Some of these powers sought to curb the destruction by creating sorcerers of their own: priests who would shape the forces of magic in obedience to their patron's will. Thus began the practice of gods granting spells to the most devout of their followers.
But some celestial powers believed that fighting magic with magic was purest folly. «Surely,» these powers said, «the best way to stop this madness is to stop magic itself.» For many days, they debated how they could do this. The flux of magic had come to fill the multiverse, and no one was strong enough to exhaust the supply. At last, however, one group of powers, the most exalted among their colleagues, devised a plan: if they could not shut off the flux itself, they could at least prevent lesser beings from sculpting the flux, so that humans and others could no longer wield the stuff of sorcery.
Then gathered the greatest of those powers. Their names are forgotten; we know them only as the Warrior, the Poet, the Witch, the Prayer, the Healer, the Scholar, and Death. Using all the knowledge at their command, they constructed a laughably simple device – a grinder, such as a peasant might use to grind out pepper or salt. This grinder, however, ground out a never-ending supply of sticky white dust.
Such a simple thing; and yet, the dust was not simple. In the presence of a concentration of magic, the dust fed on that magic and grew as hot as molten steel – a magical heat so pure and piercing it could burn the very fiends of the pit. Now imagine, O Queen, what might happen to your court mage if he had particles of such dust on his clothes or skin. As he began to cast a spell, he would draw into himself the flux of magical energies, concentrating it within his being… when suddenly, his skin would sear with agony, his clothes catch fire! Wracked with pain, he could not complete the spell; or if he pressed on by sheer force of will, he would continue to burn until he turned to ash.
This was the plan of the celestial powers – to grind out such dust and spread it throughout the world… indeed, through all the realms of the multiverse. In every place, the dust would disperse, settling on people, on plants and animals, on houses and seas; and how could mages escape that dust? It would settle on their bodies, their clothes, their food, their drink… no amount of washing could get every particle.
Armed with the grinder, its creators began to tour the Ten Thousand Worlds. Wherever they spread their dust, magicians quickly ended their sorceries. Of course, some sought to develop spells to protect themselves from the dust; but how could they cast such enchantments? Even those who thought themselves flameproof, who danced with fire and drank molten rock, found themselves ravaged by the dust's awful heat. Thus all sorcery was suspended, and for a time, the Ten Thousand Worlds returned to the simplicity of life without magic. Most people, I believe, breathed a sigh of relief.
But what of the other celestial powers… the ones who had armed their priests with magicks of their own? Those powers raged in fury at the anti-magic dust; for the deities with magic-wielding followers revelled in the influence exerted by their priests, and without magic, the priests were mortals like anyone else. Congregations began to ask uncomfortable questions, the most important being, «Do I truly want to worship this god?» People may bow their heads to any deity if there are sufficient rewards for devotion, or punishments for disobedience; but if the rewards and punishments stop, congregations soon realize some deities are less worthy of worship than others.
Great were the howls of wrath from celestial powers snubbed by their flocks. They raged against the creators of the grinder, and banded together to declare a war of vengeance. Long did the battle thunder through the heavens. The seven creators were the greatest of the powers, but arrayed against them were so many angered deities that at last the seven were defeated. I cannot tell you their fates, O Queen; some scholars say the creators were obliterated, while others say they were torn apart but soon re-formed to become the gods we revere today.
As for the grinder, the other celestial powers found they did not have the strength to unmake it, or even to stop the continuing flow of magic-killing dust. Their solution was to create a second grinder and a second type of dust: a brown dust that draws and channels the magical flux away from the white dust. I have told you, O Queen, what would happen if your court mage attempted to cast a spell with the white dust on his skin; but if he also had brown dust it would act as a funnel, drawing magic away from the white dust and directing it into your mage's soul. The white dust would not burn, and the magical flux would be even more focussed than usual.
In fact, O Queen, your court mage and all things in all places contain a few motes of both the white and brown dust. The creators of the first grinder spread its dust to all worlds; and after those creators were defeated, the other powers spread equal quantities of their own dust to counteract the first. Once the different dusts had come to balance, the two grinders were bound together, like mundane salt and pepper shakers, and thrown into an empty plane of existence. There they have continued to grind, even to this very day. They have filled that plane with their dust, from one horizon to the other, and they will persist in their grinding to the end of time.
