Antiphon (41 page)

None of the navies of the Named Lands had sailed this far into the Ghosting Crests. Ships that did were seldom seen again. But there were others. He’d seen their vessels when they’d brought him to the island. And it stood to reason that somewhere out there in the vast ruin of the world, other survivors of Xhum Y’Zir’s wrath existed. Tribes of maddened refugees who clung to their long-dead wizard gods, if the Y’Zirite resurgence was real and not just some concocted means to remove the Androfrancines and whip the Marshers—and his own father, it seemed—into a frenzy of faith.

A distant sound of bells and shouting reached his ears, and he looked south. He saw nothing, but the sounds of a ship reached his ears as it drew near.

He looked at the two children who’d inventoried the yacht. “What do we have?”

As they began listing off the items, Vlad smiled and watched the light of understanding grow in their eyes. He turned the bird loose with the same red thread tied upon its foot—now knotted with a coded message of distress.

Then, he and his children magicked themselves and slipped into the water, their shirts stuffed with everything they could hold.

Eight minutes after they’d first heard the approaching ship, they overturned the yacht and set it adrift with its oars, sail, and enough detritus scattered about to be convincing.

Then, Vlad Li Tam and his children treaded water and waited for what fish might take their offered bait.

Time in the Beneath Places blurred into a shuffling walk in the dark dimly lit by Isaak’s eyes, and they slept in whatever nooks and crannies they could find. Charles felt his stomach rumbling and knew they must be close to their goal.

Water had been in good supply, but the rations they’d carried for him had given out days ago. The metal man had carefully calculated what food to bring, but changing course frequently to avoid pursuit had added time to their walking. Still, Isaak assured him they were near.

Their lantern had burned through their fuel as well, and Charles found himself hoping they’d stumble across more of Orius’s men. The notion of surrendering to them appealed more and more to him.

Somewhere above them, an icy northern winter layered that part of the world with snow, but in the Beneath Places, warm breezes dried the sweat on his face as he leaned against the tunnel wall and caught his breath.

Isaak’s eye shutters flickered. “We are close, Father.”

Charles nodded. “I hope so.”

For the first week, he’d felt the protest deep in his muscles and bones. Now, it was a dull ache, but he found there were still only so many leagues he could walk in a day. He questioned his judgment more and more with each step. He studied the metal man.

I am holding him back.
But that was only partially true. Isaak could
certainly move faster alone, but the strain it would place on his sunstone heart increased the risk of that fracture breaking open.

Charles slowed his breathing and closed his eyes, focusing on one of P’Andro Whym’s meditations to center himself and slow his heart rate. “I am too old for this,” he said.

Isaak’s eyes dimmed momentarily, and his bellows wheezed. “You do exhibit outward symptoms of physical deterioration as a result of advanced age.”

Charles’s laugh was sharp, and it echoed through the cavern louder than he wished it to. “Thank you, Isaak.”

When he’d caught his breath, they pushed on again, and three hours later they found themselves in an open space. Isaak guided Charles’s hands and placed them upon a smooth, warm metal wall that curved. The dim light from the metal man’s eyes revealed the rungs in the side of the shaft, and Charles felt something like elation growing in his chest. “Is this is it?”

Isaak nodded. “Yes.”

They climbed in silence, Isaak following after. It wasn’t said, but Charles knew it was for his benefit.

He is afraid I’ll fall.
And he was tired enough now to see the logic in it. Twice, the old man paused to catch his breath, heartbeat drumming through his body, loudest in his temples and accompanied by flashes of light that danced even behind closed eyelids.

But when they reached the top, a closed metal hatch met his reaching hand. Holding tightly to the rung to anchor himself, he pushed at the hatch and grunted. “I can’t move it,” he said.

He heard the bellows below and felt the warm rush of steam as Isaak released it through the exhaust grate in his back. Then, he heard the faint clicking of Isaak’s internal workings. “I will need to open it.”

A metal hand found his ankle, guiding the foot, and Charles moved to the side as best he could. Then Isaak was beside him and shoving a metal forearm upward at the hatch. Charles clung to the rung with one hand, leaning away to give the metal man room to work.

When it swung open, the mechanical scrambled up over the rim of the shaft. Still panting, Charles welcomed the hands that pulled at him.

These caverns were colder, and when he’d recovered from the climb, Isaak handed him a heavy wool sweater from their pack and they continued on. His stomach rumbled as they went, and he noticed that the metal man’s pace had picked up.

After winding through a Whymer Maze of lefts and rights and tunnels that doubled back, ascending and then descending, they finally found themselves in a wider corridor. The air here was not as cold as where they’d been but wasn’t as warm as the Beneath Places, either. And Charles could smell the faintest traces of kerosene in the air.

These caves are traveled more frequently.
He’d known that many of the Marshers took to living underground. Some of the essays and notes smuggled out by Tertius during his time here had indicated that the Marsh King himself had lived in an elaborate series of caverns deep in the roots of the Dragon’s Spine.

As they walked, the smell of kerosene fell away, and another smell—familiar as an old friend—came to him. He placed it instantly: It was the smell of paper.

They stopped as the floor began a slow descent downward, and Isaak released his hand, gently positioning Charles against the wall of the cave. He leaned against it and squinted.

This dark felt less oppressive, but still it disoriented Charles, and the dim amber light of the mechoservitor’s eyes was not sufficient to show him his surroundings. “Wait here,” the mechoservitor said in a low and reedy voice.

Farther ahead and down, Charles thought he heard the faintest rustling of pages.

He listened as Isaak moved away slowly, following the cave’s gentle downward slope.

When Charles heard the other mechoservitor speak he jumped with surprise. “Greetings, cousin,” it said. “I anticipated your arrival, though I fear you are too late.”

