“What is that?” Siren asked in an awed whisper. She was staring up past the machine, past the distant figure of Doctor Barkham, at a mottled collage of blue, white and grey illuminating the top of the chamber, “Is… is that the sky?”
“I believe it is, yes,” Franck replied in similar tones.
“But…” she didn’t need to finish the sentence. She only had to look at the shimmer in Ellis eyes as he stared up at it. Even amidst her own terror, she felt a pang of joy for him.
“It’s even more beautiful than I had imagined,” Franck said, still whispering, “all this time spent looking for it and… I’m not sure I ever really believed I would see it!”
“It’s so bright!”
“And that shade of blue…”
Siren glanced over at Ellis. There was a tear rolling down his check, but his lips were parted and his teeth were gritted together. He looked like he was in pain, or else filled with rage. Suddenly, she realised that it wasn’t joy she should be feeling for him.
“Ellis. Ellis are you alright?”
He blinked, then turned his head to look at her. Another teardrop rolled its way to freedom, but his eyes were intense, steely even, and the set of his jaw spoke of great determination.
“I didn’t want it to be like this,” he said, “I wanted to go home, but not like this.”
And then Siren understood and felt stupid and ashamed. How could she not have realised straight away? It wasn’t just Ellis and some of his friends that had just been sent to his world, but there was Doctor Barkham as well as an entire legion of Stoneskins. Also, if Franck’s theory was correct, they had brought a daemon along for the ride. Ellis’ world was in serious danger and, from what he had been saying, she gathered that it would not be as prepared as Shadow might have been in similar circumstances.
“I’m sorry,” she managed.
“Don’t be,” he replied, “this isn’t your fault.”
He was no longer blinking and his eyes were already beginning to lose their liquid glimmer. Instead they seemed deep and confident. Siren didn’t think she had ever noticed how beautiful they could be before.
The moment was interrupted by a cough from Franck and they both turned to look at him. He gave them a brief, thin grin, then looked up to the platform at the top of the machine and called out in a loud voice, “Congratulations, Rosetta, it looks like you’ve finally achieved the goal of ten thousand years of Hypostatick Philosophy! You must be very proud.”
In answer, Doctor Barkham stepped onto the elevator and began to descend.
“Really,” Franck continued, “I can’t wait to read your report on this. I assume you’re planning on publishing it in the Journal of Traitorous Wretches, yes?”
Doctor Barkham continued to descend in silence.
“No? That’s a shame. I’d definitely have picked up that periodical.”
The trio watched on, with no further comment from Franck, until the elevator finally reached the ground with an echoing thunk. Then Doctor Rosetta Barkham, Countess of Skullbridge, stepped forwards and clicked her fingers.
A couple of lanky Stoneskins - belonging to the sub-species known as Spiketails because of their long sinewy tails, spiked at the tips like a kind of vicious flail - appeared either side of her. One of them had eyes burning a brilliant, icy white, whilst the eyes of the other were a pale blue colour with specks of purple flickering within them.
“Frostfire,” Doctor Barkham said, directing her fierce gaze at the white-eyed creature, “take the boy, I may have a use for him.” She turned to the other Spiketail, “As for you, gather a few others and then find someplace to seal up the philosopher and the pirate girl. I’ll want to interrogate them later, so try not to cause them too much injury.”
The creatures nodded and then Frostfire advanced towards Ellis. It drew out a brass device, like an oval compass, from a belt around its waist and twisted a dial on its side. Siren watched as Ellis slumped, no longer held frozen to the spot by Rosetta’s equations, but before he could move to escape the Spiketail had its wiry arms around him, tightening its grip until Ellis was wincing from the pain, then it lifted him off the ground and carried him back over towards the Doctor.
Meanwhile, the other Spiketail had called over two more of its companions and they now advanced on Siren and Franck. Siren began to squirm as she saw the creature approaching her, a particularly tall, lean specimen with red eyes flecked with orange, reaching down to its belt. She hoped that, if she was ready for it, she might just be able to run before the Spiketail could grab her, but that creature must have seen something in her poise, because it didn’t touch the compass-like device until she was already held tight in its grasp, her arms restrained behind her and a loop of metal tightened around her wrists.
As she tried to struggle she caught glimpses of Franck out of the corner of her eye. He wasn’t resisting at all, in fact, she saw him hold out his wrists from his back to accept the metal tie. A sickly smile was stretched across his pallid face. She could only hope he was planning something.
Once they were both restrained the blue-eyed Spiketail led the way out of the chamber. Siren looked back over her shoulder, trying to see Ellis trapped in the arms of Frostfire. He was struggling every bit as hard as she was and for a moment their eyes locked on each other, but neither called out. Instead, it was Franck who made all the noise, chatting away to his captor quite amiably.
“I do hope that there will be tea wherever you’re taking us. I’m quiet parched. Trans-aetherick travel can do that to a man, or so I’m told and besides, it’s not exactly mild out there right now – well, I suppose, looking at that sky it actually might be now, but certainly, when we were still in Shadow, it was warm enough to fry eggs on the stonework!”
Already they had rounded the next corner and the entrance to the great hall and the machine beyond were lost from view. Siren could only wonder what Doctor Barkham had in mind for Ellis.
“Oh yes, that would be good as well, don’t you think? Eggs? Not fried of course, but hard-boiled, with those little toasted soldiers. I imagine you would know all about toasted soldiers. I heard some fascinating tales of mass immolation at the battle of Pyremarsh. Not a problem for the average Lithoderm, I would assume, but we humans really do know how to burn, oh yes! Nice and crisp. And there’s an idea – perhaps it should be fried eggs afterall, with bacon, hot, crispy bacon. Do you like bacon?”
