Worldsoul

“Go on!” Benjaya Vrone shouted. “I’ll take care of her.”

With the other Librarians, Mercy and Shadow fled down the stairs. A brief glance upwards told Mercy that the ghostly birds had gone to roost, just as living ones do during an eclipse. As they were halfway down, the stairs rippled like the skin of a stroked cat, flinging them against the banisters. Mercy lost her footing and sat down hard. She was thus in a position to watch in horror as the entire front facade of the Library split in two. Tiles fell from the roof and she saw the bird-faced spirit follow it, twirling down through the air to crack in two on the marble floor below. The crack widened so she could see all the way out into the square, which was filled with frightened groups of people running to and fro and a golem in the midst of it all, trudging stolidly about its business. She glimpsed McLaren, with Benjaya at his side, directing people to safety.

Shadow pulled her to her feet.

“Look!” But she was pointing up the stairs.

On the Ninth Floor, the rift that had begun as no more than a slit in the air along Section C, was now spreading. Icy air gusted through with a swirl of snow and Mercy caught her breath. She saw rather than felt the ka pluck her sleeve.

“Up or down?”

“I don’t think we’re going to have a choice,” Mercy said. By now, along with the Duke, poised elegantly upon a tilted step, they were the only ones left on the upper staircase. Everyone else was pouring out through the crack in the front of the building; Mercy hoped they would at least have a chance at survival. She couldn’t work out whether it was an actual earthquake or not. The city wasn’t prone to them as geological phenomena, which suggested to Mercy that this was some massive ruction along the storyways themselves, some heave in the fabric of the nevergone.

But the rift from Section C was coming on fast. Shadow reached out and gripped Mercy’s arm as the curve of arctic air and twilight swept down the staircase to engulf them.

Deed could hear the engines powering up as he neared the turret. The building had stabilised for now, but Deed wasn’t taking any chances. As he drew close, the doors of the base of the turret burst open. The nose of an airship slid out, a dark, iridescent green, whirring with spell-vanes of its own. He could see the pilot in the cockpit, insectoid behind his goggles and flying mask.

Deed scrambled up over the running blades and through the open hatch. He didn’t bother to find out whether Darya had made it as the airship began to glide down the roof, but a thud and a curse behind him indicated that she had. Deed sighed. He stumbled into the cockpit and tapped the pilot on the shoulder.

“Keep away from that!” He pointed to the rift in the sky.

“Do you think I’m an idiot?” the pilot demanded, belatedly adding, “Sir.”

Deed flung himself into a seat before acceleration did it for him, and strapped himself in. A moment later, Darya joined him. At least there were no accusing glances about his unchivalrous behaviour; disir expected everyone to act on their own behalf.

Good thing he’d had the airship tested recently. Its maiden voyage through the overlight had been a success.

The airship reached the edge of the roof and lurched into the air. It rose surprisingly quickly for such a bulbous craft, although Deed could hear the increasing whine of the engines as levitation spells took hold. Around him, the mechanisms of the airship whirred: a large brass sigilometer in the centre column of the cockpit spat out data. Deed had a brief, dizzying glimpse of the scene below him in the square as the craft turned: crowds streaming down the alleyways and out of the Library. What was happening to the Library? Deed thumped the pilot on the shoulder.

“Take us around again!”

Muttering, the pilot obeyed and Deed saw that the front of the Library had broken like an egg. Let this be a lesson to you, Jonathan, he thought, next time you plot to bring down your enemies, make sure that the universe isn’t planning to do it for you.

“All right,” Deed said. “Get us out of here.”

But it was too late for that.

Mercy smacked down into snow. The impact knocked the breath from her lungs. She inhaled again and the cold seared her throat.

“Shadow?”

“I’m here.” Shadow sat up. “Wherever here is.” Mercy did not recognise the precise place, but she thought they must be in the world from which the disir had come, the world of the bridge and the lands inside the mountain. The landscape was the same: plateaus of snowfield against black shards of mountain, descending through the pines. She got to her feet, to see the Duke of Hell and Perra sitting side by side in the branches of a tree like two exotic birds.

“Where are we?” Shadow asked.

“It’s part of the nevergone. You went back to somewhere that emerged out of the legends of the Fertile Crescent; this is further north. The Ice Age. I’ve been here before.”

Shadow nodded, taking it in. “And the way out?”

“Well, this wasn’t where we first came in. We went down a particular storyway-there was a bridge and a waterfall of mist. This is further in from that land, deeper. This might not even relate to human memory.”

“The Pass comes from demon’s stories,” Gremory said. She walked lightly across the snow, dusting something from her taloned hands. Mercy thought it was ash. “I’ve never been here before. Do you know the way out?”

Mercy shook her head. “Not really. We’ll just have to keep walking and see if we can find our way back to the bridge.”

She thought, but did not say, And what happens then? The world of the bridge had led back into the Library, but that had been when there still was a Library. She was by no means sure this was still the case, given the state of it when they had left. Although “left” was rather too active a verb.

They began walking down through the pines. Here, the snow was sparse, kept away by the dense canopy above them. This, surely, was the sort of forest you found in fairy tales: thick, impenetrable and dark. And filled with monsters? Almost certainly. She thought about stumbling over the old god’s lair again and swallowed hard. Well, she’d found his story, hadn’t she? He ought to be pleased.

Above the pines, the sky was quite dark, swarming with stars. Mercy was only able to see by the light cast by Perra’s eyes: golden beams on the snow and the black trunks of the trees. But gradually, Mercy found she was able to see. The sky was lightening to a bright indigo blue and shadows appeared. Dawn? But then, with dismay, they came out onto a high plateau and Mercy realised that the reason she could see was because of the Pass itself.

The airship rocked as if it had been buffeted. Deed had a birds’-eye view of the second rift as it spread outwards from the Library, obscuring the ruined facade from view. He could see through the ragged edges of the rift to a familiar landscape: the world of the disir.

“Take us through!” Deed commanded the pilot.

“Not much sodding choice! Sir.”

The little airship was being pulled into the gap, nose forwards. Deed heard the whine of the engine as stabilising spells tried and failed to secure the craft’s trajectory. Then the temperature plummeted and they were sliding through the gap into the nevergone. Deed was looking down onto the churn of cold grey ocean and behind them, he saw the rift in the air snap shut.

“What’s that?” Mercy was looking down onto the plain, at a dark mass of moving forms. From this distance, it looked like an ants’ nest, strung out along the looping shores of the river. She could see the glint of the rosy, heaving light of the Pass striking sparks from the metal of weapons.

“Looks like we’ve found Loki’s army,” the Duke said beside her.

“There are thousands of them.”

“Yes. I must say, it will be interesting to see what happens when these two cultures clash-both ancient, both unhuman. Circumstances have always kept them apart, but now they’re going to meet at last.” The demon fished in a pocket of her armour and extracted a pair of small brass opera glasses. “Would you like a closer look?”

The army stretched across the plain, far beyond the river. Looking through the opera-glasses, Mercy could see the disir clearly: tall, attenuated figures, wrongly jointed. Their skin was mottled black, white, grey. They wore leather armour, some in tatters. Many of them wore headdresses of wolf skulls, evidence of earlier kills. All were