A match flared, and a halo of candlelight illuminated a wall of books. The brightness of it after so long in darkness hurt Charles’s eyes, and he closed them momentarily against the intrusion of light. When he opened them, he saw Isaak standing with a solitary, robed metal man that he recognized. “Hello, Father,” the mechoservitor said. “It is agreeable to see you. But I fear my cousin has brought you into precarious circumstances.”

Precarious circumstances.
He chuckled. “I insisted upon coming.”

The metal man looked from Charles to Isaak. “You should have prevented him, cousin. His kind is not made for this work.”

Isaak shook his head. “He made us, cousin. He, too, serves the dream.”

The eye shutters opened and closed rapidly. “Perhaps,” the metal man said, “he does.” He looked to Charles. “I am only concerned for your safety, Father.”

Charles realized suddenly that he, himself, wasn’t. He felt more a parental concern than any fear of personal danger. It hadn’t been so in the Beneath Places, knowing that they were not alone in those dark places. But now that he was here, an optimism of sorts pervaded him.

And these children of mine would not let harm befall me.

“I appreciate your concern for my well-being,” Charles said.

The metal man turned to Isaak, and Charles heard the high-pitched whine of scroll spindles as they spun. When the metal mouth opened, what came out was an unintelligible stream of numbers.

Isaak’s eye shutters flashed. When he replied, it was a similar outpouring.

Charles vaguely recognized the code that passed between them as the same he’d heard from the moon sparrow, and he marveled at the ease with which they conversed in it. The fact that they used it at all added another meaning to the metal man’s earlier words.
His kind is not made for this work.

As they continued to speak, Charles took in their surroundings. The soft halo of light from the candle revealed a cavern that sloped downward in a spiral, its outer wall entirely dominated by volume upon volume of books. The Book of the Dreaming Kings, he realized: that massive, multitome collection of dreams reaching back to the first Marsh King who arrived to this temporary home with his Wicker Throne and his Firstfall axe. Several of the books were stacked on the table near the candle, and as the mechoservitors exchanged data, he watched Isaak lift first one and then another, opening to marked pages to study them briefly before closing them.

Finally, Isaak interrupted the other mechoservitor in midstream. “I think,” he said, “our father should be consulted in this matter, cousin.” He turned to Charles, not waiting for agreement. “Father, the Book of Dreaming Kings shows evidence of tampering with a precision beyond Marsher capacity. Pages have been excised, and in some instances, careful forgeries have been substituted. Besides a mechoservitor, what could do such a thing?” He extended one of the volumes.

Charles took the offered book and bent his eye to the page beneath Isaak’s metal finger. But in this light, he couldn’t make out any discrepancy. “A page is missing?” he asked.

“Many pages—pages vital to the dream—are missing,” Isaak answered. “What besides a mechoservitor could accomplish this?”

Charles squinted at the page, tipping it toward the candlelight. It was indeed precise—such that he could not see it at all. He placed the book on the table and picked up another. On this one, he could barely see the faintest line where a page had been. “No technology that I am familiar with,” he said.

“Then logic would dictate that it must be a mechoservitor.”

The code started up again between the two metal men, and Charles replaced the book to pick up another. Once more it was barely perceptible, but a page had been carefully removed. And Isaak was correct—the only technology he was aware of that could do this with such precision and forge a suitable replacement was one of his mechanicals.

But the Androfrancines guarded their metal men well. Or at least they had before that first generation had been sent into the Wastes alone to create their hidden library. Still, if these were all united by their metal dream and the antiphon it required, it did not seem possible that one of their kind could do this.

He looked at Isaak, then remembered the metal man he’d rescripted to send east to the Keeper’s Gate bearing his message for Petronus. “Could one of the others have been compromised somehow?” he asked. “Rescripted to remove the pages without the knowledge of the rest?”

But even as he said it, another possibility rose in his mind, and the thought of it raised both curiosity and fear. He remembered the drawings from Rufello’s
Book of Specifications
, but more than that, he remembered the relics dug from the ashes of the Old World, the scant remains of Xhum Y’Zir’s death choir torn to pieces and scattered across the Churning Wastes. They’d never found more than just trace evidence of their existence, and yet the decimated landscape of the Old World proved that they had once walked those lands and sung their spell for their wrathful master, carrying out his last terrible orders. The other mechoservitor’s voice brought him out of his reflection, and he shook away the intrusive images of fire and darkness.

“All but four of my brothers are accounted for,” the metal man said. “And those are far from this place.”

Charles nodded. “I think,” he said, “there is another possibility to consider.”

And when he said it, it was as if one of those dials from that old
inventor, Rufello, spun and clicked into place for him, unlocking a realization that made his legs weak. Carefully forged messages brought by quietly intercepted birds. Code after code broken without effort. Gospels produced and disseminated quickly in a corner of the Named Lands that had no presses and limited literacy.

It was said that in the days when the world was new the Younger Gods made metal servants for themselves. And the legends of the Wizard Wars spoke of the silver army that Raj Y’Zir brought with him when he fell. Charles had never embraced the metaphysical aspects of those stories but had understood like any good Franci that truth lay beneath myth. And he’d handled those blackened bits of metal, seen Rufello’s sketches and notes.

He had taken those bits and those notes, and he’d created an approximation of something far more complex than his tools and technology would allow for. These creations of his—these children—had found a dream in the Wastes and now served it.

What, he wondered, might this other mechoservitor serve? It was not hard to guess, though he could not comprehend how it had come to pass without Androfrancine knowledge or intervention.

Charles closed his eyes against the images of fire and ash that pressed upon him and hoped that he was wrong.