Into Eternity (The Eternals Book 3) Page 22

  “If that's true, then why not move lower so he might spy us.”

  “So he doesn't spy us, of course.” Merryweather crossed the tiled floor to stand at our side shaking his head in suitably unimpressed style. “Here, allow me to demonstrate.”

  Merryweather collected a spare seat, which he passed to Linka with a polite bow, before returning with two more. “Just sit down and be quiet,” he hissed. “We don't want to be distracting our Nordic beauty, it's a long drop if we do.” He leant forward to peer at the russet and ruby world below.

  I sat with care, the chair, fitted with some kind of pneumatic system, hissing under my weight. Linka and Walter did the same to varying exhalations. She settled into elegant repose, whilst he linked his fingers together, leant back and stretched them out to a loud click.

  “Ouch,” he whispered.

  I ignored him, moving my chair closer to Linka.

  “Charming,” said Walter. He wiggled his right forefinger in typically dramatic fashion before depressing an innocuous looking black switch. As if by magic, the area before us lighted up, images flickering into being like the ghost of a lost world. “Impressed?” he asked.

  “I will be when it impresses me.”

  Linka grinned and squeezed my hand as Walter prodded at several more buttons that had flashed into life.

  “Now, who would you like to see most?” he asked Linka. “Then again, I'd maybe better ask Jean that,” he said, bypassing my darling before she had a chance to reply. “Well, who's it to be?”

  “Grella,” my instant response.

  “Ooh, you surprise me,” cooed Walter.

  “Why?”

  “You could have seen anyone. I'll repeat that, anyone.”

  “Thanks, that's three times you've said it and I'd still like to see him. I've a hunch you'll show me the others, anyway.”

  “Good point. Anyway, for now, I give you Grella.”

  “Walter leant closer to the flashing lights and squares of images and whispered,”Grella, King of the Nordic peoples."

  Nothing happened. The lights continued to flash, the screens displaying the same eerily mottled facades.

  “That worked well.”

  “Shut it,” he snapped. “Technical malfunction, I'll get it right this time.” Merryweather closed his eyes and said in a slow purposeful voice, “Show me Prince Grella of the Nordic peoples.”

  And with a flash of ochre ground and ruby skies, the squares leapt to life. Linka's hand tightened in my own as land and seas, though I knew not where, illuminated the wall before us. There were hundreds of snippets of the world I knew, yet didn't. The images flicked from here to there to somewhere else in a constant bombardment of ocular imagery. Yet despite their numeracy, almost all were barren except for the occasional tree and snow-capped mountain. All except a fleeting glimpse of Gorgon's castle that was, or rather, what remained of it. The earth tremors had devastated the Baltic's home to little more than rubble and broken chintz. It was odd, but the only thing I hoped was that the moths had got out alive. It was a strange thought to have when so many people had resided there, but they seemed more worth the saving than they.

  “Ah, got him,” said Walter drawing me to where his finger pointed.

  “Oh, my,” said Linka.

  I knew just what she meant. Grella was stooped, the Nordic prince bent over double. Across his broad shoulders laid the cross he had ripped from the seabed, the thing's great stone base dredging the hard ground in his wake. So heavy was his burden that dust devils of tangerine topsoil and deeper more muddied offerings clouded his passage.

  “Grella, Grella, Grella, what are you doing?” mused Merryweather stroking his chin.

  I gave him an inquisitive look but all the dandy did was remove his hand and shrug. “That's royalty for you.”

  “Can you get any closer?” I asked squinting at the screen.

  “Zoom in,” said Walter. “Multiple angles, please.”

  The wall became one massive collage of Grellas. There were at least five separate angles displayed from a multitude of differing distances. However, it was the image from head on that was most sobering. A ragged Grella was no longer a snowflake caught in a winter sky but a glob of slush displaced by speeding carriage wheels on a dirty road. And though the Nordic's face looked to the soil beneath his feet, his half-shattered goggles were clear to see, one lens smashed its jagged glass catching the light at acute angles.

