Like most people of Northern Shale, the driver preferred to give the Roil as little thought as possible. It was all too much. Of course, it was easier to avoid such dark thoughts in his offices in Mirrlees. However, this far south it was impossible.
The Roil permeated everything and with every trip its presence increased, darkening not just the sky but people’s souls as well. Down and up down and up. He’d gone this way enough times to feel it there, that awful horror which would rise and build with him with every mile. For North or South, he was always coming here, always returning.
He prayed he was not around when the Roil crossed that last mile. The Grand Defeat was still a fresh memory for him; he had lost his father there and an older brother. Damned if he was going to let the Roil take him as well.
The stationmaster, dressed in his greatcoat, as though it was the middle of winter, came out of his office, whistling cheerfully. Odd, the fellow was at the best of times a grim duck.
“Ted, why is the furnace blasting?” The driver asked, wiping sweat from his brow and pointing at the fuming chimneys.
The stationmaster smiled a wide tenebrous smile and showed him.
Chapter 11
Lithdale Expedition Missing.
Lithdale’s eighteen-man expedition into the Roiling Darkness has not returned. More alarming is the spread of the darkness itself. While authorities assure this paper that there is no real danger from the newly sprung equatorial phenomenon, they have requested caution.
Rumours continue of things, as one local has put it, “Not right”, coming from the darkness.
So far all reports are unsubstantiated.
Lithdale of Lithdale Triumphant Industries, and of no little standing in Confluent circles was described as a man of alarming virtue. He will be…
The Melody Amiss rolled past column after column of creatures – Quarg Hounds for the most part though there were other beasts there too, some humanoid – padding towards Tate. Few used the road and, though she came from the city, such was the intense focus of these Roilings that she went ignored.
Tate blazed, its call far stronger than the draw of her tiny carriage.
Every mile she drove was a mile away from her home, and every mile was another to add to her betrayal of it. For she had fled while the others remained.
Not long after the city had passed beyond the horizon, with only a smudge of flame discernible, there was a silent blinding brightness behind her that lasted a heartbeat, and the earth shook as though one of the Vastkind had stirred then fallen again into sleep.
Outside, dust-darkened flakes of snow drifted down and shrouded everything in white.
Behind her, the Roil had thinned though not enough to reveal the stars, she was too far from the epicentre.
In Tate, she knew, the sky would be clear for the first time in decades. But there would be no one to see it, just the shattered and frozen remains of the city for moon and starlight to pick over and wonder what had been? What might have happened here?
Margaret knew.
Someone had managed to ignite an I-Bomb, perhaps several of them.
Tate was dead its suffering complete. The ice would melt, and the night would roll back in over lifeless, broken stone. Even as she drove, the snow faded like the faintest of dreams and the Roil closed over her again.
Mechanism Highway had emptied of Roilbeasts and grown crowded with ghosts.
Margaret could not escape the memory of her city aflame. She had time to think, and her thoughts plunged her lower than she had ever been. And always there were questions. Where were her parents? Who had set off the I-Bomb?
She slipped between rage and fear, cold clinical plans and theories and deep, deep sadness.
Most worrying of all was the question of the Roil’s new-sprung awareness. Its beasts had howled and battered against Tate’s walls and moats, not through any desire for conquest but because it occupied space in the Roil. Such dull-witted assaults had been relatively easy to resist. This though, this new cunning could not be stopped.
If it had gained a kind of mind then it was a creature that covered half the world with a colossal consciousness.
While she knew she could not even begin to understand its motivations, or the depth of its intelligence, growth must be one of them, growth as swift as possible. Humans were a threat to it. Out there somewhere to the north lay the Engine of the World. Did it know of this? She hoped not, but there was no way she could be certain.
A dim flickering in her mirrors focused her attention. At first, she thought it nothing more than her imagination for it was so faint, so questionable in its existence, and the miles behind her were pure darkness. However, she embraced the diversion and found her attention drawn to the soft uncertain light, until she had to force herself to focus on the road.
Over the next few hours the light increased in intensity and, finally, she recognised it for what it was – a drone. It had been set to follow the straight line of the highway. However, it had slipped a little off course. An hour or two further north and she would never have seen it.
She slowed the Melody. Not daring to stop nor turn back. Not daring to hope it might be from her parents. The drone caught up at last and threatened to pass over her.
Margaret shot the drone down.
It hit the ground in a spray of dust and metal.
Margaret charged up her cold suit, fumbling over its controls, her hands at once numb and feverish. She left the engine idling and scrambled out of her carriage, pistols at ready. Such was her haste that she almost tripped over her feet getting to the shattered drone.
Her footsteps scarred the ground, the Roil spores that coated it, sliding away from the touch of her boots, and growing pale as bone.
She kicked at the half crushed message pod’s door until it swung open. Smoke moths rushed out at her. Margaret stumbled backwards, batting at the air. The chill of her cold suit did its work and the moths fell away. Margaret stared into the pod.
A book lay within, well-thumbed, curling up at the edges. Her father’s notebook! She snatched it out and flipped to the back.
Be careful, and swift. They’ll be coming for you. She’ll be wanting you. Run and keep running.
Trust no one. There is no one left to trust.
Who wanted her, and why? Margaret desperately desired to read it now, glean whatever she could from its pages. But that note filled her with fear.
She could not stay here. It was too exposed. A Quarg Hound yowled in the distance and far above some great winged beast churned through the Roil. She sensed things drawing in, closing around her.
She had no time to dig into the wreckage. She snatched up the notebook and ran back to the Melody Amiss. The engine clicked into gear smoothly and Margaret drove away, picking up as much speed as she dared.
She’ll be wanting you. Trust no one. There is no one left to trust.
She had hoped for answers and found only more questions.
Chapter 12
To blame Cadell for what happened on the Dolorous Grey is to blame a wind for blowing, a storm for raging. Cadell is Cadell, disaster comes easily with him.
He is the hungry man, the whisperer in shadow that comes just before the flutes descend. You see him, you run.
A little down George Street a horse had fallen at harness, stone dead before the carriage, tipping the whole thing forward. The driver roared, then moaned. He jumped from his seat and beat at the beast’s scrawny rain-soaked hide with the handle of his whip.