Or so the ancient tales say.
When Wheezle finished reading, neither of us spoke for several seconds. Even the wights were silent, their burning gaze lost in some unknown distance.
«Miriam told us Rivi hated magic,» I said at last.
«Indeed,» Wheezle nodded. «And if she finds the two grinders… one grinder makes it impossible for people to cast magic, and the other is essentially the antidote. An exceedingly powerful pair of weapons.»
«What would happen,» I asked, «if she spread the white dust over a battlefield? While she and her allies were safely covered in the brown.»
«Magic decides many battles,» Wheezle replied, «especially when your opponents have none. With proper tactics, Rivi could become a fearsome conqueror.»
«Of course,» I said, «some god would eventually stop her. Step in and seize the grinders.»
Wheezle shook his head. «I think if one god tried to possess such powerful artifacts, other gods would prevent that from happening. Suppose, for example, that a good god claimed the grinders; evil gods would fear such weapons wielded in the cause of virtue, and would try to take the grinders for themselves. The struggle might precipitate Ragnarok itself – the final battle of god against god, wherein the cosmos is destroyed. No,» Wheezle said, «the gods will be extremely wary of intervening… and if any god does, Rivi will be the least of the multiverse's problems.»
«But suppose Rivi tries to conquer Sigil!» I protested. «Suppose she spreads her dust, then leads in an army equipped with magic. Surely The Lady of Pain would take direct action then – it's her job to protect Sigil.»
«The Lady of Pain may or may not be a god,» Wheezle replied. «She is Sigil's legendary protector, but she is also a great mystery. Perhaps she is only a sorcerer herself; in that case, she will be as helpless as any streetcorner conjuror. If by chance she is a god… well, as I say, gods of all persuasions would band together to prevent any other deity from claiming the grinders. Who knows the outcome?»
I shuddered. Scant minutes ago, our party had just come to rescue Yasmin and the others; now, it looked like the fate of whole worlds was on the line. Truth to tell, I still cared about Yasmin more than some abstract threat toward Sigil or any other realm… but the added pressure didn't help.
8. THREE SCORCHED PRISONERS
Somberly, Wheezle and I left the control bunker, emerging once more into the full din of the machinery room. My Dustman colleague had stuffed his pockets with scrolls and documents, including the diary of Felice DeVail. Perhaps we didn't have time to read any more right now, but he fully intended to check through everything when he got the chance.
The wights greeted us with spike-toothed smiles, but Hezekiah and Miriam didn't notice us at first – they were too busy talking, or rather yelling into each other's ears so they could be heard above the clang of pistons. Even with them shouting, I couldn't make out what they were saying from any distance away; and as we approached, Hezekiah saw us and guiltily broke off his conversation.
I didn't like the look of that. Miriam was scarcely an irresistible seductress, but how much voluptuous charm would it take to turn the Clueless boy's head? She could never talk him into knifing Wheezle or me in the back – he was too naively virtuous for that – yet I worried he might help her «just a little» and get us into trouble just a lot.
«Remember she's the enemy,» I told him, shouting loudly myself. «She's untrustworthy and dangerous.»
«She says I'm dangerous too,» he replied. «The way I scared her makes her want to… she says she'd like to serve me.»
That made me blink in surprise – I hadn't expected her taking the submissive approach. When Hezekiah made himself the embodiment of terror, did he touch a responsive chord in Miriam's heart? Some people love to be overwhelmed, I knew that… and when I glanced at Miriam, I saw her gazing at the boy with an expression that was almost worshipful. Of course, it was quite probably a sham: just a different sham than I'd anticipated. «Be careful,» I muttered to the boy, then turned away, embarrassed.
* * *
Within a minute, we had left behind the clamor of ratchets and throttles and gears. It hadn't been an interesting noise anyway – lots of volume but no finesse.
«Where are you leading us now?» I asked Miriam.
«Petrov's quarters are just up ahead,» she answered. «You said he might have helped capture your friends. If he's in his room, you can ask him yourself.»
«Looking forward to it,» I assured her as I drew my rapier from its sheath. Even if she was leading us into a trap, I'd be happy to face Petrov with sword in hand.