  “That's not good,” I said.

  “Yet another classic Jean understatement,” Merryweather corrected. “It's safe to say Grella is a little the worse for wear.”

  “He must have fallen, hit his face on a rock,” Linka grimaced.

  “Whatever he has done and wherever he is, he persists. Brave man,” I said, clacking my tongue.

  “Must you do that?” Merryweather moaned.

  I didn't do him the courtesy of replying.

  “Where is he?” Linka asked, as I gazed over to Aurora hoping she hadn't seen the same image as us.

  “Yes, can you decipher from this contraption where he might be?” I added.

  “Other than on the ground, I can shed no further light on the matter. However, with a bit of technical jiggery-pokery, I might be able to find out. Let's try, shall we? Pan out,” he said, his lips close to the equipment. “Further,” he offered, when all was still soil and rock. “A bit more. A tad further. More. More. Too far! Back. Easy. Easy. Stop!” he commanded and did a little jig.

  “Am I supposed to recognise that?” I leant in closer. Grella was just a speck of dust to the right-hand side of the screen. Opposite his microscopic form were pools of water that stood between a revealed seabed.

  “That, dear, dear, Jean, is all that remains of the Adriatic.”

  “How can you tell that?”

  “Because, as I keep saying, I know stuff.” Merryweather shook his head in sarcastic frustration. “Plus, it says so here,” he said and pointed to some words above another similar image.

  As if to celebrate his brilliance, Walter jumped to his feet and continued his jig by cavorting around the observation room.

  “Idiot,” I growled.

  “You don't find him in the least endearing?” Linka faked a smile and rolled her eyes.

  “Less than ever.”

  “I tend to agree.”

  “Where's this image stemming from, do you think?” I pointed to the highest vantage point. The eye in the sky took in a large section of ruined landscape.

  Linka surveyed the image. “Camera one, it says here.”

  “What good's that! Without knowing the sequence of said cameras, or whatever they are, that information's useless.”

  “That's all it says.”

  I rubbed the screen for some stupid reason expecting it to reveal more, which of course it didn't. “There's something about it that looks familiar. I think it's the light, but I can't be sure,” I commented. I spun round to see if either Sunyin might lend their expertise to the situation, but the younger had left via the elevator, its doors firmly closed, and the old monk concentrated on Aurora. The poor girl had dropped both arms to her sides and trembled like the last autumn leaf being wrenched from its branch in a November storm. The look did not befit one such as she, the strain was too much for her.

  “I'm stumped,” said Linka. She shrugged her shoulders, as clueless to the day's events as I, and let out a sigh.

  Enough was enough.

  “Sunyin, what's the matter with her?” I barked unbothered by what raising my voice might do.

  “She feels him, Jean,” a brisk reply.

  “Who?”

  “Her brother.”

  “How?”

  “The Nordic children share a link that no other Eternals do. I believe it is part of their condition but suspect only the Marquis able to confirm it. The helmet amplifies the connection to the point of her being twinned with him for the time she wears it. I have seen the Marquis use it on others, or rather sensed it. One thing I know with ass
uredness is she feels every hurt that afflicts her brother. They are as one at this moment; pain for pain, sadness for sadness.” Sunyin shook his head in solemnity.

  “But Aurora does not suffer their condition. She is of them, but not as them.” I felt a panic befalling me as slivers of caged lightning criss-crossed Aurora's head; the static making her hair stand up straight like dusted cobwebs.

  If I expected Sunyin to say something in return, it did not occur. Instead, the old monk's renewed eyes glistened with an unparalleled sadness and I felt ashamed at myself for having caused it even if it was by accident. He lifted a wrinkled hand to his face and caught a tear that dropped from his eye, which he handled with the greatest care. Sunyin turned the droplet of water over on his fingertip with the delicacy of it being a world and he a God charged with its protection. He studied that liquid morsel of himself before placing it upon his gathered robes. “Thank you, Jean.”

  “For what, my friend?”

  “That is the first tear I have shed since the Marquis blinded me.”