Throughout all this the Lithoderms moved swiftly and silently and Siren struggled in vain against the grip of her captor. They hurried past all the doors and side corridors they had seen earlier on, whilst the Spiketail with the pale blue eyes flicked its head left to right, too quick for a human to register much more than that there was, indeed, a door, but Siren could tell that this creature was checking each room for its potential as a cell. These Spiketails were much more intelligent than the Grinders.
“I’ve never really understood people who don’t like bacon,” Franck continued, seemingly oblivious to the fact that his custodian was ignoring him, “it just seems to me that there is no meat more flavoursome and delicious. I can understand if you choose not to eat meat, of course, but to eat meat and dislike bacon, that is a paradox I just cannot get my head around, and I can assure you, I have unravelled many a paradox in my time. My mother used to present a paradox to me every night at bedtime and I was not to sleep until I had solved it! Ah, such sweet dreams those gave me.”
He sounded like he was becoming nostalgic now. Siren wondered if he had gone completely mad at last. She glanced around hopelessly at their surroundings and realised, from the bluish glow coming out into the corridor, that they were passing rooms filled with tanks and aquaria. She could see ripples of light running along the stones of the walls opposite each door.
“It reminds me of a dream I had the other night. Quite perplexing it was, filled with strange symbols and numbers. I hear your people put a lot of store in dreams, perhaps you might be able to interpret?” He glanced around at the disinterested Spiketails as if expecting an answer, then resumed, “It went something like this-”
As she listened to what followed Siren’s mouth fell open. Franck was not relating a dream, but was instead intoning the symbols and numbers which made up an advanced equation of algebraic Hypostatick Philosophy and the Spiketails seemed to be ignoring him completely. He was saying it all in the same rambling tones that he had been using since he left the hall of the machine and, if she hadn’t been paying attention, she quickly realised, she might not have noticed the content at all. Of course, that was what he was counting on, and, judging by the still-disinterested stares of their Spiketail guards, it was working.
And then Franck’s hands started glowing and that strange spell of boredom, so expertly cast on the three Stoneskins, was shattered instantly.
“What is it doing?” the red-eyed creature holding Siren hissed in a voice like falling gravel, but no one got a chance to answer because, as that question mark was falling into place in the transcripts of time, the glow became a flash, the flash became the sound of shattering glass and that became the rush of ancient water, thick with dead algae.
Water poured into the corridor from doors all around them, slamming the Spiketails into the wall and forcing them to loosen their grip on their captives. Siren was pulled away from the one which had been holding her by the force of the torrent and felt herself being dragged under. She struggled to keep her head above the water, but as she was swept along the corridor she bobbed up and down, being sucked beneath the surface for several seconds at a time, swallowing whole mouthfuls of rancid, dirty liquid. All she could see was the water and the walls of the corridor. There was no signs of either Franck or the Spiketails.
Her skin grazed against the rough stone blocks, then she felt her feet catching on the stones of the floor. she began to feel the pressure lessen around her, the flow begin to die down and the water level drop until she was half-seated, half floating in the middle of the tunnel as the lights above her flickered on and off with a faint buzz.
She felt exhausted and battered, like one big bruise. Her head hurt and she wasn’t sure if it was from a knock she might have received, or the water she had imbibed, or just the stress of the situation. She wanted to lie where she was and not move, but slowly the realisation that the Spiketails would soon be looking for her again, made her slowly rise to her feet, the knowledge that the flood would have alerted more of them made her move more quickly and panicked thoughts of what might have happened to Franck soon had her wading through knee-high water, trying to find her way back to the entrance, in the hope that she might be able to get help.
The Silverspire, however, was a labyrinth of corridors and chambers and with a layer of water covering the floor and reflecting the light in strange rippling ways, it was very hard to recognise anything she might have seen on the way in. She was also unsure of exactly what path the flood had taken her along and so she didn’t even know if she had ever been down this particular corridor before. She could only hope that she was going the right way and that, eventually, she would find someone or something that would help them.
Eventually she approached an intersection between tunnels and froze. She could hear the sound of something splashing through the receding water up ahead and instinctively she reached down to her belt and fumbled for one of her knives. The first one she went for was missing, having been swept away in the torrent, but as she reached further around she fingered the hilt of another and slowly drew it out from its leather sheath. With it held out in front of her, ready to swipe, she advanced slowly and tried to make no noise as her legs slid through the liquid murk. Her prey, perhaps her hunter, was less subtle and the splashing only grew louder as she neared the intersection. Whoever it was, they sounded large and heavy. She was reasonably sure it couldn’t be Franck, but then a bulky shadow fell across the mouth of the corridor and she was certain. Her assailant was a Grinder.
She glanced at the blade in her hands and wondered how it would fare against the creature’s slate scales. Not very well, she surmised, which meant she had only two options: run before it was aware she was there, or fight in the hope she could find a weak spot. She was about to commit to the former plan, when there was a roar behind her and her fate was sealed. She didn’t need to glance over her shoulder to see that there was now a second Grinder, and she didn’t need to see the shadow stretching further across the mouth of the corridor to know that the first was coming to investigate.
She took a breath and readied her resolve, then she held her knife out in front of her once more and charged.
FIRST EPISODE
AUTHOR COMMENTARY: You can always rely on Franck to do something unexpected and find what is, perhaps, the least logical way to escape from any given situation. For the next few episodes I have 'split the party' and things get a bit hectic, with some very different things happening to each of the protagonists as we go along. It's a very exciting section, and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.
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