The corridor opened into a sizable chamber with at least twenty bunk beds set into the walls, like the recessed niches of a mausoleum. In the middle of the room stood a few metal tables bolted to the floor, the sort of tables you might see in an army barracks, where the soldiers sit, play cards, and boast of their sexual exploits. These tables, however, were too brightly polished for a real barracks, with nary a stain from spilled beer, nor scratches from mugs slammed down in anger when someone's poker hand held one ace too many. The rest of the room also lacked any of the normal signs of occupation: the lingering smells of bodies, the scuff marks of boots on the floor.
«Remarkably tidy for a hide-out,» I said to Miriam. «Is this really where your cronies live?»
«Don't be a leatherhead,» she growled. «We underlings live farther down the hall. Mr. High-and-Mighty Petrov couldn't bear to tuck down with the likes of us, so he moved into this empty room. He tried to tell us Rivi wanted him close in case she got cold in the night… but that slag has so much ice in her veins, she couldn't warm up if she kissed a red dragon.»
«Uncle Toby once gave a sponge bath to a dragon,» Hezekiah piped up. «I don't know what color it was.»
«Hush,» I told him.
«No, really, this is an interesting story. The dragon had contracted a case of mummy rot from some adventurer she'd eaten, and Uncle Toby —»
I put a finger to his lips. «Button it,» I whispered. «Someone's coming.»
Chalk up another for a Sensate's razor-sharp hearing. Some distance ahead of us, a stream of grunts and groans echoed down the corridor, punctuated now and then by a juicy upswell of profanity. Wheezle gestured and immediately one of the wights wrapped its rotting hand over Miriam's mouth, just in case she tried to shout a warning. She tossed Wheezle an aggrieved look, as if the thought would never enter her mind… but even if she yelled her head off, the man approaching us probably wouldn't have heard. He seemed too caught up in venting his piteous moans to notice any of the world around him.
Thirty seconds later, he walked into what he thought was an empty room. The bleached white hair showed it was our old friend Petrov… but a Petrov who had clearly seen action since the showdown on the Vertical Sea. His head sported a blood-soaked bandage, and his bare chest had turned a bright lobster red. Under other circumstances, I might have believed his skin was sunburned; but I knew this particular damage was frostbite, courtesy of the blistering cold from Oonah DeVail's staff.
It made me smile that Petrov hadn't walked away from the fight unscathed. Unfortunately, the fact that he was walking at all suggested his side had won in the end. If Yasmin had come out on top, Petrov would even now be dining on dust outside the Spider.
Like a mountain of misery, the big basher shuffled to one of the tables and sat down with a heavy thud, letting his head slump forward into his hands. In all the time it took for him to get into the room, he had never spared a glance into any of the recessed bunks… which means he didn't notice eight wights and assorted breathers lying there in wait. His first clue that he wasn't alone must have been the tip of my rapier pricking the back of his neck.
«Greetings, honored hoodlum,» Wheezle whispered in Petrov's ear. «We would not hurt you for the world, but you have accidentally sat where Mr. Cavendish is about to thrust his sword. I suggest you keep very, very still.»
* * *
Wheezle assigned four wights to hold Petrov down, a number which struck me as excessive. True, old Bleach-Hair was a bulky brawler of a berk, and on a good night he could sling a pair of tavern wenches under each arm; but at the moment, a five-year-old with sharp fingernails could drop Petrov to his knees by poking the man's frostbitten tum-tum.
«Should he really be moaning like that?» Hezekiah asked. «I think he's hurt.»
«He wants us to let down our guard,» I said, as the wights slammed our captive onto the hard metal table. The jarring sound of impact was quickly replaced by a wail of agony from Petrov. «He's such a big baby,» I muttered.
Wheezle clambered up on a chair so he could lift himself to eye level with the man. «Now, honored hoodlum,» he said, «we would like to know what happened to our colleagues: the ones you confronted back at the Vertical Sea.»
«The sodding berks froze my hide off!» he growled. «But I got my revenge – showed them what a haunch of beef feels like inside the oven.»
I let the tip of my rapier nestle down against his Adam's apple. «Did you kill them?»
«I piking well wanted to… but Qi and Chi said no, Rivi would want to question them.»
