Beneath Ceaseless Skies #48 Read online

  Sully ignored the wurm’s taunt. He was a solitary man by necessity if not by choice, slender and pale, scarcely older than twenty-two. He smiled a quick hello as Sabrina set her mug to cool alongside a collection of manxome claws sheathed in time-blackened steel.

  Doctor Rowan Mallory perched atop a ladder in the corner between two of the room’s volume-laden walls, lost in the pages of centuries-old metaphysics. Amber gaslight reflected off the frames of his brass variable-loupe spectacles. Sabrina’s line-brother, the “Dark Apostle” as he was known in the Shadowlands—those hidden reaches upon Morgana where night lingered a bit too long.

  “And what pray tell is troubling the beasties now?” Sully asked, careful not to look at her too closely.

  “It was Emlyn. She’s fine.” Sabrina gathered her long skirts beneath her and sat opposite him before the fireplace.

  “Nightmares or a sudden fear of barrow ghouls?”

  Sabrina’s eyes twinkled. “Actually she wanted to know if she’s of an age to start having it off with boys. Trevor and Henry have announced they’re ready to begin their conquests of the fairer sex.”

  Sully flinched. Safe in the bedchambers upstairs were a dozen young refugees from Myrddin’s End, runaways liberated from stimulant laboratories and families who’d already been lost to the shadows. “How old are they?” Sully asked. “Fourteen?” The edge to his voice could split industrial diamonds.

  “Fourteen and three-quarters, as the months were measured on Great Albion.”

  “Three-quarters?” Doctor Mallory’s subdued baritone drifted down from above. “That makes all the difference then.” He offered one of his enigmatic half-smiles as he turned a page in the faded manuscript, its characters inscribed in blood by the long-dead Shadowmancers of the Invisible Reach.

  “God’s wounds, Rowan, don’t be such a prig,” Sabrina said. “Try not to be so serious for once in your life.”

  Mallory’s smile only broadened. “I can’t. Too many years spent in the company of militant academicians. Steel rulers. Prithee, don’t get me started.”

  He committed the equation he’d been studying to memory, then folded his spectacles and placed the text back into its niche. He hopped off the ladder with a metallic rustle. His trappings were rugged if otherwise nondescript, but instead of trousers he wore a skirt of densely-scaled mesh, the native equivalent of chain mail, belted in gruhlish fashion but cut to human proportions.

  “Right. We’ll stem the biological tide in the morning, Gods help us,” he said. “In the meanwhile I’ve got meditations to offer and defense hermetics to calculate.” He knelt and put a hand on Sully’s shoulder, gaslight glinting off the ancient metal bands that adorned his fingers and wrists. Sully flinched again. “Even a deaf man can hear the agitation in your voice. Are you alright?”

  Sully feigned a smile, wiping cold perspiration from his face. He tapped his head. “The Garden is secure.”

  Mallory nodded. “Cheers, then.” He stood and gestured to Sabrina. “You be nice. Don’t even think about going back to the college tonight.” He kissed the top of her head. “The Powers guard and defend thee from Steel Fever and the Vivisector’s Ravenous Daughters. Twilight Fire brighten thy passage, and Deep Sea guide thee home.” He stopped at the doors to the entry hall. “And do try not to wake Broon. He’s killed for less, and I’d rather not deal with the mess afterwards.” He smiled again and left the library, closing the doors behind him.

  Sabrina rolled her eyes. “God, he bores me to sobs.”

  “He’s not joking, you know,” Sully said. “Broon likes his shut-eye. All four of them.” He relaxed a bit and leaned back, his quick dance with the devil sidestepped once again. “Are you sure your families are line-bonded? You don’t really seem to be cut from the same bolt of cloth as he.”

  “I? Let’s simply say that when Professor Astrid Mallory’s favourite son followed her into Morgannic archaeology, the rest of us lowly mortals didn’t seem to matter any longer.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Believe as you wish. The final laugh is on Mother anyway, now that Rowan’s chucked it all to become the high bloody priest of a dead religion.”

  “The battle-faith isn’t dead. He’s giving it a voice.”

  “He can do so without wearing the dress.”

  “It’s a bal’geTh. Quite the rage amongst the mountain gruhls, or so I’m told.”

