City of Ruin - Mark Charan Newton [142]
The three Grey Hair cultists approached from behind and studied the monstrosity alongside him. Bellis had even begun making sketches in a notebook, while the others inspected it from all angles, Abaris muttering anatomical features and cladistic theory out loud.
It seemed to possess innumerable eyes, all of them reflecting the light radiated by the cage. All staring back at him. Examining him. And whether or not this was his paranoia, he couldn’t tell, but it certainly seemed as if the giant spider knew exactly who Jeryd was.
*
Voland leapt out of bed as he heard the Phonoi make a screecownstairs.
Where was Nanzi? In a panic, and sensing something wasn’t right, he scampered around the room hurriedly dressing himself. He darted away from the bedroom, still bleary-eyed, and called out for her. There was no reply. He stumbled downstairs.
There was no sign of her throughout the entire house in fact, so he hastened even deeper through the darkness, feeling his way along the walls to the abattoir with its familiar stench of death. He was met only with silence.
‘Nanzi?!’ he shouted urgently. ‘Nanzi, are you there?’
‘She’s not here,’ one of the Phonoi replied. It quivered in and out of ghost-form, first the face of a screaming child, then an old woman, then blackness.
‘Sorry, sir,’ another chimed. ‘We know she’s out. We sense her . . .’
‘She’s right across the city.’
‘We sense she’s trapped somewhere.’
In the stillness of the room the Phonoi began to glow uniformly. They shifted through the air, as they always did, drifting about in sharp bursts only to skim away into nothing at all. He wished they would stay still so he could establish some clear answers.
‘Where is she?’ Voland pleaded.
‘Trapped is all we know,’ the Phonoi declared. ‘We simply feel it.’
‘I need to get to her,’ Voland ordered. ‘Help me, please.’
‘Anything for Doctor Voland,’ they called out soothingly. ‘Yes, anything at all.’
After a brief silence, a number of them took form and became one mass, then began to circle the room in rapid motion. They tightened their circuit around Voland, a strangling wind that settled underneath him, and around his waist. He felt a sudden lightness, and realized he was being lifted into the air then moved backward along the route he had taken to the slaughterhouse.
‘She’ll need clothes when she transforms . . .’ Voland began.
They whisked him upstairs in a flurry, let him stuff a few of her garments into a satchel, then down again. It was dizzying.
Ahead of him a door burst back, and as he flew out suddenly into the streets of the city, people pointed and stared. The Phonoi tilted him upright, like he was walking on air, and he held on to his hat as they rose higher, heading to the west, above the snow-slick rooftops of Villiren, noticing the little street fires and torches and flashes of magic, the movement of customers to and from taverns, the patrols of soldiers . . . all becoming smaller with the distance.
He flew towards his lover.
*
Jeryd turned and pointed. ‘Over there, in the distance above thooftops.’ Something was moving across the horizon, a figure with aint white glow blurring its outline. It dipped back and forth, theoved steadily. Bats scattered from the crevices along its route, making their escape in erratic paths.
‘What on earth do you suppose that is?’ Bellis asked.
‘It wears a top hat.’ Abaris was peering through a small telescope. ‘Blimey. Those are Phonoi around it, I’ll wager.’
‘Bugger, I hope not,’ Bellis whispered. ‘You sure, Abaris?’
‘Aye, for sure,’ the man replied, moving the brass tube in gentle pursuit of the moving figure. ‘Quite an intensity of them, I’d say. They’re helping him to fly.’
‘What the hell are Phonoi?’ Jeryd had moved with the Grey Hairs away from the cage, towards the edge of the rooftop, infected by Bellis’s sudden nervousness.
‘Spirit wraiths,’ Bellis explained. ‘Those blighters were once prisoners – murderers