pain moved to his bones and almost crippled him. He heard the sound of crashing debris coming from behind, and then he felt it in his bruised and battered limbs. A second doorway loomed before him, this leading to an enormous banquet hall lit by golden chandeliers. The drone of a hunting horn vibrated the air.
Dill glanced back. The Icarates had now destroyed most of his apartment. They were driving their procession through its remnants. As soon as Dill saw them, he sensed the beasts’ hooves pressing down, the weight of their huge lumbering bodies on the floorboards. His vision blurred again. He felt like he was standing on the edge of an abyss-the darkness pulling him closer.
“Fight it!” Hasp shook the young angel. “Don’t lose your wits now.”
Hasp dragged the pair into the banquet hall. Long tables had been arranged along three of the walls, each covered in platters of food. The god shoved Mina roughly to one side, and then snatched an apple from the nearest table. “Eat this,” he said to Dill. “It will give you the strength.”
“What about Mina?”
“Just do as I say,” the god growled. “And don’t even think about eating anything else.” He turned and charged back the way they had come.
As the Lord of the First Citadel ran, the chamber changed around him, reflecting his rage. The walls darkened, turning from rough grey stone to hard black glass. Over his head the ceiling began to crack. Ahead of him, the doorway expanded until the hole filled the entire wall.
Dill could sense that the Icarates had destroyed most of his soul. Through the throbbing of his blood he felt his room’s agony: the split skirting, the broken furniture, and the shattered bed with its torn drapes trampled under the hooves of stinking beasts. Dizzying, disparate sensations crowded his exhausted nerves. Fighting unconsciousness, he took a bite of the apple. Abruptly, the pain diminished; his heartbeat steadied, then pounded with renewed vigor.
He took the apple over to Mina.
At the far end of the corridor Hasp roared. He had reached the open doorway, a portal now as large as a portcullis. The Icarates had finished consuming Dill’s room and now stood at the entrance to Hasp’s own castle.
Here, they hesitated.
Either the Lord of the First Citadel had grown in size, or the passageway had constricted around him. In his old, battered armour, he towered before the intruders. From somewhere he had acquired a massive stone sword, which he held effortlessly before him. The Icarates clicked and buzzed in apparent agitation, sparks fizzing from their awkward white suits.
Hasp flexed his shoulders. “Should I break your souls?” he boomed. “Or armour mine?”
A heavy iron grate crashed down across the door to his castle, separating him from the would-be invaders. Metal panels appeared from out of nowhere, then slammed and bolted themselves against the interior walls. Girders slid in from the walls on either side, meeting each other with a series of loud bangs. “Would that stop your hammers?” he asked with a shrug. The metal defenses wavered for a moment, and then dissolved like smoke.
“Or should I forge an army of my own?” the god went on.
The floor around him bubbled. The bubbles swelled and changed, forming black glass creatures like crude sculptures of men and beasts: clubfooted golems and sleek, powerful cats. Their claws raked the floor of the passageway.
“Or should I simply move?” Hasp said.
Dill could not persuade Mina to eat. She stared through him, oblivious to her surroundings. He took another bite of the apple, and then offered it to her again, but she remained as slack and witless as a puppet.
The floor gave a sudden jolt.
The passageway in which Hasp stood suddenly contracted, bringing the god and his glass-forged figures careening back towards the young angel until he was immediately outside the entrance to the banquet hall. What had been a long corridor a moment ago had compressed into a short hallway.
But beyond Hasp’s front door now lay a chasm. The Icarates and their tunnel had remained in one place while the castle retracted from them. Now their procession was trapped on the other side of a wide gap. They were gazing out through a ragged hole in the wall of a vast and strange building.
Dill saw that his own little apartment had been one among countless others. Oddly shaped windows and doors clustered around the rent where the Icarates stood. More and more apartments came into view-a thousand dwellings stacked one upon the other-even as Hasp’s castle retreated. The facade looked like a cliff of stone, steel, glass, and metal, all entangled as if an epic struggle between different builders had taken place. And in a sense that was exactly what had happened, for each apartment was a manifestation of someone’s soul. The carved marble, brick, and dark-stained timber was living.
This, then, was Hell.
But now the whole facade was broken and bleeding. Streams of blood poured from the fractured walls, spattered off timbers and girders, and formed a fine red mist. Debris cascaded past the portcullis. A sweet, copper-rich scent filled the air. Then Hasp’s castle picked up speed. Now the god’s stronghold was burrowing through Hell, leaving its own ragged tunnel behind. By now the Icarates were left far behind.
Hasp wore a grim expression. Sweat lined his brow and his hard blue eyes were tense with concentration. “This flight will cost me dearly,” he muttered. “And it will destroy many of the other souls around us. I doubt I can keep this up for long. Did you consume the apple?”
Dill nodded.
“Good. Technically, I suppose that was cannibalism.” He shrugged. “Better that, than have you fade away completely. Now-” he turned away “-our cover is gone. We must surface and draw what power we can from the bloodmists. Otherwise we’ll be grounded.”
The living ghetto of souls existed on all sides of Hasp’s stronghold. From the bloody passage the castle had already ripped through it, it looked impossibly vast. Hasp clenched his fists and the whole castle rumbled and began to rise, now cleaving a path upwards.
“Leave the girl.” The god beckoned towards the corner of the banquet hall. “She’s safe enough here. I want to show you something. Follow me into the cage.”
“What cage?” Dill asked.
A folding metal gate appeared in the corner of the room, and then opened with a clatter and a clunk.
“That cage,” Hasp said.
It was an elevator much like the one Dill had used every day to descend through the heart of Deepgate’s temple-a metal cage suspended by chains and pulleys. The god closed the folding gate behind them. “While you remain in my castle, you’re under my protection,” he said. “Your soul will recover from the damage it sustained. Just don’t start growing any walls in here.”
With a rattle of chains the cage began to rise. It jolted, and suddenly picked up speed. Before Dill had time to breathe, another jolt quickened their ascent again. And another. Soon they were racing upwards through a glass- walled shaft through which Dill spied luxurious suites full of plush furniture and golden, sparkling chandeliers. Rooms passed in a blur, scores of them, and still the metal elevator rose higher and higher.
They arrived eventually in a glass conservatory which glowed like a multifaceted lantern. Lush green plants writhed around them on all sides, curling their slender leaves around one another in the golden glow from a swarm of fireflies. Vines crept up the windows, sprouted yellow flowers, and then withered and fell. As Dill watched, the process repeated itself again and again: plants grew, died, and then struggled up from the earth anew.
Overhead, buildings smashed against the conservatory panes. Hasp’s castle was still rising up through Hell, demolishing everything in its path. Dill could only wonder why the glass ceiling did not shatter and rain down upon them. Evidently the god’s soul was tougher than it appeared.
And then suddenly the heavens appeared above them. Chunks of building fell away from the windowpanes to reveal an angry red sky. Darker whorls of crimson and black drifted slowly across this vista like scum floating in a cauldron. The conservatory continued to rise until they were looking out across the landscape from a great height.
A maze of canals etched the ground for as far as Dill could see, their mirror-black walls bounding loops and narrow twisted runnels of dark red liquid. Above these channels towered high, sharply tapering hills crowded with houses as queer and disparate in their architecture as those underground.
