They might have been sailing for an hour — maybe two, Verain couldn’t be sure — when there was a trail across the night sky, a purple jet of sparks and, moments later, there it was again, except moving the other way. Is that him?
‘Tuung,’ she called.
‘What is it?’ he replied from his position at the tiller.
‘Come and look for yourself.’
‘You come here and tell me.’
Verain stepped cautiously across the deck towards him, then pointed up past the sails. ‘There was something up there. It was moving across the sky.’
‘Meteor?’ he asked.
‘It could be, but there — no look! There it is again.’ Sure enough, there was another trail, this time curving much closer: it zigzagged then hovered, approaching the boat very slowly, like some inquisitive firefly.
Then, a final rush and it clattered aboard the boat, rolling and skidding to a stop at the far end.
‘Dartun!’ Verain called, and instinctively rushed towards him before remembering what he had just done. She paused, waiting for his reaction to define the following engagement.
Dartun brushed himself down and limped around to face her. His face was bizarrely pale, even in this light, and his clothing was almost non-existent.
‘The moon,’ he declared, ‘is not a moon.’
‘What the fuck?’ Tuung called out. The others had stirred from their rest now, and sluggishly moved to Tuung’s side. Verain was between her order and Dartun, uncertain which way to go.
‘What do you mean?’ she said.
‘One of the moons,’ Dartun replied, as if nothing had happened. As if he had not just slaughtered dozens of people. As if he had not just flown around the sky like a human comet.
‘What about it?’
‘It isn’t a moon!’ he replied again, exasperated. ‘It’s an immense city. Or rather, it was an immense city — however long ago.’
‘You aren’t telling us you’ve just come back from there?’ Verain enquired in disbelief.
‘I am,’ he said, watching them now with great sorrow.
‘Why did you go up there?’
‘Because it is in my nature, Verain. You of all people must know my tendencies to push the boundaries of knowledge. I… I could not help myself. I found these new abilities and, perhaps selfishly, I simply flew higher, and higher, until all I could see was the moon. I’m sorry I abandoned you.’
‘Never mind that,’ Tuung spluttered, ‘what the hell was up there?’
Verain glared at him.
A groan of wind passed through, and in the following silence Dartun continued. ‘It was one long, sprawling city. Metallic street after metallic street, all abandoned to time. There were immense numbers of dwellings, small units, large units, all of an equal mass. There were burn marks… charred elements, blackened zones around the edges of structures, as if a fire had engulfed the place.’
‘How big was it?’ Tuung asked excitedly, and for a moment Verain thought they could just forget everything, just blank out what had happened, and return to their old state of happy exploration of sciences and the unknown.
‘A thousand metal Villjamurs, all bleeding into one another,’ Dartun replied. ‘It was not a moon, most definitely not. Whatever it is, it was designed by no civilization that I know of. The closest I had seen was the architecture of the Mathema, but it wasn’t quite right. It is artificial. There were substances I’ve never seen, fabrics I cannot even begin to comprehend. With the aid of my transformation, I stood on the highest level of their tallest structure and stared out. All I saw was lane after lane, road after road, spiralling around each other with precise symmetry. There were lattices, grids of sunken metal streets. It shimmered so greatly that, as I flew invigorated across the crest of our world, the detail caught my eye. It reflected the light of the sun as strongly as the other moon, which seems quite real, and did not possess the appearance of streets or cities.’
Tuung was evidently in awe. ‘What do you think it was built for?’
Verain was on the verge of breaking down. This is what we’ll do then. We’ll ignore his brutality. We’ll ignore that he just slaughtered a crowd of innocent people. We’re tired and need to return home. That’s fine with me.
‘I do not know,’ Dartun replied. ‘Perhaps our cultures sought out to live among the stars. The project did not, it seems, end well.’
And neither will ours, Verain thought.
THIRTY
Lan followed the priest for what seemed like miles. Would there be no end to these passageways? Feeling raw and vulnerable, she was at first reluctant to leave Fulcrom’s side, but he persuaded her that this mission with Ulryk was the lesser of the evils available.
A good night’s sleep had left her with stiff legs and aching muscles, but despite this she felt reasonably fit again. Part of her wanted to go out and find the people who caused her pain, but she had her instructions, and trusted Fulcrom’s intentions.
‘Ulryk,’ she said, after what must have been an hour, ‘where are we?’
He articulated his detailed explanations, most of which she didn’t understand, and she felt he might be trying to bore away her curiosity.
Several times on the route down, the priest stopped to assess a blocked doorway, whereupon he would chant in an esoteric language. She could not quite perceive what was happening, only that the blockage was no longer there.
Rooms trailed into a sequence of holes, which in turn led into an underground cavern. At this stage, they entered such complete darkness that she had no sense of where she was, what time had passed or how Ulryk could discern where they were going. Guided by his voice, she listened as, now and then, he softly informed her in some small detail of where they were, but none of it had any context. More to the point, she couldn’t see how she could help. She wanted to be doing something, anything, using her powers and skill and judgement, not shuffling her feet through the dark. But that was all she did, for hours.
Eventually, she watched in awe as the priest constructed a raft from stones by using only speech, and navigated them through the darkness.
Finally they approached the second city, the city under Villjamur, the city of the dead. From the exponential decay, it looked as if a disaster had struck, and the sky — if she could see it — was utterly black, with no stars or moon, nothing to denote there was anything but a void above them.
Ulryk explained to her the logistics of the place, who the people were, and what he had discovered so far.
‘How long have you spent down here?’ she asked him, as they walked along the crumbling streets. Shutters and doors opened as they passed, though she could see no figures beyond.
‘Time is different in this location, though I estimate it has been several days’ worth of work.’
‘And you’ve found nothing?’
Ulryk shook his head and sighed. ‘I have been searching for something that may or may not be called the “House of the Dead”, for that is how Frater Mercury referred to it. I once assumed this whole world was what he implied, but I have my suspicions that there are buildings down here that defy time and imagination.’
She could see, for the very first time, the exhaustion in his expression and the wariness in his eyes.
The dead were friendly enough, merely curious to see someone from the realm of the living. At first she was afraid to go anywhere near them, but she could see they meant no harm. The initial cluster of civilians faded to just a couple of Ulryk’s helpers.
They passed a plaza, where the dead roamed the streets in vague exploratory arcs. Whispers echoed towards her from all directions, as if the citizens were talking about them, but she couldn’t see them looking their way. They just went about their business — whatever business there was down here.