grass. Definitely the spirit’s sight, she thought, with its spatial differentials. With Gremory, she skirted the trees, trying to keep out of sight of the gardener.

She thought it had worked, until they were quite far into the orchard. Shadow did not recognise the fruit that grew on the trees: the leaves were like an apple’s, but the fruit was oval, small, the colour of sunsets, and they emitted a strong pungent fragrance.

“Do you know what they are?” she asked Gremory in an undertone.

“Don’t eat the fruit,” the demon replied.

“But you can see them, yes?”

“Yes. They grow on bones.”

Clearly Gremory was still apprehending the garden in a somewhat different way.

Shadow was tempted to pick one of the fruits, but reason told her this would be insane. She moved in and out of the trees, zigzagging, then movement caught her eye. She turned. To her dismay, the gardener was watching her.

It was a hunched, dark shape. The shoulders were massive in proportion to the rest of its body, tapering to a narrow waist and strong legs. She could see the small dark eyes, whiteless in its broad face. It looked more like an ape than a man, something primitive and ancient. It was watching her with a stillness that suggested intelligence, however, and when it saw that she had observed it, it began to bound forwards with long, loping strides.

Shadow drew her blade. She was conscious of the demon turning beside her, but Gremory’s hands remained at her sides. The gardener leaped. Shadow threw herself to the side, rolling out and down. Teeth snapped along her arm, grazing her sleeve and she thickened her veil to maximum across her shoulders and head. An arm like a club shot out and struck, knocking a numbing blow over her left shoulder. Her left arm grew limp; ignoring it Shadow feinted, then lashed out with the sun-and-moon blade. It hit home, just beneath the gardener’s collarbone, but there was no blood, just a small powdery shower. The thing’s lips, rubbery black like a dog’s, pulled back from its teeth and it gave a soundless growl, a vibration which Shadow felt rather than heard. Behind it, the demon took a dancing, mincing step backwards. Shadow took a chance and threw the blade. It struck the creature in the centre of its throat and should have severed the windpipe. The creature gave a breathy cough and spat something out into the grass: it looked like a small leaden cube. Shadow reached down and snatched it up with a corner of the veil, not wanting it to make contact with her skin. Then the creature fell apart. Its head burst like a melon dropped from a turret; its chest exploded, fragmenting outwards until only the legs were left, twin crumbling trunks which tottered and fell. Soon, the only thing left was clots of soil, dark in the greenness of the grass.

“Thanks for your help,” Shadow said sarcastically to the demon. Gremory shrugged.

“I didn’t want to steal your kill. You looked like you had it under control.”

“Well,” Shadow said, wiping the earthy blade on the grass. “Maybe I did.”