  Sabrina merely shook her head.

  The thing inside Sully Finn chortled to itself, though only Sully could hear. So spirited, Sullivan. So rebellious. A prize worth waiting for.

  Sully could feel it leering at Sabrina through his own eyes, pleased with what it saw. Her features were those still referred to as “Oriental”—dark almond eyes, raven hair combed up and back—her clothing stylish with a smartly tailored blouse from the Royal School of Biological Sciences. An intern tending the runaways in her line-brother’s care, slumming in the ‘End. “She just needs discretion,” Mallory would say, too often swayed by a brother’s love to truly see how far she’d gone astray.

  But Sully could see.

  He cast his perception inward to the place where his soul was protected, the place Doctor Mallory had taught him to visualize. A maze of cold metaphysical walls, overgrown with tenets and equations and dark coiling vines of native rhiannon. A sealed tower anchored the heart of the maze. Mallory called it the Inner Garden. Sully called it a battlefield. He focused his thoughts upon the thing that lurked inside him.

  You cannot have her, old monster. Leave us alone.

  We have you, Sullivan, the wurm taunted. And you’re weak. So very weak.

  I’m in control now. That’s all that matters.

  Your ascetic pretenses fool no one, dear boy, not even your meddlesome priest. He summons power that mortal Earthmen can neither comprehend nor control. Your desire betrays you, and his ministrations will fail.

  You own my body, you twisted bastard. You do not own me.

  All in good time. You will stumble. You will submit. You will offer unto us whomever we desire. The Gods of Razors and Metal will triumph in the end, and the woman will be ours.

  Oh, go to Hell.

  Silly child. We’ve already been there.

  Sully stared into the cold dark stones of the tower wall. His cold reflection stared back, the idealized image of the Mind within him, perverted by the dark presence of the wurm. He imagined a rock in his hand and threw it with all his might into his reflection’s cold stone face. The parasite retreated.

  Sully and Sabrina grew silent and listened to the storm now coming down harder, howling over ancient chimneys and rooftops. The Shadowmancers had been five hundred years dead when Men first surveyed the ruins of what would come to be called Malagant, the Black Prince, greatest of Morgana’s towering feudal strongholds. Within the confines of the fortress city, vast looming halls and manors stood crowded together, one atop the next, carved into the riverbanks and rising up the sides of the mountain itself. And everywhere, etched into stone walls and stone alleys and massive stone battlements, a blackened silhouette—one for every master and thrall, their very shadows burned into the rocks the instant they all died.

  Wherever possible the brave expeditionists had rebuilt the original structures, modifying them for human use, christening them with earthly names. But the silhouettes remained.

  Sabrina watched him from the corners of her eyes. He could practically feel her glance brushing along his skin like silky smooth lips. It could, more to the point, the thing inside him, exploiting his senses as if they were its own. She stood and stretched, then strolled to the doors of carved tulgey wood that opened into the mews outside. Sully caught her fragrance, the scent of her feminine places, a smell of spice and rich dark petals of bloodleaf.

  “Sabrina? Don’t get too close.”

  Gaslamps flickered before windows of tinted glass. Sabrina stopped and looked down at him. “It’s rain, Sully.”

  “Perhaps, or not.” He paused. “The
indigenes believe that forces of Nature are very much alive and possess Wills of their own. You want to risk slagging off a storm?”

  “The indigenes believe the World is flat and we come from the wrong side.”

  “Touché.” Sully pulled on a small runic cross dangling from his neck, his eyes roaming over the blackened relics displayed there in the library. Each one was a reminder that something awesome and horrifying had happened to this Aspect long before Men ever set foot upon it.

  “Places of power exist throughout Creation,” he finally said, choosing his words with care. “Places of light, places of darkness. Sometimes it’s a mountain, or a circle of trees, or a star on the great brass arc of its rails. Sometimes it’s an entire World.”

  “Sully....”

  “The Shadowmancers were bound to this Aspect, this place of power. Thaumaturgical abilities the likes of which we’ve never seen. They were so powerful that, in the end, in the name of the battle-faith, the Armies of Starlight and Abyss annihilated one other in a single night of pyromantic flame, leaving behind the lesser races to fend for themselves.”

