Authors: Tim Lebbon
‘And he’s been
chewing on that stuff all day,’ Leki said. ‘After we carried him …’ Her voice trailed off.
This might be an Engine no one has ever found
, Juda was thinking.
Untouched, unplumbed since …
‘… through the marshes, and he’s so drugged up we might as well …’
…
since the war. And what will that mean? What will I find there? Will there be bodies? And magic. Dregs of magic, for sure.
His head throbbed, limbs tingled.
‘I don’t see why you even believe him about Venden. What if he’s …?’
The voices faded further as Juda began to run.
‘I see it now,’ Bon said. ‘But what
is
it? It shouldn’t be there. It’s horrible.’
Bon and Leki must have run to keep up with him, because they stood either side of him now, staring at the Engine.
‘I told you what it was,’ Juda said. ‘You’re in my world now. You need to listen to me. You need to …’ He trailed off, every sense possessed.
‘An Engine,’ Bon said, voice filled with dreadful disbelief.
‘Need to what?’ Leki asked.
Juda stepped forward so that he could not see them in his peripheral vision. He wanted to be alone.
‘How can the Ald deny the existence of something like this?’ Bon whispered.
‘Need to
what
?’ Leki asked again, insistent. Her voice shook.
‘You need to watch.’
Juda walked away from them and towards the Engine. He could smell magic, hiding in the depths of this great structure like blood pooled in a corpse’s lowest parts. He could
taste it on the air, a touch of something other tainting the breeze that dared flow around and through the apparatus. He could almost hear it, absorbing and giving out noises like nothing natural – it voiced sunlight and time, gave music to history and dark drums to deeds long gone. It was his everything, and he would do
anything
to acquire it.
Though he knew magic would never be owned. It had
never
belonged to the Ald, and Juda and all other Brokers understood that. It was a thing unto itself.
That’s giving it a mind
, Rhelli had told him at one of his first Broker meetings,
and naming it as a god. That’s something the Wrench Arcs do, and they even have a name for it
–
Crex Wry. Crex Wry, the Skythian god of the Pit. Don’t go that way, Juda. Don’t give it a mind, or your own mind will be doomed.
But Juda had always understood the difference. People worshipped gods because they believed the gods cared about them. But magic had its own concerns, and they were way beyond the petty ministry of humanity.
The Engine loomed before him. Resembling a pile of tumbled boulders, it was larger than those he had seen closer to Skythe’s coast, and seemed more complete. Untouched by time and inquisitive hands. His Broker’s selfishness had led here, and he had lived that life for so long that he could feel no remorse. Not over the lies he had told, nor the people he had betrayed, killed. This was a construct intended solely for the gathering and placement of magic, and it stood for everything he lived for.
Brokers don’t murder
, a vague voice whispered, but he ignored it. Broker, Wrench Arc … in the presence of the Engine, such definitions ceased to matter.
Here was a source of his true drug. It was beautiful. And yet he could not linger, because the ultimate source might be closer. This thing had helped destroy Aeon, and what he might find
here would be nothing compared to the magic that might still smother that dead deity’s remains.
‘This will be quick,’ Juda said, though as he broke into a run and approached the Engine, he knew that was not the case at all. Once he touched it, he would be possessed, and time would be lost to him.
The sun was setting, but for the first time in years he did not fear the night.
The Engine looked as if it had grown from the land, an imposition that could have been grotesque, and yet Juda found it beautiful. Great metal limbs curved up and out from its main body, burying themselves in the rocky ground, and the stone had melted and reset around these piercings. There were five limbs, smeared and dulled with corrosion and swathed with creepers and a crawling, flowering cactus. The main body of the Engine was bulky and inelegant. It seemed to have tilted to the west over the centuries it had been here, and now it presented its uneven upper surface to the setting sun. There was no real order to its design, and that set it aside from the four other Engines Juda had seen. They had been curved and regular, whereas this was blocky, as if parts of it had been attached with no consideration to order.
Fine metal bracings arced way above the main structure, and something might once have spanned between them. There were rumours of flesh and blood in these things, long since rotted away. There was talk of a mind.