«So all three are alive?»
«They were the last time I saw them. Not pretty,» he added with a leer, «but alive.»
With miniscule effort, I could have leaned forward and sent the bladepoint through his windpipe. Not pretty, but alive… the words flooded like poison into my heart. Petrov and his cronies had been carrying firewands as they fought our friends. I thought of Yasmin looking as savagely burnt as the victims in the court rotunda; and I had to walk away quickly before I forgot myself.
«Who are Qi and Chi?» I heard Hezekiah asking.
«Thieves. A githzerai and githyanki – they helped bring down your pus-swilling friends. While the boys and I made things toasty up front, Qi and Chi snuck up from behind and tickled some spines with steel. Your group surrendered nice and quiet once they'd been ventilated a bit.»
«Where are our teammates now?» Wheezle asked.
«Go pike yourself.» Petrov aimed some spittle in Wheezle's general direction. He got more on himself than he did on the gnome, but it was the thought that counted. «I've said enough already,» Petrov snarled, «and I'm not rattling my bone-box no more.»
«Dear, oh dear,» I tsked from the corner of the room, «torture time again. Hezekiah,» I raised my voice, «what faction do you think boasts the most fearsome torturers?»
«Ummm… the Mercykillers?»
«Not a bad guess,» I told him. «The Mercykillers like torturing people and they put a lot of effort into it… but alas, they're overly crude. They're too fond of breaking bones and spilling blood; they haven't devoted themselves to discovering what genuinely causes the maximum amount of pain. The true students of excruciation are… well, I blush to admit it, but the most adept torturers in the multiverse belong to my own faction, the Sensates.»
«You're a Sensate?» Petrov asked uneasily.
«That's right,» I answered, stepping up to the table. «We've spent centuries documenting every possible sensation the human body can experience. Many people think we only pursue pleasure, but that's wrong. We devote equal time to the study of pain. To the science of pain. For example, let me try to remember the location of the capitus nerve.»
I leaned over Petrov's body and drew out my tweak-knife. It was not an imposing blade, just a tiny thing I kept for whittling pen nibs when I wanted to sketch in ink; but it had a good sharp edge that I'd whetted less than a week earlier. In a pinch, it could double as a razor.
«The capitus nerve,» I said, making up the story as I went along, «runs all the way from the ball of the right foot to the left lobe of the brain.» I drew the unsharpened side of the blade up the length of Petrov's body. «Did you know that the longer the nerve is, the more pain it can experience? And the capitus nerve is the longest nerve in the body.»
«Who the sod cares?» Petrov snapped.
«I, for one, find it most stimulating,» Wheezle replied. «Please continue, honored Cavendish.»
«The capitus nerve runs through the most pain-sensitive areas of the anatomy. The knee. The inside of the thigh. The groin, of course.» I tapped each of these lightly with the flat of the blade. «Then there's the chest, which I notice is already in a tender condition. There's a great deal of individual variation in the route of the capitus through the chest, but you can usually find it by cross-correlating with a few other key meridians. First you find the small intestine…»
I jabbed my thumb deep into the pit of Petrov's stomach. He shrieked, probably thinking I was using the knife; or maybe he was reacting to true agony, from the frostbitten skin of his gut. «Ohh,» I said with great sympathy, «if you think that hurt, you're in trouble. The nerve I just hit was an itty-bitty one… scarcely able to feel pain at all. About the same size as this one.»
Extending a knuckle, I rubbed briskly along the man's sternum, raking back and forth across a knot of nerves I happened to know lurked there just under the skin. Petrov howled again. I wiped off my knuckle; flakes of chapped skin had stuck to it when it pulled away from Petrov's breastbone.
«Well, those two points of reference have given me a bearing on where the capitus nerve should be,» I told him. Lifting my knife, I added, «It may take some digging to hit the nerve bang-on, but I guarantee it will be worth the wait.» I leaned in toward one of the wights who was holding Petrov down. «Could you tilt his head so it's pointing away from me? They always vomit when I do this, and I don't have a change of clothes.»
«All right!» Petrov yelled. «Who the pike cares? I'll take you where the rotten sods are locked up.»
A few seconds ticked away in silence; then Wheezle touched my sleeve. «Could you show me where the capitus nerve is anyway? I would be most interested in learning.»
