The Weight of the World (Amaranthine Spectrum 2), page 1
DEDICATION
For Nunky
Volume Two of the Amaranthine Spectrum
TOM TONER
GOLLANCZ
LONDON
CONTENTS
Cover
Dedication
Title Page
Author’s Note
Epigraph
Introduction
PROLOGUE
Fairy Tale: 1645
Atholcualan: Winter 14,646
PART I
Proximo
Coriopil
Mersin
Izmirean
Satrap
PART II
Scoundrel Flower
Dusk
Corbita
Astirion-Salay
Homage
Midnight
Letters
Goh
Fallpull
Starry Most
Petrichor
On The Town
Cursed
Day-Dark Palace
Luminescence
Zadar
Tanker
PART III
Wolf
Gallery
Decadence
Grand-Tile
The Show
Silver Moon
Port Rubante
PART IV
Thrasm
Apostate
Filgurbirund: Midsummer 14,647
Warnings
Loot
The Feeders
Liatris
Sepulchre
Throng
Ash
Journey
Vintage
Nourishment
Treasure
EPILOGUE
Chelsea: 1649
Glossary
Acknowledgements
Also by Tom Toner from Gollancz
Copyright
AUTHOR’S NOTE
There are a few odd formats used throughout this odd book.
Whole chapters are occasionally written in italics, and these take place in the past. Anything written in the present tense can be assumed to be a dream, or taking place in a dreamlike state.
EPIGRAPH
‘You must go back before Caesar’s legions, to the days when the bones of giant animals and men lay on the ground … to the New Troy, the New Jerusalem, and the sins and crimes of the kings who rode under the tattered banners of Arthur and who married women who came out of the sea or hatched out of eggs, women with scales and fins and feathers …’
Hilary Mantel
Wolf Hall
‘All the day long her sail was stretched as she sped over the sea; and the sun set and all the ways grew dark. She came to deep-flowing Oceanus, that bounds the Earth, where is the land and city of the Cimmerians, wrapped in mist and cloud.’
Homer
The Odyssey
There is a glossary at the back on p. 457
INTRODUCTION
The Weight of the World is the second volume of the Amaranthine Spectrum.
The first, The Promise of the Child, began in the year AD 14,647.
Earth, now known as the Old World, has changed beyond recognition and become the forgotten haunt of talking beasts and the twisted, giant-like remnants of humankind known as the Melius. The lifeless, apparently sterile local stars – discovered, much to everyone’s surprise, to have been visited and subsequently abandoned seventy-nine million years earlier by an intelligent species of dinosaur – are now in the possession of the Amaranthine, a branch of immortal humans left over from a golden age.
Their empire, known as the Firmament, extends outwards from the Old World for twenty-three solar systems to the edges of the Prism Investiture, a ring of grindingly poor planets and moons occupied by the Prism, a cluster of dwarfish, primate descendants of humanity.
In the Vaulted Lands of the Amaranthine Firmament, the Perennial Parliaments are jostling for power, with one sect challenging the Emperor himself for the Firmamental Throne. Their nominated ruler is Aaron the Long-Life, a recently discovered man of incredible age who they hope has the power to heal the Firmament and push back the ever-encroaching Prism.
On the Old World, in a remote estate near the former Mediterranean Sea, lives Lycaste, a shy giant Melius man and legendary beauty. Pining for a girl who does not love him in return, Lycaste’s life changes when a census-taker arrives from the distant ruling Provinces. Lycaste and the man find themselves immediately at odds, and one night, when the dispute becomes physical, Lycaste mistakenly believes that he has committed murder. Terrified, he flees his homeland for the first time in his life, making his way through the war-torn Old World Provinces. The Melius eventually falls into the hands of Sotiris, an Amaranthine mourning the death of his sister, who realises that Lycaste is far more important to the fate of the Firmament than ever could have been anticipated.
Sotiris has been tempted by the mysterious Aaron the Long-Life with the possibility of seeing his sister again. He eventually accepts the devil’s bargain, agreeing to rule the Firmament on Aaron’s behalf, but not before turning Lycaste over to his old friend, Hugo Maneker, a one-time confidant of Aaron’s who he knows will keep him safe.
In the lawless worlds of the Prism Investiture, Ghaldezuel, a Lacaille Knight of the Stars, is contracted to steal a miraculous invention: the Shell, a device apparently capable of capturing and preserving one’s soul. He delivers it to the Old World and its new owner, Aaron the Long-Life, along with the mummified remains of one of the star-faring dinosaurs. Aaron is revealed to be the spirit of a dead Artificial Intelligence created by the creatures in the distant past. He has lain dormant in projected form for seventy-nine million years, whispering into the ears of the powerful until he could be reunited with a body. Aaron uses the Shell to conjoin his soul with the dinosaur’s corpse and takes physical form. He tells Ghaldezuel that together they must travel to Gliese, the capital of the Firmament, before his ancient plan can be fulfilled.