  “Sully, I grew up with this shit. My mother teaches it....”

  “She teaches only what the Directorate allows her to teach. The surviving peoples of Morgana, every one of them, believe the Shadowmancers are still here. Even in death their Will could not be destroyed. They live on in the Aspect itself, bound to this World’s collective unconscious. Sabrina, look at the wonders your brother is capable of.”

  She seemed to sink in upon herself as her pretense of ignorance turned into something much more worrisome. “I can’t believe the Directors haven’t censured him by now. They do threaten often enough.”

  “Science and thaumaturgy are one and the same on this orb,” Sully said. “The Directors know that, and it frightens the blazes out of them. So they focus instead on expanding Her Eternal Majesty’s Aetheric Possessions and pretend the dangers here are not real.”

  Just as they did the night a heretical young scientist named Rowan Mallory found Sully in the gutter beneath Cathedral Hill, at the steps of New Saint Paul’s, a ragged predator barely out of adolescence. Rejected by family, consumed by a demon’s desire, stained by the blood and tears of the innocents he’d violated.

  “There’s a darkness that clings to the heart of this City, Sabrina. It calls to the people who’ve been here too long. Doctor Mallory is trying to stop it.”

  “Is this one of those barmy stories you tell the children, or personal exposition?”

  He stared into the fire, his voice no more than a whisper.

  “Both.”

  “Really.” Sabrina leaned forward. “Are you a bad boy, Sully Finn?”

  “Not intentionally....”

  He knelt before the fire and tossed in more wood, sweet smelling logs of cerridwen and minstrel’s harp. Sabrina watched him, openly now, and didn’t attempt to hide it. She returned to her spot on the floor, a playful gleam dancing in her eyes.

  She wants you! the wurm hissed. She wants you, sweet boy. It twisted and roiled inside him, sliding around his organs like a mass of liquid snakes. She initiates the ritual, the courting, the coupling. Our lady of passion, your guide into chaos—

  Be quiet, Sully thought. She doesn’t mean a thing—

  But in the pit of his stomach, and the dark places even deeper, he knew he was wrong. He’d stood at this precipice too many times, knew the portents too well.

  Welcome her into the family, Sullivan. A new host. A new plaything, your willing sister-bride.

  Be quiet! Sweet Christ in Heaven....

  Memories came quickly now: hot ragged breaths, naked hips slamming together, the taste of stolen passion on his tongue. And in the Garden, outside his psychological walls, something viscous and black began to seep through hairline cracks.

  Can you feel her desire? Can you smell it? Glistening and wet. Passion calls to passion. Flesh calls to flesh, blood to blood. Stand with us in the centre of the fire. Release us.

  Moisture collected under Sully’s arms, down his back. His forbidden places throbbed. The wurm siphoned off an oily portion of itself, flowing its seed into Sully’s reproductive tract, pooling there, waiting for the violent spasms that would eject it from the old host and into the new—this woman, this Sabrina Cheng-Mallory. Its Sabrina Cheng-Mallory. The Enemy’s flesh and blood. The demon wallowed in the sheer audacity of it all, and Sully was powerless to silence it.

  Sabrina reached for her cup and sidled closer.

  “There’s a bathing tub next to the scullery. It looks big enough for six. What do you say we fire it up and listen to the rain? You can keep an ear open for wayward spooks if you like.”

  “It’s not a bathing tub. It’s Broon’s stewpot.”

  Lightning strobed again, above the manse, over the river, thunder rolling like the turning of the World on its great herculean gears. He reached for another log, but there were no more.

  “Rowan—”

  “—isn’t going to hear us, and Broon can sleep through a monsoon.” Sabrina rose to her knees.

  Black ooze ate through his defenses like acid. Sabrina crept close, closer than anyone had been in a long time. He ached, it had been so long. He could not move, could not run, his pale arms frozen around his knees.

  Worship her carnality, Sullivan. Release us! Kneel before the altar of her calescent flesh, share the sacrament of sweat and black seed. It’s been so long, so very long.

  Her hand touched his leg, slid up the inside of his thigh.

  Warm, yes! So very warm....