Wordlessly, I shook my head.
* * *
More corridors to slog through, and time was ticking by. I wondered how long it would be till Rivi's wights found the grinders out in the arena of dust. There was no way to guess. If I were a true hero like my father, maybe I'd be racing after Rivi and the Fox instead of Yasmin: putting the fate of the multiverse ahead of a few individuals. We had Unveiler and could command the wights to attack our enemies. Unfortunately, the wights would all be wandering in the airless arena, where they couldn't hear us calling orders; meanwhile, we'd face a fire-mage and a mind-raper, plus their band of bully-bashers armed with flame-wands.
No, I decided, my father might have succeeded against such a mass of enemies, but I couldn't handle the odds. Saving Yasmin and the others was at least manageable. Once we rescued our friends, we could hightail it back to Sigil and fetch reinforcements. It wasn't a heroic plan, but it was something we might survive.
In time, I heard telltale sounds of clanking up ahead and Petrov led us into another machinery room, twin to the previous one. Obviously, the Glass Spider had several independent drive mechanisms, each with its own engine room; a separate motor for each of the Spider's legs. This machine room had the same number of pistons chugging away, the same layout, the same noise… but the control bunker in the corner had a huge wooden beam blocking the door shut.
«They're in there,» Petrov pointed to the door. «Gods rot you all.»
«Amen,» Wheezle agreed earnestly.
Three wights held Petrov, one held Miriam, and the other four went to work moving the beam. Judging from the way they strained, I estimated the timber weighed close to a ton. It took the wights a full minute to get the beam clear of the door, and in that time Hezekiah made a discovery: Oonah's ice-staff, tucked in under a desk whose surface glowed with incomprehensible runes of light.
«Rivi threw it there,» Petrov said grudgingly, as Hezekiah dragged the staff out. «Wouldn't let anyone else touch it because it was magic. She hates magic and every damned sorcerer in creation.»
«Doesn't that make the Fox nervous?» I asked.
«The Fox hasn't got enough brains to be nervous,» Petrov answered. «He's too sodding barmy to see Rivi's just using him.»
«Using him for what?»
But Petrov clamped his jaw tight and wouldn't say another word. I didn't press the issue – once we got old Bleach-Hair back to Sigil, the Harmonium could sweat everything out of him.
The wights dragged away the beam at last, and Hezekiah leapt forward to open the door. I dashed after him, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, and barely managed to drag him back in time… because the second the blockage was gone, the door burst open with the force of a cannonball and Kiripao hit the floor in a diving roll. His momentum carried him up to his feet in one fluid motion, and he had embedded his fist through the ribcage of the nearest wight before he realized we were the good guys.
The wight, in life a female elf, glared pointedly down at Kiripao's hand plunged wrist-deep into her chest. Kiripao blinked for a few moments, then got the message. «Sorry,» he muttered, and levered the hand out of her thoracic cavity, dragging with it some stray bone fragments and a spill of the red powder that seemed to serve these wights as blood.
«Could I smell your hand?» I whispered to him.
«No.»
* * *
Kiripao's robes had been reduced to charred rags during the fire-fight. He'd rearranged the remaining scraps into a passable loincloth, leaving his chest and legs bare. The flesh thus revealed was a three-colored patchwork: the angry red of burns, the pale pink of an elf's normal skin, and a milky white as unblemished as a freshly gessoed canvas. I'd seen that white before, and not just on blank canvases – it was new skin, recently regenerated by a powerful influx of healing magic. Over the next few hours, it would gradually adjust itself to match the rest of Kiripao's body; in the meantime however, it showed that the pious brother had taken quite a beating, and someone had patched him up afterward.
Of course, I told myself, Kiripao must be in good standing with his god. If he prayed for his injuries to heal, the deity would answer his prayers. And he could have patched up Yasmin and Oonah too in the same way… at least to the point where they were out of immediate danger.
Oonah hobbled from the control room a moment later, working up a warm smile when she saw this was a rescue party. Whatever healing she had received, it wasn't enough – her legs moved stiffly, as if each step brought her fierce pain. Her arms had the same stiffness as she reached to take back her ice-staff from Hezekiah; but once she grasped the staff in her hands, some of her constriction appeared to ease. I wondered if the staff had inherent healing powers, or if she simply felt better holding it. With reverent care, she set the butt of the staff onto the ground, then leaned her weight wearily upon it.
