Alan Campbell - Iron Angel

Dill had taken a long and twisted route only to end up mere yards from his pursuers. Now only a foot of stonework separated him from the Mesmerist priests and their cage of bones. He heard them pause on the other side of the wall.

Dill froze.

Where was the doorway?

Something metal clicked. There was another pause. A low hum. And then Dill heard the bone-cage move on again. He breathed.

He turned around to find the doorway facing him. It occupied one of the side walls of the alcove, and its tiny dark eyes all seemed to be fixed on the angel. As soon as Dill saw it, it cried out:

Back here! The white crow is hiding here!

The doorway slid around the alcove, moving to the rear wall where it now formed an opening between the angel and the channel in which his pursuers were approaching.

They came through the doorway with tridents.

Dill backed away as two Icarates stepped into the alcove. Sparks burst from their armour and showered the waters around their boots, raising a smell like scorched meat. Their iron weapons hummed; their eye lenses and copper mouth-wires shone. The remaining pursuer rolled the bone-cage up close to the doorway, but that hideous sphere was much too large to pass through this narrow gap.

The doorway giggled.

The first Icarate raised his trident.

But Hasp had taught Dill how to fight. He had shown Dill how to manipulate his soul to create weapons and armour. And Dill used his new skills now.

He willed himself a shield. A light steel buckler flashed into existence, already strapped to his knuckles.

The angel punched, slamming the shield into the trident before the Icarate could complete his lunge. The buckler deflected the heavy iron weapon, forcing it wide. One of its forks connected with the shaft of the second Icarate’s trident.

And a concussion shook the air.

Dill took a step back as both tridents sparked violently. The Mesmerist priests’ bodies jerked once and suddenly became rigid. Smoke hissed from their armour.

Wicked crow! You’ve ruined their armour.

The doorway was shrieking, shuttling rapidly back and forth along the wall in agitation.

Dill studied the two Icarates. They remained completely immobile. They can’t move without their armour? He grinned and stepped closer to the doorway. “Let the other one through.”

The doorway hesitated, but then it began to race back and forth along the wall with an even greater urgency than before. No!

Dill changed his shield to a sturdy iron pike. He clutched the shaft in both fists and drove the weapon downwards through the moving doorway, forcing the point hard against the ground opposite.

With a loud clang, the doorway came to an abrupt halt against the shaft of the pike. It slid left, and then right, but it could not move its side columns past this new obstruction. Dill had skewered it. He beckoned to the remaining Icarate.

It approached the doorway with a hammer.

Dill felt pressure mounting on his pike as the doorway struggled to free itself. It was pushed hard to the left, trying to move the pike. Dill maintained his grip, using every ounce of his strength to hold the weapon firmly in place. The tip of the pike scraped across the ground, but he gasped and held on. Just a moment longer. His arms were shaking. The doorway shuddered and heaved against the pike.

The last Icarate ducked inside the doorway.

When the Mesmerist priest was halfway through, Dill willed his pike to disappear. Faced with a complete and immediate lack of resistance to its enormous efforts, the doorway abruptly shot away along the wall, carrying the hapless Icarate with it. Unable to shed its momentum, it struck the adjoining wall at tremendous speed. But while the doorway could pass through solid stone, Menoa’s priest could not.

Pieces of the crushed Icarate fell to the floor of the alcove, sparking briefly before they died.

Dill moved on.

The doorway continued to hound his every step. Enraged at being tricked, it shrieked and yelled and announced the angel’s presence to anyone who might have been around to hear it.

Dill couldn’t escape it, so he needed to find a way to destroy it. As far as he could tell, the Mesmerist creation consisted of nothing more than two upright stone columns with a lintel across the top. Yet it moved through the solid walls of the Maze like a bubble of air through water.

It seemed indestructible.

White crow, it yelled. Icarate slayer. It remained a few paces behind Dill, tracing the wall of yet another long, curving canal.

What would Hasp have done? Dill reached into his pocket and took out the apple the god had given him before they’d parted. The fruit looked even smaller and more rotten than before, but tasted surprisingly sweet. It boosted his energy and confidence.

And it gave him an idea.

During his journey through Hell, Dill had passed several ruined temples, quadrangles full of monoliths and arches and rotting black stonework. Icarate holy sites, Hasp had once told him-their ancient fly-infested facades rose higher than the surrounding canals and ziggurats.

A short distance away, Dill could see one of these structures now. Red light bled through the gaping windows of a crumbling black tower-a fanglike silhouette against the hot skies.

Dill changed his course towards the ruin.

As he drew nearer, the Maze began to show obvious signs of deterioration. The walls between canals were older here, much more dilapidated. In some places they had collapsed entirely, forming ragged gaps between the channels. Steps sank down into deep wells or spiraled up around fingers of dark stone with no apparent purpose. The ghostly faces within the walls looked different, too-something odd, almost inhuman about their eyes.

The doorway grew suspicious. Each time it came up against a broken wall, it was forced to turn back and find an alternative route.

You won’t lose me in this decaying labyrinth, it crooned. The Maze has countless walls. There is always a way through.

Finally Dill reached the ruined tower. It rose from the center of a spacious quadrangle full of spikes of black rock. A ring of gallows had been built around the building’s foundations, although none of the nooses were currently occupied. Several walls extended inwards from the quadrangle’s perimeter, like the teeth of a mantrap, but none of them reached the tower itself. Each ended in a pile of rubble, yards from the building.

Dill examined one of these partitions. The stonework was wet, rotting; it crumbled away under his hand. He set off again, following the wall towards the tower.

The doorway kept up with him. You won’t escape by hiding in that tower, it said. The Icarates perform their rituals in such places. Dangerous things lie within.

Dill reached the end of the wall, and stopped. The doorway could go no further.

You are still surrounded by walls, it snarled. Run and hide. I can wait forever for you to reappear. I’ll tell Menoa’s priests where you are.

But Dill had no intention of hiding. He stared at the tower for a long moment, frowning, as he pretended to weigh his options. Then he strolled a few paces back the way he had come, halted, and regarded the tower once more. The doorway was waiting, watching him to see what he would do.

Dill willed himself a hammer-an enormous iron brute of a war-hammer. He swung it hard at the wall, and the fragile stonework crumpled under the blow. The top third of the wall teetered, then fell forward and crashed to the ground. He raised the weapon again.

By now the doorway had realized what was happening. It screeched and raced back towards the angel.

A second hammer blow took out another two feet of stonework. Dill had made a jagged rift in the top half of the wall.