Vuldon said to Lan, ‘You should get up the side of the building if you can and crack open some windows on the way. If I remember jobs like this, you might get a lot of people at the windows trying to jump in order to get the fuck out of there. Can you carry a human or rumel? You might have to.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ she replied. ‘I’m not as strong as you, but my inner forces should be enough. I think by now I can do some tricks with gravity.’
‘If you’re not sure-’
‘I’ll be fine,’ she snapped.
‘Good. I’ll clear the way from the ground up, and smash my way through any closed doors.’
Lan crouched then pushed herself upwards and onto the side of the building, sprinting up the stonework. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Vuldon slam-kick the front double doors and barge his way inside.
The wind grew stronger as she climbed higher. As she reached a level parallel to bridges, people began to shout at her, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying. With her heel she smashed in the first window, but the fire hadn’t reached that far down. When she withdrew her foot she nearly slipped and stumbled — her heart missing a beat — but with her arms out wide and more focused concentration, she stabilized herself again.
Lan resumed her ascent.
Screams were leaking out from the inside. She could hear them faintly at first, someone wailing, like the call of the dead. Are we too late? Lan wondered. The noise spurred her on and she rose ever upwards, smashing in windows, always looking in to see if anyone was inside who needed help.
Then, with her foot on one windowsill, a hand suddenly clutched her shin — it was a pale-faced, dark-haired woman garbed in white robes. Stitches arced across her forehead and she appeared to be phenomenally undernourished.
‘Are you OK?’ Lan shouted, prising the woman’s fingers from her leg in case she stumbled. ‘Do you need help?’
The woman simply stared back at her, wide-eyed. Lan climbed down and angled herself into the grim room. Inside was a bed, a desk and a bucket. The metal door at the other end was locked and, Lan noticed, possessed a barred grille at eye level. Smoke began to drift down, so Lan turned, grabbed the woman, who simply became rigid as if expecting Lan to beat her. Lan dragged her to the window and, using all her strength, edged the woman up onto the sill; with an almighty heave, Lan jumped into the air with the woman clutching Lan in a death grip. Together they tumbled onto an adjacent bridge.
Loosening the woman’s constricting hold, Lan grabbed either side of the woman’s face and stared into her eyes. ‘I’ll return to see if you are OK — I promise.’ With that, she dashed back through the air, onto the side of the building, and continued further up.
The smoke was pungent now, and Lan thought there were probably a whole host of fabrics being combusted inside. At this height the cityscape opened up around her, in full panorama, little lights in the various nearby rooms, people standing at the windows, people on the bridges — there was no doubt that Villjamur could be a beautiful city.
Then above was a distinct scream.
Lan smashed in another window and smoke billowed out. Oh my… Lan wrenched her gaze away in shock, but forced herself to look inside, holding her hand across her mouth because of the fumes.
A corpse lay on the floor in a large pool of blood — it was a woman with her throat slit and a sharp chunk of glass in her bloodied hand. She was clothed exactly like the woman a few floors below, and again the room was furnished in the same way.
Lan headed further up the side of the building.
As the wind ravaged her, she managed to reach the penultimate floor. Again smoke billowed out when she kicked in the window. She waited to let it clear, gripping the edge of the window frame for support, but the smoke kept on spilling into the evening air.
Eventually, holding her mouth, Lan climbed inside.
This wasn’t a room like the others. It was a mezzanine, with once-grand stairways and an opulent lobby, decorated in shades of grey and purple. A layer of smoke was crawling across the ceiling, and the heat was intense, even though she couldn’t see the fire.
Vuldon’s voice: he was shouting for people to exit the building.
Lan plunged further inside to locate him, and a stream of people drifted past her with a dreamlike reluctance to escape the flames she could now see roaring away in a vast chamber just beyond. Vuldon’s hulking figure was practically flinging people out and down the stairs.
Suddenly one of the supporting frames behind him gave way; the ceiling began to buckle, one floorboard at a time snapping under the strain. Vuldon lurched forwards, and the fire upstairs collapsed down with an enormous noise, then began to spread. The room was now blocked by blackened and burning wood.
‘Don’t just stand there, you stupid bitch!’ Vuldon shouted, ‘help me get them out!’
Lan glided to his side, the smoke starting to infiltrate her lungs. They had to be quick, so with Vuldon she began to smash the blockade with bits of furniture — metal stands and chairs — and soon there was enough of a clearing for her to squeeze through. Flames engulfed her, but she concentrated on channelling the effects within, and the fire began to respect some abstract boundary around her body. Absurdly, Lan was now repelling the flames, and inhabited a bubble of her own making.
Focus…
There, under a hefty workbench in the centre of the room: a group of people with frightened faces were huddling together. Lan finally reached them, knelt down and extended one arm, and tried to coax them out.
They wouldn’t come. Frustratingly, they simply looked away, some shaking their heads.
‘I’ll help you!’ she shouted. ‘We’re here to get you out.’ Still they wouldn’t come. She tried to pull one of them, but they resisted.
‘Magic person,’ she thought she heard one of them say.
‘No, I’m not a cultist.’ But it was no good, they weren’t going to move.
Vuldon crashed in behind her and lumbered to her side. She told him of the situation. To her shock he lifted their workbench shelter, toppling it backwards. ‘Come on, you fuckers, get yourself out of here. Move!’
He violently heaved them forwards, and they screamed at him. Lan didn’t know what to do, but followed Vuldon’s lead, and pushed them outwards.
‘Look out!’ she yelled. Another support fell, smashing two of the group through to the floor below with screams, leaving a gaping hole. Lan watched in despair. She felt out of her depth. She wasn’t made for this, wasn’t used to seeing such horror close up.
Vuldon was bellowing at her to move but all she could see were the two frightened faces that had plummeted down. She heard him swear then flinched as he grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and hurled her out past burning timber, where she finally came to her senses and began guiding the survivors down the stairs.
A stone spiral staircase lined the way down, and as they moved past various rooms — cells — Lan peered in to check for other victims or survivors, but there were none. Just what was this place? It was cell after cell, not exactly a prison, but it was no place of freedom.
Heading down the stairs, they all drifted away from the heat. She couldn’t see Vuldon any more, but trusted he would have the skills to survive. Finally, she guided the remaining survivors out through the smashed main door, a sign of Vuldon’s work. She heaved in the sharp air, and then realized that she had been crying — either from the smoke or the intensity of the incident, she didn’t know which. She composed herself.
Twenty-four survivors shivered in the cold. Each of them was wearing an identical, shapeless pale gown. They trudged around in circles, always looking down to the ground, never at each other. Two of them vomited against the wall, three sat down cross-legged in a vaguely child-like gesture. She checked some of them for injuries, and each bore strange markings around their heads. Scar tissue blossomed visibly on at least half of them. Whenever she looked in their eyes she saw only distance, or vacancy, or a disturbed mind.