He walked around the Engine. Over time it had truly merged with the ground, sinking down, plants growing against it, and in a couple of places rocks had tumbled from the slopes above and impacted against the shell, shattering or coming to rest as they subtly altered the landscape. The Engine might have been here for ever, as much a part of the landscape as mountains and rivers and valleys. But Juda knew otherwise.
‘Is
there anything?’ Bon asked from where he and Leki watched from a distance. But Juda did not reply. He felt a brief rush of anger at them for intruding on his moment, but then he simply shut them out. This was him, and his Engine.
Somewhere there would be a way inside.
He skirted the Engine twice more and sensed no dregs. It was not surprising. After so long, any dregs left outside would have faded away or been subsumed into the ground. But it troubled him, because it could also mean that this Engine
had
been explored and plundered. Even six centuries ago, there might have been people here who knew what to look for. He didn’t know who – not the surviving Skythians, for sure, because that far back they would have been hauling themselves back onto two feet. But who did not really matter. The thought of missing out was awful.
‘It’ll be inside,’ he said softly. ‘Near the heart of the thing.’ He had to find a door.
He felt Bon’s and Leki’s eyes upon him, but he ignored them. He circled the Engine one more time, and then started to climb. There was no way in at ground level.
The metal was rough to the touch, abraded, dented. Grasses and moss grew in pockets where windblown soil had gathered. He found handholds and footholds and hauled himself up, pressed close to the metal walls and feeling the subtle warmth stored in the Engine during the day. The sun was touching the ridge to the west now, and the huge device was releasing its heat.
That’s all
, Juda thought.
Nothing else. It’s dead, now.
But he remained alert as he climbed, expecting at any moment to hear the growl and grind of metal from inside, and the whisper of softer things, as it became aware of his presence.
‘Juda, the sun,’ Bon called.
‘I’m fine.’ He did not even look their way as he answered, because
he was scrambling across an almost-level platform covered in moss and bird droppings, and something ahead had grabbed his attention.
Juda paused and took a pinch of scamp seeds from his pocket. Shadows danced at the extremes of his vision; bad dreams waiting to pounce.
I’ll not sleep
, he thought, determined.
There’s too much to do and see.
He crunched the seeds between his teeth and closed his eyes at the fresh flow of scamp. When he looked again the shape was still there, atop the Engine. An invitation to explore. A warning to stay away. Juda was not sure which, and he did not care. He was going only one way.
The touch of magic was there, exposed to the elements for centuries and yet still so obvious. Elsewhere, the uneven upper surface of the Engine was spiked with the severed remnants of pipes and cables, and pocked with countless holes, most of them filled with dirt and home to a variety of heathers. It was an old Engine left to the elements, something out of its time, belonging to an age centuries old.
But magic did not age.
Juda went slowly to his knees, muscles weakened by desire. Leaving that last dreg at the camp to observe the slayers, he had been bereft, but had comforted himself with the knowledge that he would touch magic again. Facing it now, he almost wished he followed a god to thank. But magic was his god.
Thank you, Aeon
, he thought, because if it were not for the Skythian’s murdered deity, this dreg would not be here.
He crawled forward, past sharp protuberances and over dips in the Engine’s shell that gave slightly beneath his weight. The smear of magic was settled in a circular pattern around what must have been a hatch to the Engine’s insides.
‘It’s untouched,’ Juda
whispered. The reason for it being there – placed, or settled by accident – concerned him little. He was a Broker, and he knew what to do.
It was warm when he reached for it, like a living thing. He opened his mind and felt it touch him, an alien contact that was nothing to do with intelligence. He felt its weight against his skin as he passed his hand through the pooled mass, and yet there was nothing solid. It was touching heavy gas, his skin having a memory of its own, and he scooped up the magic and twisted it, turning his hand back and forth and watching the absent shadow curling itself into a smaller shape. Another turn and it lay in the palm of his hand, a seed of potential.
