Touching the Void Read online

Rissad's injuries. Rissad met Rel's worried frown with a raised eyebrow that eloquently underscored Rel's lack of better ideas.

  "If you don't feel up to it, I could drop us through." Rissad's voice managed to be lazy and mocking even though it was his injuries that would suffer.

  "Are you mad?" Rel couldn't keep the anger from his voice. "How are we going to run like this?" Normal procedure would be to run hard at the Gate and dive head-long through it, thus arriving vertically out of the floor on the other side. But even if Rissad's leg could stand the landing, there was no way they could move fast enough to manage the dive. Even without Rissad, Rel wasn't sure he could manage it past his current robe of aches.

  The other man's eyebrow climbed higher. "I thought your sister was a Gatemaker?"

  "What's that got to do with anything?" Were all southern Gifted this well-informed? Maybe having so few incidents down there meant they all had too much time on their hands.

  "She hasn't told you everything she trained for?" Despite the pain, there was mirth in Rissad's tone, gentle and reflective. "Chag never shut up about it."

  Rel worked the tension out of his jaw. "Pevan can be... recalcitrant sometimes."

  "Hah. She'll grow out of it." Rissad's face fell somewhat as he saw Rel's scowl. "Sorry, forget I mentioned it. There's a way that doesn't need us to run, is what I'm trying to say. Designed for moving casualties in extremis."

  "How?"

  The grin returned, far too smart for its own good. "I hope you don't mind getting a bit cozy."

  Following the Gatemaker's instructions, Rel wedged himself into the oval aperture of the Gateway, his back to the bottom of the opening and tingling with the contact, his foot against the top. That left his head and body upright on the far side, facing the Abyss. Though he twisted as best he could, all he could see of what the door had hidden was darkness. His free leg trailed across the concrete of the ledge, sliding slowly with the swing of the door.

  Rissad lay down on top of him, holding himself in place with a tight one-armed hug, his face pressed to Rel's shoulder. Rel wrapped his arms around the other man, trying to tell himself he wasn't really that relieved there was no-one around to see. Before the discomfort could turn physical, he heaved backwards, using his braced leg to lift the rest of their weight out through the Gateway. The back of his skull bounced off the floor, hard, and Rissad let out another harsh gasp, but the trick worked.

  The two men disentangled themselves and fought their way up to standing. In front of them, the darkness was filled with faint glimmers where torchlight reflected from immaculate plastic and metal. The vague shape of the room was visible, enough to make out that it matched the door for size, but the space inside was so tangled with racks and walkways that making sense of it became impossible.

  As they limped across the threshold, the quality of the air changed; the Abyss felt damp, ever so slightly redolent of mould, but here the overwhelming impression was of cleanliness. No dust caught the unsteady light of the few remaining torches behind them, and there wasn't the bright scent of life that came from clear days in the open air. There was just the sense that whoever had built the place had controlled every aspect of it to perfection, and nothing had changed since.

  Rel helped Rissad prop himself up against a rack of bare metal shelves and went back to collect a couple of torches. At the Gatemaker's suggestion, he popped back through a much simpler Gateway - nothing stopping Rissad making Gates in the back of the door now - and collected the Stable Rod too. The door ground to a halt with a fresh teeth-wrenching scream

  When he'd recovered from the echoes, Rel took the rod and torches back to Rissad, his hands already coated in the vile stuff the Wildren had infused the wood with. More light didn't help much with making sense of the room, but at least they could see what was on the nearby shelves. Row on row of plastic bottles, all full of water, caught the light immediately in front of them. A wire mesh, wrapped tightly around the whole shelf, must have protected them through even the most violent upheavals of the Realmcrash.

  With good, watertight plastic so scarce these days, Rel counted the bottles as raw wealth. There were enough for every town in the First Realm to get a few, and he thought he could see another rack deeper in the darkness. He said, "Do you think they know all this stuff is in here?"

  Rissad grunted. "Everything I've heard suggests the Wildren have never been through the door, for whatever reason. They could have broken in if they'd wanted, I'm sure."

  "What's it all for?"

  "You're the Clearseer. Take a look around, see if you can spot anything that might say." The Gatemaker's stiff tone made the instruction peremptory, and Rel bristled. Still, despite the headache he knew he was inviting, it was the best way to figure out what they'd found.

  The first instant of cold as he embraced Clearsight was welcome, refreshing, numbing to the anxiety of being so far in conflict with the Wildren. It didn't last; the cold sharpened, pushed hard fingers through the centre of his forehead, and pain returned. At least he stayed distracted from worrying about Dora and Taslin. Even without the pressure between his eyes, the room revealed by his enhanced vision made sure of that.

  It was a room of straight lines and crisp angles, vertical supports and horizontal catwalks broken only by the occasional dramatic slash of a staircase. Somehow, though, the shapes conspired together to form a spiral of such perfect natural grace that the eye was sucked along it, round and round and unmistakably upward into darkness. Rel got the sense that he saw far beyond the confines of any physical chamber; right at the edges of vision, there was a sense of pressure that might have been Realmlessness pressing in, but it was shielded in some way.