Several more seconds passed; I held my breath, waiting for Yasmin to emerge from the control room. Kiripao and Oonah said nothing. When I could bear it no longer, I rushed to the doorway and plunged inside.
When you're a Handmaid of Entropy, it seems you don't respond well to healing.
Yasmin sat propped against the far wall of the control room, her head sagging, her hands lying limply in her lap. For a moment, I didn't know if she was even alive; but then her chest lifted with a soft and shallow breath.
In a heartbeat I was crouching by her side, but reluctant to touch her for fear of causing pain. Her dragon-skin sheath had not been damaged by the firewands, but where the sheath hadn't offered any defense – her arms, her bare shoulders – Yasmin's flesh was deeply singed. Her hair had burned down to the scalp. Even worse, there was a patch of wet stickiness on her back, just below one shoulder blade. I guessed that Qi or Chi must have dirked her with a magic dagger, strong enough to pierce the tough dragon hide that was supposed to protect her.
With a tortured moan, Yasmin lifted her head to look at me. Her cheeks glistened with tears, squeezed out by the pain against her will. In a sighing whisper, she said, «You'll have to… draw another sketch of me, Britlin. The other one…»
She looked down at her hand and moved the fingers slightly. Flakes of burnt paper fluttered into her lap.
«What can I do to help?» I asked.
«Not much,» Oonah said from behind my back. «She's resistant to healing magic – all the Doomguard are.»
«I tried my best,» Kiripao added, «but her will fought back too strongly.»
«Entropy… must not be cheated,» Yasmin whispered. «A Handmaid… must stay… loyal…»
Her voice drifted off. At first, I thought she was simply too tired to continue speech; but her eyes had focused on something at the far end of the room, and I turned to see the others entering the control room in the company of the wights.
«Wights…» she murmured.
«Don't worry,» I assured her, «they're on our side.»
«But they are… they have…»
A flicker of life pierced through her dull resignation; I had no idea why. «Yasmin, don't get yourself excited – save your strength.»
«But the wights,» she forced herself to speak. «They could… contribute…»
She was too weak to finish her sentence, but Wheezle hurried forward. «As a Dustman, I am familiar with the devotions of Entropy, though I am not a follower myself. Handmaids disapprove of conventional curative magics, but they practice a different form of healing that adheres to the precepts of their faith. I believe they can simply… withdraw health from one body and transfer it to someone else.»
«Not all of the health is transferred,» Yasmin whispered. «Some life energy is simply… dissipated… in the process. Praise Entropy.»
Immediately, I offered, «If she wants a life infusion, she can have some from me.»
«No,» Yasmin said, putting great force into that single word. «The wights…»
«She is correct,» Wheezle nodded. «Once health begins to drain from one body to another, the flow is next to impossible to stop. Better to take the energy from the wights, honored Cavendish. It will lay them cleanly to rest, just as Unveiler would; and it is an obviously noble cause.»
«Noble!» Petrov snorted. «Pardon me while I puke.»
Hezekiah calmly threw a backfist into Petrov's gut. The man doubled over, stopped from falling only by the wights who held his arms.
«Not bad,» said Kiripao, «but try for more snap in your wrist.»
* * *
Wheezle asked for four volunteers from the wights. All of them stepped forward, including the ones holding Petrov and Miriam. I wondered if they were simply eager to please the person who held the scepter, or if some measure of generosity still lurked behind those flaming eyes. Perhaps all undead possessed a degree of good will as well as bad; they merely walked down wicked paths because their creators were almost always evil.
For the sake of simplicity, Wheezle chose the four wights who didn't have their hands full with our prisoners. The first was an orc woman with greasy black hair and a more than usually greenish complexion. She settled gently onto her knees beside Yasmin and actually managed a smile (despite her boar-like tusks). Then the wight hissed softly and held out her hand for Yasmin to take.
Yasmin's lips moved in silent invocation. I found it difficult to picture an impersonal force like Entropy being able to confer favors on its faithful… but how different was this from the practices of druids? 