Juda breathed heavily, grinning. The night probed at his mind, but now he felt strong enough to fight it. His Regerran curse sang, but he was not full Regerran, and the aggravating factor of his addiction had been sated. Tonight, he would fight the nightmares down.
The joy was more intense than anything he had ever felt before. He remembered his first orgasm with another person, the girl giggling as he spurted over her hand and wrist. He recalled his first taste of silk wine, his first look at something undeniably beautiful, and the moment he had finally believed without question that magic could be his. None compared to this.
The dreg seemed purer than those he had touched before, and more filled with a potential that expanded even as he considered it. But there was no room in his mind right now to wonder why.
He tugged a small bag from his jacket and dropped the shrunken dreg inside, pressing it back deep into his pocket so that it could not slip out. There was no mass to the dreg, but it was a thrilling weight against his skin.
Removing
the dreg had revealed an opening in the Engine. It had not been visible before, but Juda did not hesitate. He lowered himself inside, feeling around with his feet until he found something solid to rest against.
‘Juda!’ He twisted around and saw that Bon and Leki had come closer, but not by much. ‘Stay away,’ he said. He dropped into the Engine, and kept falling.
‘What do we do?’ Leki asked. She had come close to Bon again, clasping his hand as they watched. Bon felt sick, and wondered if Leki did as well. It was not a sickness born of fear or urgency, but something deeper. A sickness of the soul. They were close to something wrong, and Juda was revelling in it.
‘Who have we allied ourselves with?’ he asked softly.
‘No one!’ Leki said. ‘We’re allied with no one. We’re following him, that’s all.’
‘He’s mad.’
‘Maybe.’ She nodded at the Engine, the impossible machine. ‘But haven’t you always wondered?’
‘No,’ Bon said, ‘I’ve always been completely sure.’
‘But to see it,’ she said. ‘Unquestionable.’ He looked sidelong at her and saw the open wonder in her eyes. He was glad, because things were changing for her as he watched. Beliefs hardening, solidifying, and hatred of the Ald and what they stood for taking on form. The existence of the Engines of magic had always been denied by the Ald, because to admit to them would be to admit the truth. And yet here was an Engine. Proof that the story of the Skythians causing the terrible plague of Kolts, not the Ald’s forbidden use of magic, was a lie. It lay naked in the sun for anyone to see.
‘Do you want to go closer?’ he asked, and Leki shook her head. He was glad.
‘No,’ she
said. ‘I think we should just wait here until he comes out.’
‘I can’t wait all night,’ Bon said. ‘If he’s crawled inside and fallen asleep, I can’t wait all night.’
‘He’s found his drug; he’ll be all right if he
does
sleep.’
‘I don’t mean that. I might be close to my
son
, Leki! I’ve thought him dead for years, and Juda has to keep his promise and lead the way.’ Bon closed his eyes briefly against the dusk. A rush of images washed over him, all of them featuring Venden.
Even if Juda
was
telling the truth, after so long, there was no telling who Venden would be.
‘So we wait a little while, at least,’ Leki said.
‘A little while,’ Bon agreed. ‘But then I’ll be going in after him.’
They sat together in the long grass and watched the Engine. It was as dead, and as still, as a pile of rocks.
The Engine is alive!
Juda thought, and his fall might never end.
There was no light within the Engine, and no way to see. His senses were smothered by the fall, though he could not feel space passing him by, nor time. He waved his limbs and opened and closed his mouth, striving for something solid or recognisable but finding nothing. He should have struck bottom long ago, unless the Engine was plugged into the heart of Skythe, and that metal shell on top was merely the head of a deep, perhaps bottomless hole into the land.
But there was no real sense of falling, and no idea that the bottom might be approaching.
Juda tried to shout, but he could expel no air. He tried to breathe in, but he could not fill his lungs. He could not tell whether or not they were already full. And then his hand brushed across something
solid, and he recoiled with a terror he had never felt before. Not because it was alive and a threat to him, but because it was so, so dead.
Let me out let me out!
he thought, but he had invited himself inside. His escape would be no one’s choice but his own.