He was silent a moment.
“Are you in pain?”
She pressed her face against the cold glass. “But you got away from them. You made it here.”
“That doesn't matter.” A tear ran down over the smooth surface of the sphere and broke against her hand. She didn't know what to tell him. They couldn't heal him, and they couldn't take him inside Sabor's castle. If he managed to crawl to the top of the mountain, he would have to remain there while the rest of them went inside.
Mina pressed her hand to the glass an inch in front of Rachel's face. “Do you realize how much of a mess you're in, Dill?” she said. “They've completely destroyed you.”
“Mina!” Rachel glowered at her. “Do you have to be so fucking insensitive all the time?”
“Well, just look at him,” the thaumaturge said, “or what's left of him. He's got no legs, one arm, and the rest of him looks like crawling scrap. He's not even going to make it to the Obscura.”
“He'll make it,” Rachel said.
“And then what?” the thaumaturge retorted. “He'll lie outside and rust. There's nothing left of him, Rachel, nothing here we can salvage.”
A crack sounded above them, and a table-sized chunk of Dill's cranium fell down and smashed into a mound of shattered crystal at one side of the chamber. Hasp twitched and clutched his head.
Rachel grabbed Mina by her shoulders and wrenched her away from the sphere. “What are you doing?”
Mina's dark eyes narrowed. She leaned her face forward and whispered in Rachel's ear. “I'm telling it like it is, Rachel. He can't survive like this, and I think he should know that.” She straightened again, smiling coldly. “Use your head, Spine.”
And suddenly Rachel understood. Menoa's warriors had weakened Dill by planting doubts in his mind. This huge bone-and-metal body was only as strong as Dill believed it to be, so the other arconites had made it vulnerable simply by convincing Dill that he
Rachel glared at the other woman. “What happens to his soul if we can free it?”
“Most spirits can survive for a short while on this earth,” she whispered, “and Dill is a lot more powerful than your average phantasm. When he was in Hell, he consumed a fragment of Iril, a piece of Hasp's soul, and…” She smiled. “… a little bit of me.”
“How long could he exist outside this body?”
Mina shrugged. “He's a rather uncommon person,” she said, “even for an angel. Why don't we get him out of here and see what happens?”
“Are you sure about this?”
“No,” Mina replied. “But do it anyway.”
Iron Head swung his hammer at the glass sphere. It connected with a loud crack. He examined the tiny white scratch he'd made on the smooth surface, shook his head, and then hefted the weapon once again. On the second blow the glass shattered.
Thus liberated, the ghosts from the sphere tore around the walls of the chamber in a vortex of vapourous hands and eyes and teeth. Rachel staggered as they howled past her face, grabbing at her, buffeting her, and she heard their cries in her mind.
Mina remained at the back of the chamber, her eyes closed. She was stroking her little dog and muttering something under her breath. Then she opened her eyes and allowed Basilis to jump down from her embrace.
The dog padded forward, growling.
“Stay out of my friends,” Mina warned the spectres. “Possess any one of us here, and my master will drag you back out again and send you somewhere you really don't want to go. Do you know what a Penny Devil can do to a soul?” She smiled grimly. “If you thought Hell was bad, just wait until you see Basilis's house.”
The spirit wind rose, shrieking, into a tighter spiral of twisting, gauzy figures that raced up towards a hole in the arconite's skull. In a heartbeat, they had departed, leaving one last ghost behind.
“You got your wings back,” Rachel said.
His translucent feathers seemed to glow faintly blue in the gloom. He looked much stronger and taller than the angel Rachel remembered from Deepgate all that time ago, but he was dressed in the same tattered old mail shirt and breeches and carrying the same old blunt sword his ancestors had used. A few lines now etched his brow, but his eyes radiated calm confidence. He lifted a hand up in front of his face and looked straight through it, smiling.
Hasp threw open the huge copper doors of the Obscura Redunda, and bellowed, “Sabor! Where are you? I'm sore, hungry, and in need of a drink.”
The god of clocks eyed his younger brother with obvious disdain. “Welcome back from Hell, Hasp,” he said. “You've lost your wings, I see. And your skin.”
Hasp grunted. “That bastard Menoa got the better of me. He only sent a million demons, mind you, but it had been a tiring week.”
Sabor raised his chin, regarding his brother coolly from under half-closed eyelids. “I'm sure the battle was tremendously impressive.”
They continued to converse, but Rachel stopped listening. She was watching Dill carefully from the corner of her eye. The young angel stood between Mina and Iron Head, gazing up in awe at the array of tubes and lenses packed within the high chamber. Had his body become more translucent, or was she just imagining it? It seemed to her that he faded in bright light, only to solidify once more when he stepped into the shadows.
“I don't suppose ghosts eat,” Hasp said, “but the rest of us are starving, brother. We've had nothing since Dill abandoned the Rusty Saw.”
Sabor sighed. “I'll have Garstone prepare supper.”
Rachel turned to face him. “Do we have time for this?” she said. “There are still eleven arconites out there somewhere”-she pointed back towards the main doors-“and now we have no way of defending ourselves against them. We've no plan, no idea where Heaven is, and no way to provoke Ayen even if we could reach her.”
Sabor merely raised his eyebrows. “Time?” he said, incredulously. “You ask
They sat down to dinner in a sombre wainscoted and darkly paneled hall that, mercifully, existed in the here and now. The adjoining kitchen, however, bounced backwards and forward in time by as much as half an hour, which meant that the main courses arrived before the starters and the pudding appeared three minutes before it had been ordered.
Dill stood a little way back from the table, glowing faintly and with a half-smile upon his lips, content to watch the others eat.
Not one of them could fault the fare, however. Garstone cooked and waited on all four of his guests simultaneously, edging past alternate versions of himself as he carried plates to and from the dining hall. He walked through Dill constantly, but apologized unfailingly.
“The doors to Heaven,” Sabor said between mouthfuls of roast lamb, “lie within a temple at the summit of this very mountain.”
Rachel started. “Here?”
Sabor nodded. “However, knowing their physical location does not help us. The doors cannot be opened.” He chewed thoughtfully. “Ayen removed us, her lawful sons, from Heaven after our up-rising against her failed, but she expelled this fortress for an altogether different reason.”
Iron Head drained his cup. Garstone hovered close by, trying to pour him more wine from a carafe, but Iron
