Antiphon

He felt the pressure shifting around him as the beast descended in a wide, slow spiral, and somewhere behind him, the whining suddenly stopped. Yet even as Behemoth moved, he found his feet steady beneath him and he made his way slowly up the hallway.

He was halfway down the shifting corridor when his grandson appeared at the end. He walked easy, standing tall with his knife dangling loosely in his hand as he went. He left the door open and tugged at another. This one did not open and the young man moved to the next, gradually working his way back toward Vlad.

He could not imagine what might be behind the doors but was certain it wasn’t worth being discovered, despite his curiosity. He could visualize bunks and passenger cabins, supply rooms and galleys in this most unusual machine, and he wondered if somewhere within this metal serpent there also lay a pilothouse or if, like the metal men, there was simply a cavity filled with scrolls that spun out a scripted response that had been etched into it millennia before by whomever had crafted the mighty mechanical.

Vlad found a corner of the corridor with less light and huddled in it, mindful of the puddle his wet clothing created. At the far end of the corridor, Mal Li Tam opened another half dozen doors, disappearing into each for minutes that seemed like hours.

Just stay to your end of it, Vlad willed. Then, he turned himself to thought.

She had brought him to the ladder with some urgency, and he suspected now that the timing of his arrival was intended to coincide with the full moon. And certainly, it seemed that his family’s blood played into it as well. But what of the strange ceremony aboard both the ship he had fled and, he assumed, the other ships that were gathering there? Was this some new aspect of those dark blood magicks this resurgence had brought back? And what was his d’jin’s role in it?

He collated the data and stored it with the rest he’d mined in the time since he’d first read the slender book that he’d taken from his grandson.

As they descended, the corridor shuddered, and Vlad heard the deep groaning of the metal even as he felt it beneath his feet and the red lights flickered and dimmed. He watched the jewels and found himself wondering what powered the large machine. Surely not the sunstones that drove his armada or the metal men. The waters around the Ladder killed those ancient power sources, if Obadiah’s experience rang true, and whatever it was that tainted this part of the Ghosting Crests also held the d’jin at bay. Thousands of the rare sea lights, including the one he specifically followed, were waiting at the edge of a perimeter only visible because of their presence.

The machine lurched and shuddered now, and Vlad pressed his back tighter against the wall he crouched against. His grandson was moving toward him again, and once more Vlad calculated just how long the powders would hold. He’d remagicked before returning to the deck with his daughter Myr maybe two hours earlier, leaving him nearly twice that remaining. They would gutter and spark for thirty minutes before finally burning out, but if he kept to the shadows.

Another groan, and the vessel shivered again, its descent leveling out before it shifted and rose and then stopped.

Mal Li Tam poked his head out from an open door and came into the hallway with deliberate steps. He moved quickly down the hall, and Vlad found himself holding his breath, gripping his knife tightly, as the young man approached.

I could kill him now and be done with it. The naked back was to him now as Mal worked the hatch, and Vlad saw at least three paths that would leave the boy bleeding out his last. He was under no illusions that it was exactly how things would play out at some point between now and the first moment his magicks began to gutter-he could not afford to lose the one advantage he held. But for now, he restrained himself. Still, each time he imagined the scenario-the knife blade slipping between his grandson’s ribs or sliding across his throat-a warm satisfaction flooded him, fueled by the memory of his children’s screams.

Mal left the hatch open when he passed through, and Vlad counted again silently before he followed.

Behemoth’s mouth gaped open now, and faint light filtered in the massive pool it created. At the edge of it, near a row of metal teeth the height of a man, Mal paced and looked for a place to climb. Vlad moved slowly through pockets of shadow, eyes never leaving his prey, and when the young man scrambled up over the teeth and into the dim light beyond, Vlad moved faster, the sound of his feet in the water masked by the grinding and clanking of the mechanical, though even now those noises were subsiding.

He reached the edge of the mouth and leaped to catch the top of a massive tooth, and despite the scout powders, he felt the exertion in his muscles and in his chest. Pulling himself up with a muffled groan, he stretched himself out over the top of the teeth and held himself in place so he could look around.

Behemoth rested now in a dim lagoon lit poorly by more of the red jewels, casting the dark water in a rust- colored light. It had brought itself to a stop, open mouth pressed close against a stone pier.

This is the basement of the ladder.

The sound of footsteps echoing through the chamber turned his head, and he saw Mal climbing a staircase cut into the far wall. Sighing, Vlad pushed himself up and scrambled onto the pier, trying to control his breathing as he went.

He pulled himself up and turned back to Behemoth where it lay stretched out. The size of it daunted him, and even as he watched, he saw steam venting from it as its gears wound down, and he imagined it sleeping here, waiting for the appointed time for its appearance.

Called forth by blood.

Shivering suddenly, Vlad set off at a brisk walk toward the stairs and soon found himself climbing. He slowed when his ascent stitched his side and threatened his breathing, pausing here and there to listen for the bare slap of Mal’s feet on the steps above him. When he reached the top, he saw another open hatch and found himself reeling from a kind of vertigo when he passed through it and found himself surrounded by water, above and below and around him. It was a corridor of crystal that stretched out across an expanse to end at another hatch.

Mal Li Tam worked the wheel of it and then slipped inside. Vlad followed carefully and quickly after.

He followed his grandson for what seemed hours, up stairs and down ladders, through crystal corridors and red-lit chambers with purposes now lost to time. Finally, as his scout powders showed their first sign of guttering and burning out, he passed through another hatch and came to a sudden stop.

This chamber was also crystalline-vast and round-and hanging in the center of it, suspended by silver wires thick as palm trees, was a massive and dark orb. A circular staircase led up from the bottom of the round chamber, stopping at a platform just beneath the stone, and already Mal was taking those steps two at a time.

This is what he seeks.

And Vlad knew that it must be the same for him, though he did not comprehend what it was exactly. Still, with the younger man’s sudden burst of energy he felt his own sense of urgency grow.

He felt heat just beneath his skin as the scout magicks guttered again, and he tightened his grip upon the handle of the knife. He moved as quickly as he could without making sound or wind, his feet whispering across the floor and then upon the stairs.

Mal had reached the platform now, and from Vlad’s new vantage point, he could better see the orb that hung above them. At first, he thought it was fractured, but as he drew closer he saw that the glass was shot through with silver veins. Already, his grandson had dropped his knife and was climbing up into the thick wires that supported it, moving along the dark surface of the orb.

Vlad reached the platform, scooped up the knife, and leaned back to watch the young man climb.

What is he doing?

Mal Li Tam stood upon the top of the orb now and laid both of his hands upon something that protruded from it. Vlad heard the youth grunting as he tugged on it, and when it began to give, it slid out of the stone with a sound that was nearly music. As he withdrew it, the veins of silver dissipated, and even below on the platform, Vlad felt a tickling in his ears as something, somewhere stirred to life with the faintest vibration.

It built, and he realized that as it did, the light in the room grew. When the long, slender staff was completely free of the stone, Mal Li Tam extended it upward with both hands with a loud cry. The light radiating from the stone’s core reflected white and hot from the surface of the silver staff, but an even greater light, from beyond the crystal room, rose to cast its eerie reflection.

The room itself began to move, the stone rotating with it as the wires that supported it whispered and sang. Vlad placed his back to the railing and crouched, trying to keep his focus on the movements of his grandson as Mal made his way down, the silver rod clenched tightly in one hand.

When his feet are on the platform I will strike.