  “I'm sorry!” said Linka, as even Merryweather stopped mid-hop.

  “Blinded you?” said I.

  “Yes, He blinded me, so I might not escape him.”

  “More fool him,” Merryweather interrupted. “Who needs eyes when you're listening to your heart. Oops!”

  “Well said, Master Merryweather,” Sunyin declared.

  If he replied, I could not say, for Aurora looked in too much pain for me to concentrate elsewhere. She tottered on the brink of collapse and I could take no more. I caught her just in time.

  “Sunyin!” I barked. “How can we help her?”

  “As I said, she feels him, sadness for sadness.”

  “What do you mean, sadness for sadness?”

  “She hurts, Jean. She hurts, as he hurts. One might say more so for she feels it as an accumulated whole.”

  His words were simple and precise, for as I clasped her in my arms, Aurora's eyes opened to deep wells of sorrow. Her beautiful, pale face was awash in sadness, not the sadness of bereavement or a told tale, but the sadness of actual physical harm.

  “How can I help you, dear Aura? Tell me what to do?” I begged. I offered my fingertips to the glass helmet but it bit at them with electric teeth.

  Aurora looked up, her forehead wrinkled with shared agony. The lines were wrong on her smooth skin, out of place and I would have wiped them away if I was able. She was as one of Gorgon's moths living in a false world and gracing it with its exquisite beauty. But that beauty was born of falsehoods and delicate in the extreme.

  Aurora raised her head. “You must…” she gasped, then fell silent her face contorting.

  “Must what, dear Aurora.”

  “You… must… be… you,” she stammered.

  “When? How?”

  “When the times comes,” she managed all of a rush.

  “That's enough, Jean.” Walter rushed over with a glass of something claret coloured in his hand. “Here, this will help,” he said.

  However, fate intervened; Walter tripped. The glass flew from his hand to smash and splatter its contents all over the flashing lights and whirring machines in a cascade of claret liquid and cobalt and gold sparks.

  “Oops!”

  “That's twice you've said that and I'm unsure which was for the worst reason,” I snarled.

  “I thought you'd missed the first one.”

  “As you're prone to saying, I know much. I just don't blurt it out all the time. And I know if we don't take this damn helmet off her head, it will kill her.”

  “If you remove the helmet, it will kill us all,” Walter protested.

  But I'd seen enough. Despite the pain, I eased my fingers under the helmet's lip and prised the thing from Aurora's skull. It hurt like all hell, and I thought it not to shift, but with a slurp of released suction it crashed to the floor. Grasping Aurora, I manoeuvred her away from the flickering controls, as Linka did the same for Sunyin.

  “No, I must guide us,” he protested.

  “Later, Sunyin,” Linka said. “If you remain at those controls, you will be killed and I cannot allow that.”

  “I have to.”

  “What do you mean, you have to?”

  “I am sorry, Your Highness, but we are falling.”

  “No, we're not,” Merryweather protested. “I'd feel it if we were.”

  “I believe you need a heart to feel, Master Merryweather,” Sunyin's counter.

  “Ah, touché, my old friend.”

  “I assure you, this is no time for humour.”

  Merryweather opened his mouth to reply but quickly shut it. “Oh, bugger,” he said as the floor lurched.

  I staggered backwards but held Aurora's cradled form steady. “What now?” I hissed.

  “Hmm, what would an eagle do in this situation, his eyrie blowing away in a storm, his wings clipped and flightless.”

  “This is not a time for musings, Walter!” Linka barked.

  “An eagle does not have the benefit of an elevator,” he said, and hurried over to the small room and depressed both its buttons.

  The elevator coughed a response. Walter tried again, alas to the same. The door shushed in its attempted opening but remained sealed.

  “Hmm, er, do you think you might grab one side, my dear?”

  Linka didn't need telling twice as she sat Sunyin down and joined Merryweather in trying to force the thing open.

  “That will not work,” Sunyin said.

  “Then, what will?” I demanded.

