Sea of Ghosts - Alan Campbell [155]
‘Stop,’ Herian cried, trying to rise from the floor.
But by then they had reached the portal.
A storm of energy poured into the chariot through the open hatchway, arcing between the bulkheads. Green flames tore across the console. The view screens blazed like suns. Granger cried out as electrical fluids shot through his body. His muscles began to spasm uncontrollably, and for a heartbeat he was aware of nothing but light and agony and the smell of his own burning flesh.
Abruptly, the light vanished.
It was as if someone had thrown a switch. The surrounding inferno simply ceased to be, leaving the view screens dark and the craft flying on through gloom. Granger eased back the throttle levers, slowing their forward momentum. Apart from the hum of their engines, the conduit was silent.
Herian groaned from the floor. ‘You’ve no idea what you just risked.’
Granger halted the flying machine. He stepped past the old man and retrieved the jewel from the rear of the cabin. It had ceased to glow, and he could no longer perceive the alien landscape within its facets. It looked like an ordinary crystal. He wedged it behind one of the view screens and gunned the engines again.
‘Let me take it back,’ Herian said.
Granger just grunted. He flew the chariot onwards at a much slower pace, threading his way through the conduits and junction spheres until her reached the transmitting station’s main entrance. All appeared as dark and desolate as it had at first. He brought the craft’s bow gently up against the outer door and then eased the throttles forward. With a shudder and an almighty groan, the door scraped open, and the small vessel moved out into sunlight.
Snowflakes swirled across the view screens and blew in through the open hatch and the gaps in the hull. Granger’s hands danced across the controls as he brought the flying machine up and over the building in a slowly rising spiral. He passed the white, lace-frill skeleton of the transmitting tower and the great torus upon its summit, where he let the chariot come to a halt. The northern ice fields shimmered like emeralds and diamonds, a jewelled coast abutting the bottle-green waters of the Mare Verdant. Awl lay somewhere to the south-west. He might reach it in a few days, but then what?
The Haurstaf had an entire army at their disposal, while Granger had one half-wrecked little chariot. He didn’t know if the craft would even make it that far.
He stood there for a moment, thinking.
‘Let me go,’ Herian said. He sat on the floor, shivering, with his shoulders slumped in an attitude of defeat. Snow was already gathering on his hair and mail shirt. ‘I’m no danger to you. Keep the chariot, let me take the jewel back.’
Granger picked up the jewel and carried it over to the hatch. An icy gale blew around his shoulders. A few yards below him, the toroid gleamed dully under the monochrome sky. Not a single snowflake had adhered to that metal surface.
‘What are you doing?’ Herian said.
Granger pitched the jewel out of the hatch. It landed in the depression in the centre of the toroid with an almighty clang, rolled one way, and then the other, before finally settling.
Herian crawled over, then let out a groan.
‘You’ll get it back,’ Granger said. ‘But I want something in return.’
The old man stared after the jewel.
‘That sword I picked up,’ Granger said. ‘The simulacrums . . .’
‘What about them?’
‘Show me how to use it properly.’
‘That’s all?’ Herian said. ‘You want to wield a Replicating Sword?’
Granger grunted. ‘That’s just the beginning.’
The room looked like a lecture theatre to Ianthe, with wooden seats rising in curved tiers before her. It was empty apart from a panel of four Haurstaf witches. Subtle changes in their expressions told her they were having a discussion, even if she couldn’t