  Sully recoiled at the feverish heat of her fingertips, searing like irons drawn across flesh as cold as the grave.

  Yes, sweet lady, yes! So warm, so WARM!

  And the last of Sully’s defenses ripped away.

  The wurm was free.

  Insane laughter split his skull from the inside, ice-cold razors of pain ripping and tearing and ravaging his gut. He doubled over, pale hands pressed against the sides of his head.

  “Shut it!” he said aloud. “Just shut it! Gods, leave me alone!”

  Sabrina railed back. Sully snapped his head around and focused upon her, his eyes black and cold as night.

  “GET AWAY!” he screamed.

  Darkness assaulted him, casting him backward in Time, into the guise of a young boy no more than fourteen. A boy sneaking away from the belching black smokestacks of Engine Town, tramping along the waterfront to Malagant’s bustling North End.

  Alone in the City of Shadows.

  He just wanted to see the boats.

  Fishing boats and taxis tied to the maze of wooden piers at Bankside. Merchant ships sailing through Blackwall Cove, out Victoria Bay to the mighty waters of the High New Thames rolling north of the city. Deep ocean vessels and dirigibles streaming west with the current, past Knightsgate Bridge and the Harrows to the Great Britannic Sea beyond the river’s end.

  He ran in panic. He’d lost track of the hour, didn’t realize how late it was until streetlamps began to flick on one by one. Children didn’t roam the streets of Malagant after dark. The City became something else, after dark. Up the steep alleys of the Stonemarket Quarter to catch the aerostat back to Engine Town, the last shuttle of the day, certain that Da would already be barmy on dreamseed and ready to skin him alive. Into the Shambles, past whores and bawdy houses hidden from gaslight and prying eyes. He turned a blind corner. The wrong one—

  And two pale hands grabbed him in the dark, one by the shoulders, the other covering his mouth. Bony hands, of a man who smelled of sweat and dead bloodleaf. The boy was spent and mute with fear. He didn’t say a word.

  Jumbled images now: a stone-lined alley under the freight rails, a nest of old fishing nets, the stink of vorpalfin and bronwen. Evil thrusting inside him, endless streams of cold corrupt seed surging up through his vitals, coiling around his organs. Evil, and blood. So much blood, dark and sticky red.

  “I’m sorry,” the man wept. “I’m so sorry....”
<
br />   The boy woke in the alley, his clothing damp from mist and vented steam, his body bruised and broken. Slicks of discharged ooze clung to the swollen flesh and downy new hairs on his thighs, still wet. The ooze was black. It was cold. It moved.

  And inside his head, a ghastly chorus of voices laughed and taunted him for not fighting back.

  A distant peal of bells rang above the alley, steam-driven chimes tolling high atop New Saint Paul’s. No, not church bells. The mantle clock in Doctor Mallory’s library, an heirloom from fabled Earth announcing hours that no longer had any meaning.

  Sabrina, running for the door....

  The thing that had been Sully Finn leapt with inhuman speed and grabbed the neck of her blouse one-handed, yanking her back as if she weighed nothing. The other hand snatched a skrave from the library’s collection of executioner’s blades and pressed the sharp edge to her throat.

  “Are you a bad girl, Sabrina?” it said, throwing her words back at her. “Do you know what bad truly is?” The voice was Sully’s but it was the demon who spoke. Sully was no more than an observer now, a voyeur trapped behind his own eyes. “Such a cockish young grwdaTh’an—so eager to risk, to debauch yourself for the thrill of the moment. Do you want it, grwd’aQh?” the wurm teased. “Do you want it?”

  Sabrina pulled back and slammed her knee into Sully’s gut. The wurm howled and dropped the skrave, and for an instant Sully regained control.

  “Sabrina, get out of here!” he said, but he stood between her and the hallway doors and the demon wouldn’t let her pass. He doubled over again as the thing inside lashed out at him.

  “You can’t have her, you bastard!” Sully said, his words hissing through clenched teeth. “You can’t have her!”

  The wurm wrenched every organ in their shared body, flayed every nerve. It could not kill him—so fundamentally were they joined, host and parasite—but it could punish him. Oh, how it could punish him. The ruination of this young woman was just the beginning. He launched himself at her—