The Hanging Mountains (44 page)

Shilly closed her eyes at the news.
Another flood.
What could that possibly mean?

She didn’t know, and she had more immediate things to worry about. Their own fruitless stakeout needed to be reported, plus the appearance of the Angel, the disappearance of Tom and Mawson, and Oriel’s hostile takeover of the Panic Heptarchy. Lastly, she brought up the imminent appearance of the Panic city in the misty skies of Milang.

‘How long do we have?’
Marmion asked, mental voice suitably grim.

That, she didn’t know. Neither she nor Sal had thought to ask Jao before.

‘A few hours at least,’ the Panic told them. ‘Maybe all night. The city takes a long time to get moving and is a bugger to stop.’

Shilly relayed that information.

‘That gives us some time to play with, then.’
Marmion thought for a moment.
‘Perhaps we can reason with this Oriel. If your friend Griel is determined to get the two parties talking, someone has to take the first step.’

The brief glimpse she had had of Oriel didn’t fill her with confidence. No one liked being forced to shake hands. And that wasn’t the worst of it.
‘You say the Swarm attacked Milang last night?

‘That’s right.’

‘Four of them attacked the Panic too, planting evidence that humans were responsible. Seems like someone’s trying to drive human and Panic apart as hard as we are trying to bring them together.’

‘Why would that be?’

‘I don’t know. But it’s certainly a new pattern of attack. Vehofnehu says the wraiths will get stronger and bolder the longer they’re at large.’

‘Who says that?’

‘The Panic empyricist. I think he might have been their King once, but can’t tell for certain. He’s gone missing too.’

Sal watched her closely during a brief lull in the conversation. They were still connected to Marmion, but the warden seemed to be thinking.

‘You think
he
was King?’ Sal whispered.

‘Just a guess, but I’m pretty sure. He knew the Swarm when no one else did. He had the crown in his possession, even if he didn’t wear it. He took Griel under his wing — and look where
he’s
ended up.’ She shrugged, thinking of her strange vision of the young, vital empyricist in his observatory. ‘If he was here, we could ask him.’

‘Maybe that’s exactly why he’s gone away.’

‘Shilly? This is a very complex situation. The Guardian is likely to face a revolt if she doesn’t defend Milang from a perceived attack, but if she opens fire on the city as it approaches, that will only confirm the Panic’s worst fears. We need to find a way to avoid the spark that will trigger a bush fire.’

‘Agreed.’

‘We also need more information. I’m therefore going to ask you to do something for me. It’s going to take you some way off your current route, if my estimate of your current location is correct.’

Shilly groaned at the thought of more time in the air.
’I can ask Jao and see what she says.’

‘I don’t think it puts you at any risk. I just need to be sure of something.’

‘Go on, then. Tell me where you want us to go.’

‘There’s a section of the range called Geraint’s Bluff. Your pilot should know it; the Panic use the same landmarks as the people here. It was hit by a landslide after an earthquake a couple of hours ago, so it’ll be easy to tell apart from the forest around it’

‘Once we get close enough.’

‘Yes. And therein lies the problem. The Homunculus was last seen in that area. I need to know if it’s still alive
—
and that means risking flying into its wake.’

She tsked in annoyance.
‘Is now really the time to be obsessing about that again? There are more important things, surely.’

‘Perhaps not, Shilly.’
Marmion hesitated minutely.
‘The runner who saw the Homunculus also saw Habryn Kail. They’ve been travelling together.’

She sat up straighter, and almost lost her grip on Sal.
‘Kail’s alive?’

‘He was. I don’t know for how much longer. The runner said that he was gravely wounded. She lent him what assistance she could. He and the Homunculus were gone when we reached their campsite.’

Sal was looking at her again.
‘All right,’
she said. ‘
We’ll do what we can. I’ll call you if we encounter any difficulty.’

She broke the connection. ‘Do you have a problem with this?’ she asked Sal.

‘No. If Kail needs our help, we have to offer it.’

‘Jao?’ Shilly twisted around in her seat to face the front. ‘Ever heard of Geraint’s Bluff?’

‘Yes.’

‘We need to go there. Someone’s hurt and might need our help.’

‘But Griel said —’

‘Our friends in Milang will look after things while we do this. Please. It’s important.’

The Panic woman mulled it over, face invisible to Shilly. Eventually she nodded. ‘All right. But then I drop you off and go back. Understood?’

Shilly did understand. Jao was worried about Griel, although she didn’t come right out and say it.

‘You sound like a different person when you talk to Marmion,’ said Sal as the balloon changed course, swinging in a wide arc to starboard.

‘Oh? How’s that?’

‘You’re — I don’t know. Harder.’

‘I have to be like that with him, or he gets the upper hand.’

‘But in a strange way, that makes you more like him.’ His fleeting smile returned. ‘You two may not be related but you have more in common than you’d like to admit, I think.’

That was a decidedly uncomfortable thought. Shilly pulled a face to show what she thought of it, then tried unsuccessfully not to think of it again.

* * * *

Kail woke to darkness and a terrible feeling of suffocation. His chest hurt and his right arm was twisted painfully behind his back. When he tried to flex it, he encountered resistance all over. He coughed, provoking more pain. His mouth filled with the taste of dirt.

He couldn’t see. He couldn’t move. One thought sprang immediately to mind: that he had been buried alive.

