I'm left alone. Lissa was the first person I turned into a Pomp: Lissa. She'd been one before, of course, but when she was resurrected back into her body, I'd had to return her powers. In those dark moments, as the Stirrers surrounded us, there had been an intimacy that was terrifying. We'd looked into each other's soul and found an echo and a challenge of, and to, our own.
I lean back in my throne and my eyes close, just for a moment.
Knives. A swinging scythe. Mist the colour of blood.
I jolt awake. Fucking hell! A bloke could cut out his eyelids just to stop these visions.
Something catches my attention. A differently beating heart, a slight change in electricity. Someone has shifted into my city unannounced. And not just anywhere…
Now, that, I can't allow.
I squeeze my eyes tight, take a deep breath to prepare for the unpreparable, and shift myself to Mount Coot-tha. Old One Tree Hill.
Someone's on my turf and they shouldn't be.
20
Mount Coot-tha. Heart of the city of Brisbane, and its Underworld twin. I arrive in the middle of a bunch of tourists. None of them seem that impressed with my swearing, or the way I hop around on one foot. This shift felt like a spear being driven into my thigh. That's something new. I thought I was getting better at it. But it passes quickly, even if I'm red-faced with embarrassment.
'If you've finished your little dance,' Suzanne says. 'We can start today's lesson. Though take your time, I'm finding this all very amusing.'
'What are you doing up here?'
'Testing your abilities, and I must say that you surprised me. I didn't really expect that you would sense me. If I had I would have showed up in, say, Tasmania. You get a gold star.'
'I don't like this shifting around, unannounced – it sends a bad message,' I say.
Suzanne's good humour slips a little. 'It does nothing of the sort. If you can detect me, or any other RM, then they can detect you. They will know that you know they are here.'
'No one can sneak up on me?'
'Not quite,' Suzanne says. 'An electrical storm can shield their presence, but an electrical storm is hard to shift into, and an RM who is in the middle of one tends to be wary.'
'And why should an RM be wary of another RM? Aren't we supposed to be all unified?'
Suzanne raises an eyebrow. 'Don't be naive. RMs can hurt you more than anyone else, except, perhaps, for this Mr Rillman. When an RM comes unannounced you be ready. And try and remember if you have crossed anyone.' The Kuta Cafe at the top of Mount Coot-tha is open, and up here, there's a bit of wind, enough to take the edge off the summer heat. The last time I was here I spoke to Morrigan still thinking he was a friend. I know that Suzanne isn't; even 'ally' would be too generous a term.
Brisbane stretches itself out around us, a vast carpet of tree-smeared suburbia. The CBD rises up in the east, a tight bunching of skyscrapers around which the Brisbane River wends, leading to Moreton Bay. A series of low, flat mountains marks the western horizon. The air is clear, a typical Brisbane summer's day.
But sometimes I'm seeing and hearing the Underworld simultaneously, a superimposed view of the land of the dead. The ruddy river. The massive root buttresses of the One Tree. The creaking, creaking, creaking as its mighty limbs are moved by the restless winds of Hell. Wal's face shifts on my tattoo. He can almost take form here, and I know he wants to.
'Do you want a coffee?'
Suzanne shakes her head. 'Just a quieter place, away from all these tourists.' She winces as though she has a headache. 'It's too bright here.'
'Just about anywhere is quieter in Brisbane than this,' I say.
I lead her up to the observation platform. It's just us, now. Maybe our presence has something to do with that. Put two RMs together and there's always a bit of electricity. Though there are some kids running on the lookout below. The air crackles with the buzzing of cicadas, the kids' shouts and the ubiquitous creaking of the One Tree. This is my home.
'Lovely,' Suzanne says. 'Looking down at it from here I must say what a beautiful and intimate little city you have. But it's not quite the right venue for what I have planned. Are you all right to shift again?'
'Of course I am,' I say.
'You're getting better at it at last.' There's a glint in Suzanne's eye. 'Deepest Dark then,' she says.
I follow her there. And I don't throw up.
'So, Faber introduced you to the Stirrer god?'
'Up close and far too personal. It nearly killed me, thank you very much.'
'Ours is a dangerous business. And none more so than when facing that god.'
'Yeah, particularly when your guide lets go of your hand.'
'I assure you that Faber was utterly mortified by what happened. At least you were quick-witted enough to do what had to be done.'
'Yes, I was, wasn't I?'
Suzanne laughs. 'There's hope for you yet. You needed to see it up close. You needed to feel just what sort of a menace it has become. To understand why this thing terrifies us – all of us – in a way that defies the usual squabbles of the Orcus.'
'I had an idea already.' When did Suzanne start taking this seriously? Is she playing me? But she's always playing me!
'No, you had no idea. This thing will be beaten, or it will destroy us. Life, and the Orcus. We thirteen have not faced such a threat in lifetimes beyond counting. There is nothing written about such a thing. But there are murmurings. It, or something very much like it, was defeated before. There are things you need to know. You've a rich heritage of which you are barely aware. Starting with the basics. Do you know why pomping hurts?'
'Because it does. It makes sense, there's that whole exchange of energy thing. If we're going to take something out of our universe and put it into another, of course it'll hurt.'
Suzanne looks at me, and laughs. 'Physics has nothing to do with what we are about, Steven.' Suzanne shakes her head. 'No. The pain is an additive, something the Orcus constructed through ceremony and hard work, and then entered into the process. Pomping used to be pleasurable, addictive.'
'That would have been dangerous.'
'You have no idea. Before there were thirteen, pomping was a nightmare. One you perhaps know too well.'
My ears prick up at that. Nightmares. She sees it and smiles.
'Yes, we all have them. You've heard of the Hungry Death?'
'Just a few stories, stuff Dad would tell me when I was a kid.' But the way Dad had told them, I'd never taken them seriously.
'They're just stories now, but there was a time when they weren't.' Her voice slows and grows sonorous and rhythmical. 'Long ago, before you and me. Before the world is the shape it is now, or shape it was before, there was only one Death. And it was called the Hungry Death because it was always hungry.' She crouches down and trails a finger in the dust of the Deepest Dark. Following her is a dusty wake, now thirteen trails, which then rise and race around her fingers. They coalesce into a form – vaguely human, vaguely Stirrer. She seems to shake her head at the whimsy of it, flicks her hand and the Hungry Death is just falling dust again, but it's broken a little of her rhythm, for a moment she is just the cynical RM again. 'If only it was that easy to dismiss. That painting of Mr D's, the lurid one by the peasant.'
''The Triumph of Death'?'
'That's the one. Picture that. You got it?' I nod my head. 'Now imagine that painting, but there is only Death. And it is everywhere. The Hungry Death was a walking, shifting apocalypse. Random and violent in a… I suppose… more focussed way than our world actually is, and I would suggest that you'd agree that ours is a pretty random
