And something else—the cool buzz of banish lights, the burning smell of wardwoman’s magic.
For an instant, I’m back in the alleyway behind my shop, with trolley wheels clattering away in the distance and an eerie man howling in the streets.
I shake the memory from my head, then stumble as the ground plunges beneath me.
“Steps,” says a soldier, belatedly.
I go down slowly, like an old man, feeling each step with a foot. I’m still only half-awake.
I step into oozing mud. It spreads over my sandaled foot, squelches between my toes. I’m out of the sun, in a small, dark, damp place.
The dregs of Angel Eye Lake?
The soldiers shove, and I fall, my knees striking something hard that shivers and rings out.
Some kind of cage?
The blindfold slips, and I catch sight of a metal grate under my feet before I’m hoisted up. A squeal and a crash, and the cage jerks, starts to descend.
A lift.
I sway, and my arm brushes against the cage bars. Waiting spiders grab at the metal, but a soldier pushes me away from the edge. The spiders resettle my weight, to stabilize me.
We grind to a stop, and the soldiers push and pull me out of the lift. There’s a low crackle in the air, a whisper-glide against my skin.
My blindfold, loosened, falls from my eyes.
For a moment, I think I’ve stepped back into Highwind.
The ghost flames of banish lights flicker against black and glassy walls. Their reflections remind me of the safe road, and a chill goes over my flesh.
Machinery hums in the shadows, above the quiet chuckle of water lapping against the walls.
I glance up at the chamber ceiling and note the supports. Lamps form a ring in the middle of the chamber; two people are silhouetted against them.
I’m nudged toward them, and snatches of their conversation come to me like the tatters of warding ribbons.
The lighted end of a cigar burns like a tiny star. “… the body can take only so much stress. It’s a one-way road, so far. Any attempts to reverse it… were not pretty…” The Director drops the butt and grinds it under his heel.
“… so they’re forever fixed in the form …” The voice is accented, but speaks fluent Highwinder. Incredulously I place it: Daral’s voice, wavering with echoes or an emotion I can’t fix.
“What in Nine Hells are you doing here?” I growl. I don’t need to fake the anger in my voice.
“Ah, Kato, so quick to suspicion and rage. My southern colleague here,”—the Director pats Daral’s shoulder as if the other man were the protégé and he the fond mentor—“is here to assist in this grand endeavor. Isn’t it fitting that the university of Jalinoor be represented? Daral here has read my work and has such interesting ideas.” The Director beams; Daral’s face is closed and inscrutable.
What is he playing at?
“We haven’t been able to do much with this opening,” the Director says to Daral. “No seams, no edges—it seems to have grown out of the surrounding rock, though it is definitely not stone. Look here.”
I’m nudged into the ring of lamps behind the two men. Light dances on a large disc, big enough to comfortably admit a man, set in the floor. The Director is right about the make of it—this cross between crystal and metal, that is somehow both and neither at the same time. The way it scatters light in some places, absorbs it in others, the shine of it—all are alien and beyond describing.
And that’s nothing compared to the way it makes me feel—the tug of it on my soul, a feeling of awe and dread and humbleness and mystery.
Angel craft.
The Director squats, points to markings on the circle. “Can’t make head nor tail of those, but then I don’t have your linguistic training.”
Daral stoops, and peers. His eyes narrow, and a glint comes into them. His lips part, then he shakes his head. “That symbol there is traditionally interpreted as angel, and there look to be symbols for protection and light… but I can’t help you beyond that.”
Liar.
“Ah, no matter,” says the Director with a sigh. “But since I’m more interested in what’s inside…” He holds out his hand.
Daral drops the angel key into it.
The soldiers tighten their grips as I lunge. I bump one away with my shoulder, take a step forward, and then sink under their weight as they wrestle me to my knees.
‘Traitor,” I spit at Daral. “You go too far!”
“Now, now, there’s no need for that kind of language.” The Director frowns at me. “This is for all mankind, not only Highwinders or Southerners.”
My lips peel back from my teeth. “So, you’re going to share everything you find under there with the Khans and eilendi?”
No answer to that. The Director leans forward and inserts the key into a slot in the center of the disc.
I lean forward, but the soldiers pull me back. I rather hope the Director will die in some horrible way for his desecration, but Taurin does not oblige me.
He doesn’t oblige anyone.
The Director sighs. “I think you’re right, Daral.”
To the soldiers, he says, “Bring him.”
That’s a never good sign. I dig in my heels, but there’s not much I can do while trussed up like a chicken. My spiders scuttle anxiously, but there’s nothing to fuel a transformation.
They throw me next to the Director, and hold me down. He rolls up my sleeve.
“I hate this,” he tells me. “This fixation with blood, this melding of flesh and mineral. It’s so messy.”
So says the man who changes ordinary men and women into the frightful monsters of Deep Night.
He plunges a syringe into my vein, fills it with dark red blood. He squirts it all over the angel key, still in its slot.
Nothing happens.
I give a bark of mirthless laughter. “Taurin indeed has
