Philip Reeve - A Darkling Plain

The glare faded; the shrieking ended in a thunderclap, and then the night returned. The ground still shuddered. Hester still held Tom tight. Grike hissed and shook himself, recovering. A pillar of cloud marked the place where the light had been, and at its foot a red glow gathered, a brazier brightening among the mountains.

“Zhan Shan!” Tom heard people saying. “Zhan Shan!” he said himself. He was very frightened. Hester’s embrace was comforting for a moment, until he remembered and pushed her away. “They have turned it on Zhan Shan! The holy mountain is erupting!”

“Who’d want to blow up a volcano?” asked Hester, angry at herself for having hugged him. Around them bells were ringing, whistles blowing, white ships rising into the night. Who could say when the weapon would strike again?

“Come on,” she said.

They wove through the busy harbor to the pan where the Jenny was moored. A group of Green Storm aviators ran toward her. Hester shouted at them that she was taking this ship. A hatch at the stern of the envelope hung open; she barked at the startled ground crew to close it and stand clear. The men shrugged and saluted, but as they drifted away, a harbor officer came hurrying over, shouting in Airsperanto. “Where are your orders? What’s your unit? All ships have been commandeered for General Naga’s strike against the barbarians!”

“No.” Hester held out her hand, showing him Oenone’s ring. “I’m taking her out myself; Lady Naga commands it.”

The man had started to salute when he saw the ring, but stopped when he heard whose it was. “Lady Naga is a lackey of the Municipal Darwinist conspiracy!” he shouted, turning. “Friends! Here! The traitor Zero’s accomplices are—”

Hester made her hand into a fist and the ring flashed as she punched the man hard in the stomach and again in the head as he curled over. She thought of killing him, but she did not want to with Tom watching. Leaving him gasping in the shadows at the edge of the pan, she hurried the others up the gangplank. Other ships were taking off” from the neighboring pans, big transports going to collect troops from the plateau above. Nobody noticed the Jenny rise among them, and her red envelope faded quickly into the night as she veered away across the lake of Batmunkh Nor. By the time the harbor officer recovered enough to start shouting for help, there was nothing to be seen of her but a wreath of exhaust smoke dissolving into the air above the pan.

They flew without lights, but the light of the eruption on faraway Zhan Shan came in through the gondola windows, red and unhealthy and bright enough to read by. While Hester steered, Tom stood at the window and looked out at the crescent-shaped gash that had been torn in the volcano’s northeastern side. The mountain itself was hidden in the darkness and the distance, so the gash seemed to hang in the sky like a burning moon.

“I still don’t understand,” Tom muttered to himself. “Why attack a mountain?”

Grike heard him. “ZHAN SHAN COULD GO ON ERUPTING FOR WEEKS,” the Stalker said. “THE PUMICE CLOUDS WILL DISRUPT AIR TRAFFIC OVER THOUSANDS OF MILES. WHOLE PROVINCES WILL BE SMOTHERED. IT IS A BLOW FROM WHICH THE GREEN STORM CANNOT RECOVER.”

“Then the cities do control ODIN…”

“THE STALKER FANG CONTROLS IT.”

“The Stalker Fang’s alive?” Grike nodded.

Hester, who had been intent on steering the airship past a rearing pinnacle of rock, relaxed a little as they flew into clear air beyond it, and looked back at her passengers. “We’ll circle around and head west,” she said. “I can set you down at London, Tom.”

“What about your friend Lady Naga?” asked Tom. He had never met the unfortunate young woman, but he felt guilty at leaving her locked up. “Perhaps when Naga’s ships have flown off, we could—”

“she is under guard,” said Grike. “they would not let us take her alive. if naga blames her for odin, there is a simpler way to save her: i will find odin’s ground station and prove who is really responsible.”

“But the ground station could be anywhere,” protested Hester.

“the stalker fang has returned to shan guo,” said Grike, turning, sniffing the musty air as if he hoped to pick up the other Stalker’s scent. He found a map of the Heavenly Mountains and spread it on the chart table. He stabbed his finger down on Snow Fan Province, then Batmunkh Gompa. “she abandoned the limpet here. she killed popjoy here. she is in these mountains somewhere. set me down, and i shall find her.”

“Anna Fang had a house at a place called Erdene Tezh,” said Tom. “We found the deeds to it among her things when we took over the Jenny.” He pointed to the place on the chart. “Maybe she’s gone home.”

“it is possible. the stalker fang claimed to have memories of her former life. perhaps they have drawn her back.”

Tom felt pleased that the Stalker liked his suggestion. “Do you think we should go back to Batmunkh Gompa and tell somebody?” he asked. “Definitely not!” said Hester.

“THEY WOULD NOT BELIEVE US,” said Grike. “THEY THINK WE ARE PAWNS OF THEIR ENEMIES. I MUST GO TO ERDENE TEZH AND SEARCH FOR HER MYSELF.”

“Is that your own idea?” asked Hester suspiciously. “Or is one of Oenone’s secret programs still running in that brain of yours?”

Grike turned to look at her. “I DO NOT KNOW. BUT DR. ZERO REBUILT ME FOR A PURPOSE. I AM THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN DESTROY THE STALKER FANG. I MUST SEEK HER OUT AND RE-ASSASSINATE HER.”

“Thought you couldn’t kill anybody.”

“STALKERS ARE NOT ALIVE, SO IT WILL NOT BE KILLING,” Grike said patiently. “EVEN IF IT WERE, IT WOULD HAVE TO BE DONE.” He waved one massive hand at the windows, at the mountain burning in the south. “IF SHE IS ALLOWED TO CONTINUE THIS DESTRUCTION, MILLIONS OF ONCE-BORN WILL PERISH.”

Tom swallowed and said nervously, “I can fly you to Erdene Tezh.”

“It’s not our business, Tom,” Hester warned him.

“It is,” Tom told her. “Because if you’re right, we’re the only people who really know who’s responsible for all this. What sort of world will be left for Wren if we let it keep happening? We have to do something.” He was about to explain the connection between ODIN and the Tin Book, but that would only make Hester think it was Wren’s fault, which wasn’t what he meant at all. “ I have to do something,” he said weakly.

“All right,” said Hester. He was as lovely and infuriating as ever. She’d never been able to resist his stupid bravery. “All right. Let’s go to this Erdene Thingy place. It’s not as if I’ve got anything better to do. Only when we get there, you’re not going to do anything heroic; you’re not going to risk your life, or try and talk to the Stalker Fang. You’re going to stay safe in the airship and let Grike go and kill her. And this time he’d better do it properly.”

Wren, awakening, wondered for a moment where she was, remembered what had happened, felt afraid, and then decided that she did not care, because Theo was there with her, breathing softly, his face pressed into the curve of her neck, the heavy, comforting weight of his arm thrown across her.

They had gone west when they’d left Crouch End, because all the roads and paths Wren knew through the wreckage led west. They had walked for hours, listening out all the time for sounds of pursuit. They had seen the pulse of fire plunge into the mountains and stood in silence, hand in hand, watching the red glow gather in the sky behind Zhan Shan, throwing the summit of the giant volcano into silhouette. At last they had settled down to rest on the very westernmost edge of the debris field, where it petered out into a rash of smaller fields, scattered chunks of track and deck plate, towering wheels. They had taken shelter inside one of the wheels, in a cylindrical cave about twelve feet high where a crank must once have been attached. (Or a connecting rod, or a gubbins of some other kind; neither of them knew enough about the wheels of cities to say for certain.) It was, at least, dry, and not too cold, and they had cuddled together there with Wren’s pack as a pillow and fallen quickly asleep.