Trent Jamieson - Roil

The engines whined. The Roslyn Dawn slowed its descent, then stopped.

“Well done,” Cadell said.

Down below, two huge pipes rose out of the earth, dark smoke poured from their cavernous openings, and around that heat swarmed rippling clumps of shadow.

Witmoths.

The sight reminded Margaret of the vents and chimneys that had once dominated Willowhen Peak. Only here, at the pinnacle of these boiling mouths, no battle raged, these were meant to draw the Roil, meant to sustain it.

Margaret stared over at David, eyes bulging in his head, his mouth wide open like some sort of idiot. He held a pair of binoculars in one hand but he did not use them, perhaps too frightened of what they might reveal.

Now you know, Margaret thought. You have seen the power of this place. What was once abstraction has become reality for you.

David was not the only one to whom this was all new.

Kara Jade had lost her cockiness. “So many,” she whispered.

“The Roil is getting ready for something,” Cadell said. “And that should not be. The Roil does not push, it shambles. It drifts, it dreams: it does not do this.”

“What about the Grand Defeat?” David asked.

“Freak weather conditions,” Cadell said. “A hotter summer, a low pressure system that became a storm that lead to a heatburst. But there was no thought to it, no strategy. This is different.”

“Things have changed,” Margaret said, and slapped a fist against the wall of the gondola, hard enough that one of the Hideous Garment Flutes slipped free and tumble-flew away. She followed its wild improbable peristaltic flight: all those membranes sliding and billowing frantically. She had seen clouds of these beasts fly, loud and shrill, over Tate.

“An I-Bomb. If we possessed an I-Bomb, we could halt this here and clear away the madness with a single detonation.”

“But we do not.” Cadell snapped. “Nor do we have your parents’ laboratories.” He pointed down. “Though it appears our enemy has something similar. Miss Jade, heave too. Now!”

On the Roilscape beneath them, what could only be described as a cannon turned towards them, though most cannon did not look as though they had been grown, nor did they have chambers that bubbled and spat liquid fire.

“Now!”

Kara Jade already had the job in hand, her face a mask of horror and determination. “Strap yourselves in,” she said.

Kara muttered over her controls, the Roslyn Dawn jerked sharply to the left and rose about a hundred yards in what seemed little more than a heartbeat. However, it wasn’t quite enough.

There was a flash of detonation, and the airship lifted on a wave of fire.

WITHIN THE ROIL

David scrambled to his feet, his nose bleeding, spots dancing before his eyes. Glad I have such a thick skull.

At least no one seemed to have noticed his tumble.

“Told you to strap in, idiot!” Kara Jade said, swinging from her controls to glare at him. David dropped into a seat, pulled the belts tight around him.

“Did we take a direct hit?” Cadell demanded. The Old Man hadn’t strapped himself in. He stood by Kara now, peering over her controls. David wondered if they made any sense to him at all.

“No, we’ve everything functioning. A direct hit and you’d hear it, a direct hit and I think we’d be hitting the ground not long after. But I’m getting us out of here, now. Thank the Mothers of the Sky for all this heat. There are thermals enough to lift us to the moons. The Dawn ’s straining for the sky. Strap yourselves in. David, I’m talking to you.”

“Already have,” he said.

The nacelles coughed and shuddered, and the Roslyn Dawn raced into the air. David’s ears popped and he clutched at the armrests. Kara Jade worked furiously at the controls, venting gas and releasing ballast, pushing the Roslyn Dawn as far as she dared.

“If you don’t get it right, the lack of air pressure can burst the gas bladders,” she said to no one in particular. “And that is not a good thing. Kill an Aerokin quick smart. Foolish man, entering the Roil like it’s his right.”

There was another flash, however, this time, they were much further from it. David watched the great ball of fire hurtle past then plummet back down into the Roil. Something else caught his eye, a distant glint in the sky to the south that shot from east to west.

“What’s that?” he asked, pointing south west with a shaking hand.

It rushed past again (or at least he thought it rushed past) and was gone.

“Your imagination,” Kara Jade said. “Now quiet all of you. I need to concentrate.”

“What did you see?” Margaret asked, her voice uneasy.

David looked at her suspiciously. Just what did she know?

“I’m not sure what it was, but it’s gone now.”

Still, David stared south, eyes straining to see through all that murk. But nothing passed that way again.

The shift from Roil to sunlight was abrupt.

David’s eyes watered as he looked out beyond the shuddering edge of the Obsidian Curtain. Rain fell on the hills a hundred miles north of Chapman. A little to the west of those low hills Lake Uhl gleamed. A normal day, an unthreatened day, until he turned his head and the Roil was there behind him.

Even when he did not turn, it remained. Sunshine failed to scour from him what he had seen, the darkness had poisoned his world.

A ball of fire burst from the Roil, sailing past the Roslyn Dawn , it described a steep arc that ended in the deserted suburbs where it struck a building setting it alight, then another and another followed until a whole block blazed.

“Those heat sinks, how did they build them so fast?” Margaret asked. “They weren’t there a few days ago.”

Cadell grinned darkly. “Disturbing, isn’t it? I have my suspicions, Margaret, but none of them are good. Nor are they helpful at this time.” He turned to Kara. “Land this as quickly as you can.”

Kara grunted in response.

“What does he mean?” David asked Margaret. “What does he mean that could make this more disturbing than it already is?”

“Vastkind,” Margaret said. “I think that’s where his thoughts lead him.”

“Vastkind?” Here was something David had never heard of, and Margaret seemed surprised. “Beneath the crust, where all is heat and even the stone melts and becomes a kind of liquid fire – the burning yolk of the world. There the old, old books say, dwells the Vastkind, a proto-roilbeast. An Ur-beast for it is from the fire that the Roil was sprung, whether through the dark designs of the Master Engineers or nature, the books do not know. But they’re big, terribly big.”

David nodded his head and shivered. “I don’t like the sound of that at all. At least, up here, we’re relatively safe.”

“We’re not safe yet, relative or otherwise,” Kara Jade said. “The bastards on the wall have started firing at us.”

She pointed behind her where flags hung from the wall. “Quick, the red and the grey flag and the green one two. Wave them out the port window.”