On a lonely, windswept planet, the true Emperor of the Firmament speaks to the voices in his head. Although everyone thinks him half-mad, the voices are in fact real: they are the souls of other long-dead AI substrates, relatives of Aaron the Long-Life, bound to the world where they died just as he once was. Panicked, they tell the Emperor that Aaron has freed himself and embarked upon a course of revenge, pursuing those who wronged him so long ago. The Emperor tells them not to worry, for many thousands of years ago the Firmament also created an artificial soul called Perception. Somewhere Perception’s spirit still resides, and it might just be able to help them.
PROLOGUE
Twenty thousand days imprisoned.
I built my cities of dust brick by brick.
Their foundations, before I became proficient in the layering and gluing of motes, were at first just ramshackle, piled strata, like the rocks of a fortress’s base. I learned fast, weaving symmetry into the silk-strengthened blocks and sticking them just so, until up rose the curtain walls, straighter and stronger as I honed my craft, to be crowned with battlements and ramparts of my own design.
Soon I’d made gatehouses and keeps, layering structures atop one another in wholly unrealistic ways; towers as high as my chamber crowned with horizontal spires and steeples. After fifteen days of tireless work, I slunk back to look at what I’d made, and then I let them in.
I’d kept the old females and their concubines separate until the accession, allowing them to spin until one corner of my chamber was milky with the silk I needed for cement. When all was finished, I opened the portcullis to their new home, looking on proudly as they scuttled in.
Of course, I had no idea what species of Spinner they were, guessing only from their feeding habits that they were quite fantastically venomous. Their aggression I had already seen, and with a cruel delight I knew I would be in for a show as I released a second, then a third female into the labyrinthine palace to contend for the throne. Above, suspended in the rafters of the great keep in the manner of a trophy head, a Twitchwing trembled in a hammock of silk. The new queen’s reward, and the nutrition that would breed me my princelings.
Stumpellina the Amputated came first across the castle drawbridge, she that had lost a leg to some accident outside my lair, followed quickly by a scampering flurry of smaller, darker males. Five were her own progeny, breathless at the chance of straddling their own mother. I did not find that unpleasant at the time, having barely considered the possibilities of interbreeding. If I’d known, perhaps I’d have upped the number: let the mutated have a chance at ruling, should it be their pleasure.
It soon dawned on me that my Spinners wouldn’t solve my maze without help – I’d overestimated in my observation of their artistic webs their ability to problem-solve – so I carried a strand of silk across from their old home, laying it like a line of rope up into the antechambers of the throne room itself. They would first have to cross perilous ravines with sheer walls traversed by dainty bridges, a gauntlet to weed out the weak and the stupid, perhaps bottlenecking the most vicious of them to allow a wilier individual to scuttle past. Another I routed to the postern, wishing the escapee the chance of becoming a future contender – I was planning dynasties here, after all, great histories that would play out before me over the years I’d have to endure. These creatures in their mighty halls would be my children, my enjoyment, my sacrificial beasts. I thought ahead as my Spinners scrabbled for their prize, thinking of the generations I could breed. Thousands, millio
ns. Indulging in flights of fancy, I imagined how they might look at the end of it all, when even I had ceased to exist.
Would they ever chance to glance up, I wondered, perhaps ruminating on who had given them this palace? I glowered over the scene, a crumpled, silken cloud of attenuated thought, watching them all, urging them on, wondering also whether greater things looked down on me. I’d seen inside their little chemical brains, watched the ebb and flow of blood through their accordion lungs, and knew that they could feel, in a sense. They might just revere me, one day, when I had force-bred imagination into them. They might just be capable of setting me free.
At last, almost simultaneously, two would-be queens achieved the throne room, scuttling in from alternate doorways and facing each other wearily as they contemplated the trapped Twitchwing. Stumpellina studied her nemesis, Fangmilla: she with the broken injector. Toxin gathered upon the good fang’s tip in an oily drop. I lowered over the battlements like an arriving storm, peering through the arrow slits and into the great keep, ignoring the struggles of the others.
They circled. I watched in a slowed-down time of my own devising, seeing their muscled forelimbs grind the dust, hearing their ragged breathing booming through the chambers of the palace. Their markings shimmered in a rainbow, the hair covering their abdomens swaying like a field of wheat. Stumpellina reared and pounced, a quick, unexpectedly clever feint enabling her to hook a leg beneath Fangmilla’s soft, exposed underbelly and tip her. Could they poison one another? Suddenly afraid, I contemplated driving them apart with a breath of wind, but by then Fangmilla had been pierced, thrashing for a moment until the life ebbed from her movements and she curled into a ball. Stumpellina wasted no time, knowing now that she was in possession of two prizes, and began to devour her old rival, suckling the juices. I watched until she was done, pushing away the husk and climbing for the Twitchwing. It had witnessed everything but lost the energy to fight. I almost considered letting it go.
While Stumpellina fed for a second time, I silently began work on the tomb of the fallen female, spinning a dust sarcophagus that would encapsulate her where she lay. Across its surface, I sculpted a frieze of exquisite ornamentation, finishing with a representation of her broken-toothed face. Naturally mummified by the removal of her fluids, she would remain desiccated and preserved for many thousands of years at the heart of the dry castle, a monument to the victorious line begun that day. All that remained now was to await the prince that would begin it. I lowered my glance to the battlements.