An upwelling of panic forced a ragged scream from his throat. Muffled, weak, desperate, he could barely hear it himself, but the exertion took its toll. A fit of coughing brought more dirt into his mouth and made his situation worse, not better. Stars danced before his eyes, cruel visions of a sky he couldn’t see. Then darkness swept them away, and he was gone.

* * * *

He woke again an unknown time later, thinking he’d heard someone calling his name. His heart pounded and he tried to lift his head. Sharp stone dug into his temple, restricting his efforts to a pathetic twitch. Something shifted beneath him and his twisted arm came under even more pressure. He stopped trying to move then, chilled by the realisation that, whatever he was buried in, it wasn’t packed down tight and might shift in ways that would only make his situation worse. A trickle of air was somehow getting in; cutting off that supply would be the death of him.

The call wasn’t repeated and he eventually convinced himself that he had imagined it.

He tried to stay calm. If he panicked again, he might never awake. The first thing he needed to do was work out what had happened. He remembered rocking on the camel’s back, being lulled into unconsciousness by exhaustion and fever. Flashes of dreams were all that remained in his memory after that point. At least he assumed they were dreams: a woman with eyes and skin similar to Skender’s friend Chu leaning over him; the Homunculus picking him up and carrying him in its arms; a deafening roar, louder than anything he had ever heard before — louder even than the flood that had swept him and the Homunculus away, two weeks earlier. Then ... darkness.

Could he really have been left for dead by the twins? It was possible. His condition may have worsened to the point where it was difficult to discriminate between life and death, especially for someone with no experience at it. He had heard tales of people rising from mortuary slabs or sitting up at their own wakes, bewildered but very much alive. It had happened often enough for him to become convinced that it had indeed happened to him.

But what to do about it? He didn’t dare move, and doubted he had the capacity to do much, even if he did. What did that leave him?

Only then did he realise that something had been returned to him — something missing for so many days that he had come to take its absence for granted. Although smothered in stone and dirt and weak with fever, he felt the Change acutely, as though standing next to the sea itself. Its return came at a cost — it meant the twins had definitely left him — but the simple fact of his reconnection to the life-flows of the world gave him at least one chance of escape.

He was too weak to move the earth around himself, but he could call for help.

‘Can anyone hear me?’

The effort nearly drained him dry. He rested afterwards, conserving his energy and resolving to try again.

‘Hello? Hello?’

At the very range of his senses, he thought he detected a response.

‘Hello! Please listen! My name is Sky Warden Habryn Kail. I’m underground. You have to dig me out. Hello?’

Stars danced again behind his eyelids, and he feared blacking out. He needed to remain conscious just in case his call was answered. If he didn’t, he would wake up even weaker. Maybe he would never wake at all. He would die in a premature grave, suffocated in a stupid accident.

Fear and anger worked in him. He didn’t want to die like this. He had work to do, a mission to fulfil. He had promised to help the twins reach their destination. They had come so far, tried so hard to understand each other’s very different worlds, and to see it end now would be galling.

There was more to it than that. His body didn’t want to die for its own sake, even if it was fevered and broken. His mind spoke of promises and duties, but his lungs just wanted to breathe, his heart to beat a little longer. His gut was less clear — a loner and wanderer by inclination, he had never let himself become attached to any one person or place for too long. The pit of his stomach hollowed at the thought of leaving it all behind, as though the
possibility
of attachment had somehow been important without him knowing it.

The name of the woman whose parchment he carried came back to him at that moment: Vania, with her deep blue eyes and ability to laugh at anything. He would’ve handed over the fragment of Caduceus without hesitation in exchange for seeing her again.

‘Help me?

Kail couldn’t help but struggle against the soil constraining him. He would shout and curse and tunnel his way out like a worm. It would take more than putting him in a grave to make him lie down for good. The seer in Laure hadn’t told him what lay at the end of the path he sought, but Kail swore it wouldn’t be this. He would crawl out of darkness into the mist and spit the dirt from his mouth. He would stand up and keep Walking. He would find the twins and show them that they had buried him too soon. He would see daylight again.

* * * *

‘Kail?

The voice was barely audible over the sound of weeping — his own, he realised, as he slowly came back to himself. His cheeks were heavy with mud and his chest hurt. His nose was now completely blocked and he had lost all sensation in his right arm. Instead of fighting for life, he now cursed himself for living. Why not just slip quietly into darkness? Why drag it out any longer? He had had more than enough time to contemplate his sorry, futile fate.

‘Come on, Kail! I know you’re in here somewhere!’

This time the voice was less easy to write off as a figment of his imagination. It was clearly audible through the Change, coming from nearby, and — to his great surprise — familiar.

‘Sal?

‘Got you! Now, keep talking and I’ll try to home in on your position.’

‘Where
—
where are you? How did you get here?’

‘Two questions we’re keen to ask you. You go first.’

‘I
—’ He coughed, bringing a little more dirt into his mouth.
‘I think I’m supposed to be dead.’

‘Nonsense. There was a landslide. You were obviously caught up in it.’

Kail groggily absorbed that information. A landslide? That would make sense, he supposed. More sense than being buried alive. He was lucky to be alive at all, then. An entirely different story.

But what about the twins? The camel? Had they been swept up in the avalanche as well?

‘Kail? Are you still with us?’

He forced himself to concentrate, to keep talking. ‘
Yes, yes, I’m here — thank the Goddess. How did you know where to find me?’

‘ Well, we didn‘t. Not really. We only heard you when we flew directly overhead, and that was more accident than otherwise. Marmion sent us out here in search of the Homunculus. We didn’t think we’d be on a rescue mission.’