Rachel realized that the other figures inside the sphere were all staring at her. Their faces moved into and out of each other, the different expressions merging and flowing between them. A young woman pressed a hand against the inside of the glass. Rachel recoiled. The phantasm appeared to smile, but there was an ugly twist of madness in her expression.
“They're not connected to this automaton in the same way that you are,” Rachel said. “You can see through its eyes, move its limbs, but they can't do anything. These people have nothing but this sphere.”
Can you release them?
“I don't know.” Her thoughts tumbled as she stared at the jostling figures. “Dill, I can't break this glass. Not yet, do you understand?” She needed him in his current form if they were to have any chance of escaping their pursuers.
She felt the chamber tilt forward suddenly and then right itself. The automaton had nodded.
He was silent for a moment longer, and then he said, Rachel? What's happening to the forest?
“What do you mean? Right now?”
No… The chamber trembled as though Dill had started to shake his head again, but then caught himself in time. It happened soon after we left Coreollis. The trees turned to stone.
“What trees? Dill, I don't know what you're talking about.” Anchor and Mina had made no mention of any sorcerous events taking place while Rachel had been spying on Coreollis.
The fog dissolved and the forest turned to stone, he went on. It looked like those petrified woods we used to see in the Deadsands whenever the shifting dunes uncovered them. Do you remember?
An age had passed since she'd last visited the desert around Deepgate. As a Spine adept, Rachel had once traveled through those thousand-year-old petrified forests, across lands poisoned after Mount Blackthrone had fallen from the sky. Yet here the forest remained verdant and alive. Was Dill confusing his memories with reality?
Or had the thaumaturge been up to something secretive and sorcerous during Rachel's absence?
Mina's calling you, Dill said suddenly. She wants us to leave now. We have company.
“An arconite?”
The room gave a sudden lurch forward.
Broken shapes littered the dark battlefield like strange volcanic outcrops. John Anchor stood at the lip of the portal, his fists on his hips, and gave a huge sigh of disappointment. “If Menoa intends to lead us into a trap, he might at least have left one of his twelve giants here as a ruse.”
A ruse? Cospinol sounded weary.
“To make us believe he feared intruders. A ruse would have been most sensible!” He gazed around him but could see little in the darkness except Cospinol's fog. “It would have tired us before the assault to come. A last battle on the Larnaig Field!”
Perhaps he decided we'd see through such a ruse too easily?
Anchor grunted. “I am beginning to dislike this king. An honourable warrior is never unpredictable. He obeys the time-tested rules of combat.”
The Rotsward's great rope seemed to hum a melancholy note.
Anchor stared down into the depths of the portal. He had been in grimmer places, but not many. The gate to Hell looked like a lake of tar, but the stench of death that arose from it burned in his throat. How many souls now swam in those foul waters? Mist hung over the entirety of the lake and moved in layers like drab curtains dragged to and fro across an empty stage. A crust had formed around the banks, as hard and brittle as black glass. Pale unappealing lumps floated on the viscid surface.
It felt cold.
He judged the portal to be some three hundred yards across, and Cospinol's skyship was considerably wider than that. But the Rotsward was much stronger than she appeared. Whereas Ayen's sun made her vulnerable, there was no sun here, and in the darkness her ancient timbers took their strength from Cospinol's own will. The portal would expand to accommodate the Rotsward. If the god of brine and fog did not falter, then neither would his ship.
Are you waiting for one of the arconites to show up?
Anchor grunted again. He rolled his massive shoulders and slapped his hands together. Then he took a long, deep breath, closed his eyes, and jumped into that hideous lake.
An icy chill enveloped him. He heard the gurgle and rush of the surface waters closing over his head, until the pressure of fluid against his eardrums stifled those noises to near silence. A dull hum reverberated in the air within his own sinuses, and then Cospinol spoke:
Our best chance of success relies upon your finding the portal spine before the Rotsward reaches the ground above you. Seek the place where Menoa's thaumaturgy is strongest. The spine should appear much denser than the surrounding liquid, like a cord or rope. Use it to pull us down through the portal opening.
Anchor opened his eyes but he dared not open his mouth for fear of swallowing any dislocated souls. He could see little in this darkness but a faint crimson glow emanating from the depths. He curled his body and dived down, pulling at the thick waters with his massive hands. The rope trailed after him, dragging Cospinol's ship down from the skies above. His lungs cramped once in sympathy with those instincts that remained from the days when Anchor had been merely human, but he ignored the discomfort. Down and down he swam until he began to relax into the rhythm of his labours.
He descended in an inwards-turning spiral until he felt the fluid becoming thicker in certain areas. Motes of white light darted past his head. He reached for them but they shot away into the distance. He adjusted his course to take him into the denser, more central part of the portal.
After a while he spotted a black thread hanging vertically in the distance. It drifted sluggishly back and forth like a strand of kelp in an unseen current.
That's it. The portal spine. Be careful not to damage it. It's already weak and it's the only link to Hell we have.
It was twice as wide as the tree trunks in the forest he had just left, yet slippery and pliant like an umbilical cord. Menoa had woven it from souls and blood magic to form the core of his birthing channel between Hell and earth. Anchor's skin burned where he touched it-a reaction to its deeply unnatural composition. Gripping the cord firmly, he used it to drag himself downwards more rapidly.
After some time the Rotsward's rope suddenly jerked him to a halt.
Cospinol's great skyship had reached solid ground around the portal opening. In Anchor's mind he saw the Rotsward's gallows, for the lowest edges of that great matrix of greasy spars would now be lodged into the earth of Larnaig Field far above.
Anchor floated in a red gloom while he gathered his strength for the job to come. He flexed his hands, opening and closing his fingers. They felt as if he'd been using them to squeeze wasps inside their nest. Now he must drag the whole skyship deep enough down through the earth and rock to allow the portal to expand around it. The blood magic should then draw power from the dead suspended from the Rotsward's gallows. It would actually feed on those damned men. Anchor smiled at the thought of his master's old army hanging up there amidst those gallows, gazing down at the fate that awaited them. Those miserable whiners would not be happy about this.
Cospinol's voice came to him through the rope. Harper is picking up a surge of what she calls “soul traffic” on her Pandemerian device.