Across the castle courtyards, the battle raged. Brothers from the same hatching fought and devoured one another, a seething tangle of furious black legs. The males did not possess the same extraordinary poison as the females, though I dare say if I were a man I wouldn’t have let one near me. With time, I might breed more potency from them, hoping someday to wield my Spinners against the Amaranthine like a blunt, flailing force, something they’d never expect until they came again to my door. It was curious: something in me feared these creatures still, some inherited, long-defunct alley of my mind formed by the process of revulsion. I can only assume it was my father’s fear. Well, he needn’t have worried; it wasn’t my Spinners that got him, in the end.
FAIRY TALE: 1645
He ambled through the litter-strewn camp, the summer day all but gone, nodding occasionally to men he knew: drummers with their backs to a sawn log; an ensign holding his boot and hopping barefoot to the fire. The farty tang of uncorked beer reminded him of other times; the fermentation of dry grass ready for pasture aromatic around them; the squeal of a green branch hefted onto the cookfire. Tin spoons scraped; men coughed.
Daniell looked at the faces of the people he passed, the ready grin set in his jaw tiring as he reached the hill. He recognised these men because he was paid to know them, to spend time with them. He was no soldier.
‘How is’t, Bulstrode?’ asked the sentry at the rise, his matchlock propped like a walking stick, barrel up. ‘You’re needed.’
He took the diagonal route, hobbling where the field had been trampled into dry divots by his Lordship’s cavalry the day before, and reached the crest in time to see the last of the pink fade from the few clouds. Only a deep, sooty orange lined the far hills of Burrowbridge, staining to blue above.
His Lordship’s tent was dark, empty as always. It comforted Daniell to think that a charlatan would have objects: talismans, jars of animal parts, perhaps a fat Grimoire of spells sitting ostentatiously on a shelf. But his Lordship didn’t appear to own a thing that he didn’t carry on his person – not a candlestick, chair or chamber pot. Daniell, in his unspecified role of retainer, had gradually risen over the few years of his service to handle nearly all of his master’s needs – from writing letters and saddling horses all the way down to far dirtier work, work that his Lordship assigned only to him. After those sorts of jobs were done, he was invariably given a holiday, perhaps a few days’ leave for a man, a week at an inn for a family; the precise rates of exchange for a life seemingly already weighed and worked out. Only just this once had someone got away, by nothing but a hair. But his Lordship needn’t concern himself with that – Daniell had the matter in hand.
As he came upon the hill camp, he saw that the huge fire-pit among the tents was piled with kindling and rolled pamphlets from town. He paused, looking into it, trying to make out what some of them said in the fading light.
The devil appeared to Joan Hodgkin in the form of a dog, he read, without needing to mouth the words. Daniell crouched and pulled out the paper to read more by the light of the faded sky. She sold her soul and was possessed. He scanned the text, examining the crude drawing of the old wife and understanding before he’d come to the bottom of the pamphlet that she’d already paid for her crimes. The West Country was a superstitious hollow, a place where mists still clung to the land long after dawn. Another written piece caught his eye, tiny among the cluttered drawings of parliamentarians in their broad hats.
Henry Purcell of the Privy Council has today laid grievous charges at the door of the king’s lieutenant general of the horse, Lord Aaron Goring, accusing his Lordship of sending villeins to his lodgings in the most lewd and violent of manners.
Daniell felt the sweat on his brow chill as he read the words, the sky darkening around him. At least his Lordship wasn’t here.
But he was here, of course he was. Daniell straightened and looked into the black silhouettes of the trees around the tent.
‘Shall I light the fire?’ he asked, bustling to the accompanying tent to find his things.
The trees appeared to draw breath. They said nothing for a handful of moments, then from the wood the delicate voice spoke.
‘Where were you?’
He stopped in the darkness. ‘Game of cribbage and all-fours, Lordship.’ His hand found the tinder-pistol in the sack by the entrance and he brought it out, returning to sit by the pit. The fragrant grass beneath him had been cropped almost to stubble by horses now moved. As he looked for his master in the dark, the fire sprang abruptly to life, billowing sideways in a breath of heat. Every piece of kindling and paper burned equally, as if the flames had not started in any one place. His Lord materialised from the depths, his kind, fatherly face set in blankness, and stepped into the light to sit. Daniell realised he was still clutching the pamphlet. He tossed it into the fire.
Aaron, Lord Goring, did not look at his servant, his eyes only interested in the fire. He lit it in this way sometimes, when they found themselves rushed. The magic, though wearing thin on Daniell, hadn’t quite lost its novelty. Where his Lordship glanced, the flames sank back like a dog afraid, blowing hard with a grumble against the base of the pit when they could flee no further. Daniell looked for shapes again, his gaze darting about the spaces between the flames, but could see nothing this time. At length, he spoke.
‘You had all but two of the culverin cannon removed this evening, I heard.’
Goring finished his fire-play, rolling his eyes up to the evening sky and the first blush of stars. ‘Then so would every able spy for five miles. Two cannon for appearances, or the king would send relief.’
Daniell looked at him, impressed for the hundredth time by his master’s methods. All was ready, then. Their army waited for its own annihilation.
