I am dead, he thought, ruined by this Engine.
The Stars of Mourning blazed distantly, disinterestedly — David realised that there was no mourning there — and dimmed. Weird masses were exchanged, great bodies vaster than this world circled each other faster, collided and did not collide, brushed past each other or flung away into space, gravity shifting their cores, and energies were stolen from their movement. He flew above it all, watching, though not really understanding, because the information crashing into him was too pure, and he realised what he had become.
Not dead. But Death.
And it was too late.
The machine unleashed its fury.
Margaret stared through the window; something was coming out of the darkness and at horrible rate. Instinctively she brought a hand up to the glass, covering her face. Around her the Roilings began to moan, and the ship increased its speed, pushing her back in her chair. But it was not fast enough.
Suddenly she could move again, totally of her free will. She slipped a lozenge of Chill into her mouth, felt it sting against a cracked tooth. The thing on her arm yowled and slid free, it shuddered on the floor a moment. Then the creatures holding her wound together, and released their grip.
The iron ship jolted as the ice front struck it, glass creaked and cracked. The craft itself began to flex, the pilots moaned, though they still kept up their flight. But there was a juddering uncertainty building within the ship’s movements.
As she watched, one of the pilots dropped to the floor and the iron ship tilted with it. Witmoths rushed from its mouth and ears. They hovered senselessly before falling dead. Andersonhad fallen too; his hands clutching at his ears, his mouth open and screaming silently, dark blood streaming from his cracked lips.
“Hold on,” Anderson groaned through gritted teeth.
“What's happening?” she asked, though she suspected she already knew the answer.
“We cannot take you to your mother,” Anderson said. “We failed. The Engine has been engaged.
“We are losing so much, so swiftly. All this wisdom and all of it dying,” Anderson said, and his voice grew thick with concern. “We must land, while we still have a mind to do it. I did not come here to kill you, Margaret. Nor would I see you dead even now.”
Margaret slipped another lozenge of Chill in her mouth and the iron ship came down hard, jarring her bones, tearing open her wound even more.
And this time she screamed.
CHAPTER 51
And around, not thunder bound, but riotous and loud
In rushed quick death, and icy breath, a vast and killing cloud.
THE UNDERGROUND A ROIL EDGE
The ice front hit, shearing through the Roil. The mirrors on the airships cracked, then fell in shards upon the earth, and the walking machines fell too.
The Engine’s been engaged, Medicine thought. We’ve done it. David’s done it.
The men at the front cheered and then stopped, falling dead, the blood freezing in their veins. At the rear, those soldiers close to the outer doors turned and ran, but all died before making a few steps. Their bodies sheathed and then smothered with ice.
It's killing them, Medicine thought. Our salvation, it's going to kill us all.
“Shut the doors! Shut the doors,” he cried, thinking it already too late. The air had suddenly stilled, his breath came in clouds, his eyes started to sting.
“Shut the doors. Shut the doors,” the cry went up, breaking that silence and suddenly the iron doors closed. And no one knew how close a thing it was.
But that was for later; now Medicine watched, eyes wide, as the Roil collapsed; within a few moments it was gone, and ice covered the window. He felt himself witness to something that he didn't quite understand, something that was bigger and crueller than he had ever expected.
David, Medicine thought. Oh, David, what have you done? What did we make you do?
All along the continent, Lodes came to life, lit by the Engine of the World; like neurons fired by David's raging thought. Releasing their cargo of cold, stilling the fury of atoms for just a moment, though that was all it took, creating instant permafrost.
Round and round the fire the stationmaster danced, his circles describing some sort of victory. And then the cold struck, freezing the air, killing the Witmoths within him instantly. He fell and with him tumbled his family, their fevered eyes closing over with cold.
And in the ice, curled up together, though dead for weeks, they died at last.
Lode B1914, already woken but weeks before, roared this time to full strength, and flattened the wet land around with cold. Plants died. The little creek — down which David and Cadell had run from the Quarg Hounds — grew brittle and still.
Tate’s Lode flared uselessly, the cold cracking the city's walls again, hurling out Quarg Hounds, plucking Endyms and Floataotons from the dark sky.
The Margin's Lode flared with chill effulgence; the River Weep snap-froze. And factories died, their cells bursting with the cold, swift and painless death, but death nonetheless. Cuttle messengers fell from the sky. The Cuttlefolk army froze in its bivouacs.
Where the Roil fastnesses — those dreaming cities — rose into the heavy sky, they felt the cold’s coming as a swift and terrible diminishment of thought. The Roilings moaned in anticipation of their doom, and knew at once the terror that they had not known since the Wit smoke had caught their souls. The fear of death.
The engine that sat at the heart of McMahon rumbled a few more futile heartbeats. The ceaseless inventions tumbled uncontrollably: bombs, shields, pieces of weaponry, mewling creatures with bleeding eyes and fevered breath. And then it stopped. The Penn woke from the dreams that caged her and her first thoughts were of her daughter. And in her next, she knew her daughter was safe, if only for a few moments more. And she knew a brief happiness.
A moment of stillness.
The ice struck, as the nearest Lodes boiled and bubbled with pure cold. All thought was stripped away and there was not even time for sadness.
Just an end.
Deep in the south, Vermatisaurs crashed into the sky — crammed with terrified and battering Hideous Garment Flutes and Endyms, snatching and scratching and biting at each other’s flesh. And then the giant beasts turned tail and flew, raced to the volcanic mountains at the equator, where it was still hot for a few moments more at least, the ice crashing in from north and south. Most did not make it, but there were still enough that they were crammed into caves, the last ones sealed the holes in mountains with their own frozen flesh — their many heads describing a hundred different agonies — and so a few survived.
They had seen this before and would see it again. And their brains bubbled with bitterness and a hunger for revenge and fire, and just hunger; and, as they fell into the deepest of sleeps, their dreams were filled with both.
But few creatures made it. Most were caught in the fury of that racing front — a cloud of dirty ice — an obsidian curtain flung back on itself, dotted with the broken remains of Quarg Hounds, Floataotons, Hideous Garment Flutes and Endyms. And all manner of more exotic creatures: dreamlings, faunitaurs and cadinows, the latter hurling down bone instruments in dismay and losing their music to the ice.
The cold stilled, and the sun shone down on a cloudless world made sluggish and white, when all before had been dark and swift.