  Rissad's hand closed tightly around Rel's upper arm, and Rel realised he'd been leaning forward, his body following his eyes up into the well of strangeness ahead. He held back from blinking, but every way he looked at the room led his gaze back to the same point. Details began to stand out, though; a staircase with steps on the underside, a rack of shelves which had a catwalk running vertically up the face of it. Clearsight made some of the more distant metalwork seem thinner, ghostly, and he started to see where one beam was a copy of another, or a rack repeated itself higher up the spiral.

  Despite utterly paradoxical geometry, the whole structure resonated with stillness, Realmspace held steady under strain by the physical framework. Even where seeing into darkness rendered everything down to a grainy, dancing grey of faint particulate motion, there was stability. Rel handed one of the torches to Rissad and walked a little deeper into the room, ignoring the other man's uneasy question. It was no surprise when his skin came alive with the gossamer-soft tickle of the Sherim enveloping him.

  And yet, something was different. Emboldened by the stability of everything around him, Rel shot out an arm, looking for the whisper of wild power that should come with the gesture. The Second Realm, so close by, failed to respond. He tried again, focussed on binding First-Realm logic across the divide, but even with his Clearsight active, his waving arm failed to twist Realmspace. Only air moved, swirling into fleeting, pathetic eddies.

  "What's up?" Rissad hobbled around the corner of the shelving, using his torch as a crutch, the still-burning end pressed to the floor and in danger of igniting his trousers.

  "It's a Sherim, but I can't reach the Second Realm through it." Rel turned to the other man, but Clearsight caught on a detail behind him. With most of the torches on the wrong side of the door, the Abyss was little brighter than the Sherim room. No obstacle to Seeing Clearly, though, and he could make out the glittering, energetic wake of some Wilder which must have just flown past the opening. "We need to get out of here."

  Rissad was snapping his fingers, frowning, but he responded instantly to the edge in Rel's voice. "What's wrong?"

  "Wilder just spotted us." Rel rubbed a hand over his forehead, all too aware of his mounting fatigue. "I don’t know about you, but I'm close to burning out already."

  "I don't know if I'll burn
or bleed out first." The Gatemaker's face was grim. "This close to a Sherim, wild power or no, I don't think I could hold a Gate steady, not now I know it's here."

  "At least we got the door open." Rel blinked Clearsight away; it would be no use to him now, and if he was going to end up in Wilder custody, he didn't want to go comatose from burnout.

  "Maybe." Rissad's face, cadaverous in the torchlight, pointed the other way, his eyes lost in the jungle of the Sherim. "You give up pretty easily, for a Federas Gifted."

  Rel shivered. "You can't seriously want to risk an unexplored Sherim in your condition!"

  "Better than another day in their hands." He glanced back towards the doorway, his pallor turning his face to stone. "Look, there's stuff I haven't told you. I have an idea of what I'm going into, but there's no time to explain. You coming?"

  "I wouldn't last five minutes. I'll take my chances here." The mere thought of entering the Second Realm now left him wincing, his eyes screwed shut. When he opened them again, there was a figure stepping out of a gateway in the door. Silver skin caught glints of yellow and orange from the remaining torches, and no human ever had a neck so long.

  Rissad held out the Stable Rod. "I'll fill you in when I get back, then. Can you buy me some time to get away?" Beneath cold ferocity, there was a haunted touch to his eyes, almost but not quite lost in the haggard slackness of the skin of his cheeks.

  "I-" Rel cleared his throat, finding it suddenly tighter than expected. He took the Rod from Rissad's hand, his grip gentle enough that he almost dropped it. The flicker of concern that danced across the other man's shadowed eyes almost brought tears to Rel's. He managed, "I'll do what I can."

  "Good luck."

  "Yeah." Rel grappled with a hundred things he wanted to say, and all that came out through the storm of warnings, well-wishes and goodbyes was, "You too."

  Rissad glanced past Rel's shoulder once, then turned, leaning heavily on his torch. Telling himself it was just because he needed to watch the approaching Wilder, Rel turned his back on the Gatemaker, but the shuffling sound of Rissad's uneven step stayed with him. Ahead, the silver-skinned Wilder glided forward, its feet spread wider than its shoulders as it walked.

  Rel's head ached. His empty stomach clenched his gut like a fist. His wrenched shoulder held the tight sensation that presaged pain at the slightest hint of sharp movement, not helped by the stiff wrist from the earlier fight. The front of his brain felt cold and vacant, the back like a lump of wool. But the shining figure bearing down on him poured the warmth of familiar anger across everything, gave him strength. The Stable Rod, warm in his hand, promised a major advantage if it came to a fight, and he still had some Clearsight left, even with the Sherim pressing chaos against his mind.

  Better to get the first word in. Rel said, "I'm censuring you and any collaborating with you for the unlawful abduction of and assault on Rissad Van Raighan. Stop where you are."

  To his surprise, the Wilder planted its feet and froze, shadowed eyes fixed on his. Maybe it was obeying, but more likely it was just too shocked to respond. Behind it, movement caught Rel's eye as half a dozen more figures Gated in. The poor light made their features indistinct, but the tall, shapely one had to be Taslin, the shorter, plainer figure at her side Dora.

  That left him with a quandary; if he used his remaining Clearsight now, he'd be unable to watch Taslin, but without it the fight would be a much harder proposition. In theory it was possible to fight a Gift-Giver with Clearsight, but no-one had ever tried. The Stable Rod bucked in his hand as it tried to bleed off the strain of their approach.

  Dora