Nineteen
The Solar had mostly dissolved into the hazy horizon by the time Isabelle and Kantelvar debarked the sloop onto the ice-rimed quay of his estate’s tiny harbor. Despite the omnimaton’s inhuman skill, it had taken the better part of the afternoon to make a safe approach to the slowly spinning, slightly wobbling column of rock. From a distance, the skyland’s wobbling movement looked innocent, even comical, like a child’s top just starting to come off its balance. But the very fact that one could observe its complete rotation in less time than it took to enjoy afternoon tea meant that, up close, it was a mountainside whirling by at a brisk running clip, carrying enough force to smash any incautious ship to flinders.
The whole skyland couldn’t have been more than two kilometers in diameter, all of it jagged and barren with patches of snow. The mooring cove was little more than a crack in the side of the mountain. The only building Isabelle could see was a turret that squatted at the top of a short narrow stair at the end of the quay. The rest of whatever this place contained must have been underground.
There was a moment, as Kantelvar stepped from ship to shore, that Isabelle almost thought she could grab him by his hood, give him a shove, and send him tumbling into the bottomless sky, but an omnimaton stood between them, ready to intervene, and even if she did manage to tip him over, it would not necessarily improve her situation. Without any way to control the omnimaton that ran the ship, she would succeed only in trapping herself here.
The moment passed, and Isabelle followed Kantelvar onto the ice-glazed stone and up the slippery stairs. Her breath steamed, and the wind clawed at her motley skirts. Her heart hammered even from the minimal effort of climbing the steps. There wasn’t enough air up here. Kantelvar took her into a narrow crevice, through an even narrower door of thickly banded wood, and into a dark, round, low-ceilinged chamber. It was an improvement over the outside only in that it was out of the wind. The stones seemed to have absorbed more than their fair share of the cold and were greedy to exchange it for the heat of her body.
“Is it always this frigid in here?” she asked. “I cannot raise a child in a glacier.”
Kantelvar said, “The interior is more comfortable.” He gestured toward a short, barrel-vaulted corridor that terminated at a massive stone slab. The slab rested in a groove in the floor and was abraded with great curved striations. She deduced that the stone itself was circular, a great wheel that could be rolled back into the wall.
Before she could turn her mind to the mechanism by which this might be accomplished, Kantelvar raised his staff and spoke ancient words in the Saintstongue. “And there will be a haven secure against ignorance and depravity.”
There was a hiss and a clank like steam boiling under the lid of a kettle, and the door rolled away. A breath of warmer air from inside caressed her face and melted the frost that had started to form on her eyelashes. Kantelvar bowed her into an antechamber with rolling stone doors at either end and a partially reconstructed omnimaton stationed in an alcove between them.
The machine was little more than a metal torso, a clamshell head, and a single arm that connected to a gear train that operated the doors. How did Kantelvar control the machines? This one seemed to want a passphrase, but would it take such a phrase from anyone, or was there some other element required? Was it the staff? This omni-doorman could not have seen the staff when Kantelvar first brandished it.
Kantelvar said, “From this fortress at the end of all things, the Savior shall appear.”
The inner door opened and Kantelvar gestured Isabelle through.
The doors rolled shut behind her with a scraping noise like the sealing of a tomb … her tomb, for this was where he meant to bury her, to impregnate her and plant her like a bulb from which the flower of some wicked salvation would spring.
A thick, frigid darkness enveloped Isabelle until Kantelvar rapped his staff on the ground and the head of it crackled to life, filling the room with a pale green glow. It was a foyer of smooth-fitting, polished stone with marble benches for seating, rather like a courtyard nook but without any access to the sky. If Kantelvar had his way, she would never see daylight again. The idea made her cold to the core.
Isabelle started as the room’s interior door creaked open and a slim woman entered. She had soulful eyes and skin so pale that it might never have seen the sun. She wore a gray livery and a coif that did nothing to enliven her aspect. Kantelvar said not a word but made a quick, complex gesture. The woman turned, smiled brightly to Isabelle, and offered her a deep curtsy.
Kantelvar said, “This is Gretl, my thrall. She will serve as your handmaid until a permanent one can be obtained. She’s a deaf-mute. I’ll teach you the signs you need to command her, but for now, to let her stand up, you should lift your left toe.”
Isabelle pulled the hem of her skirt back and flicked her toe up. Gretl stood up at once and watched her attentively.
Isabelle asked, “How many servants do you have?” Slaves of a cruel master could be potential allies. Indeed, the mere fact that people lived here meant certain logistical necessities had to be met. The icy rock outside was no place to grow food. Were there regular shipments of provender from the outside?
“Six infelix patrueles, all unhallowed,” Kantelvar said with the proprietary enthusiasm of a man describing his flock of prize sheep.
Isabelle translated the Saintstongue, “‘Unfortunate cousins’?” Then she grimaced, because she wasn’t supposed to know that language.
But Kantelvar was too caught up in his narrative to notice. “Yes, your cousins in fact, by some remove, the last withered branches of failed hybrid lines.”
Isabelle felt she’d been slapped, but of course Kantelvar would not have trusted all his breeding efforts to just one bloodline. Isabelle must have had dozens of cousins she didn’t know about … mustn’t she? “Why ‘unfortunate’?” Even asking the question filled her with dread, as if by knowing the answer, she might somehow be responsible for it.
“Culls,” he said. “Hybrid sorcery tends to be messy. Only a few from each generation manage to pass multiple lineages down intact, and the more lineages are combined in one body, the smaller the chance for success. Unless they are unhallowed, killing the failures is the most merciful thing to do. They can’t control their sorcery, you see, and the Temple would hunt them down as abominations and subject them to Absolute Confession.”