  “Nothing, Jean, they are sealed for our safety. The Marquis was very specific about such things. In the advent of Shangri-La's doom, nobody would breach those doors. They were his ultimate failsafe meant to protect him from…”

  “From what?”

  “Well, you.”

  “Don't look at me, I've just arrived,” Merryweather giggled.

  “Jokes! Now!”

  “I'm nervous,” he pouted.

  “Make yourself useful and take your daughter.”

  I passed Aurora over and confronted Sunyin. “How do we steer this thing?”

  “When the helmet is not being used for tracking, Shangri-La can be moved by directional controls.”

  “What?”

  “There are arrows on the panel to mark our direction and elevation. I would have tried those next if Aurora had not steered us back on course.”

  “What do you mean, back on course?”

  “We were already on the move when she and I arrived here.”

  “Then, what were you doing at the controls?”

  “Nothing. I was sat looking out at the view and wondering what this and that button would do. I have never seen so many twinkling lights, they are as I remembered the stars.”

  “So let me get this straight, Sunyin,” Merryweather interjected. “Aurora and yourself took over from another.”

  “Yes, as I said, we were already in motion when Princess Aurora and I arrived. All I did was place the helmet on sweet Aurora's head and told her to think of her brother. That is what she wished. She told me on the way here after we'd left you.” He smiled at us both as though it common knowledge.

  “But who?” I didn't know what else to say.

  “Yes, who?” Merryweather demanded in rather more assertive fashion.

  A blaze of firework light cut any reply short. I didn't stop for further instruction, nor to take in the horrified look on my darling's face as she realised what I contemplated. Instead, I covered my eyes with one hand and rushed to the madly sparking controls. Fireworks of light streamed from the metal panels and a disturbing amount of smoke. At first, I could not see the buttons Sunyin meant, but an innocuous looking panel in the centre of the display was marked as he foretold. It was there that the current surged most violently. What choice did I have but to try?

  I tore a sleeve from my coat and ripped it in half again. I wrapped each hand in the torn off rags and stabbed at the controls. The ferocious heat seared my
flesh, the intermittent flashes of multicoloured light beyond agony. As each spark landed it burnt through clothing, skin and worse. But Shangri-La responded and sought to right itself. As I surged left to keep my balance, I pressed the right arrow and vice versa when the opposite took place. And for a minute or two, as the great city strove to respond to direction, I thought I'd done it, saved us all. How wrong I was. With an explosion that would have rent a nation in twain, I saw the Zeppelin to our left burst into a ball of flame, too weak to withstand the city's differing momentums. A ball of amber fire raged through the sky like a mushroom, then dropped towards us.

  We lurched down once more, despite my wild pressing, but there was nothing I could do. I barely had time to cover my eyes as the flames burst against the windows. I could only pray the others fared better as I threw myself to the floor.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  -

  Rubble

  There was the sense of plummeting, of falling away. Like peregrines striking for prey, we hurtled down at such velocity that my body rose into the air to leave me suspended clawing for the floor. The laws of physics that my parents had preached took me then and pressed my back against the ceiling like a foot on a throat. It was the strangest sensation that plummet to hell with nothing but quiet for a fanfare.

  I resigned myself to the certainty of death, so close to Linka's outstretched fingers, yet so far. Fortunately, another had not given way so easily.

  Walter made the move to save us, not I. He flipped over, released Aurora, who was pinioned to the ceiling and then braced himself to the beamed roof. Inch by inch, he made ground, dragging himself hand over hand against forces unfathomable. Like fingernails raked over a blackboard, the sound of the dandy's talons scraping along the ceiling sent shivers down my back. How he moved, I knew not, yet he did. He pulled himself along until directly over the sparking panel, forced himself to his feet, his knees cracking with the strain, and reached down. The efforts of his exertions etched across his features, Walter looked unusually determined. Where metal and keratin met; where the tip of a talon on an outstretched forefinger brushed a flashing, saffron switch, Walter flicked the thing forward. A split second from start to finish, it felt like a lifetime.