The Infernal City by Greg Keyes Page A

they were kids—she poured the contents of a vial into it. He closed his mouth and coughed.
    She drank her own dose. It felt like a cold iron rod was being pushed down her esophagus, and she coughed, violently.
    The world spun dizzily …
    No, it wasn’t the world. It was her. She and Glim were out of the cave and ten feet above the summit, then twenty, but spinning crazily. She thrashed, trying to catch his hand before they drifted too far apart, and finally got his wrist.
    That stabilized them a bit, which was good, but now they were picking up speed, and they were aimed straight at the floating island.
    “Turn!” she shouted, but nothing happened. As the stone loomed nearer and nearer, she desperately tried to imagine another destination—her house, her father’s house back in Lilmoth.
    That worked, for they turned, slightly, then a bit more. But then Glim grunted, trying to shake himself free, and they were suddenly yanked back toward the thing. Annaïg felt her grip breaking, and knew even if she managed to turn, she was going to lose Glim. He wanted to go down, but more than that, he wanted to go to that thing.
    So she picked the deepest crevasse she could see and focused on it, and the wind became a thunder in her ears. Glim’s will appeared to relent, and they began to pick up speed. Something seemed to draw through her, as if she had somehow passed through a sieve and not been shredded, and then that, too, was past. Walls of black stone reached around her like an immense cloak, and then she felt weight return, and the sure grip of the world renew.

SIX

    Annaïg stirred and pushed up with aching limbs. Her arms seemed spindly and weak, her legs boneless.
    Her palms were pressed against thick-grained basalt, and she saw she rested at the base of the vertical crevasse she had aimed for; a sliver of light was visible, relatively narrow but rising hundreds of feet. It felt somehow as if she were in a temple, and the sky itself some holy image.
    Glim was a few yards away, thrashing feebly.
    “Glim,” she hissed. Echoes took up even that faint cry.
    “Nn?” His head twisted in her direction. He seemed to be back in his eyes.
    “You break anything?” she asked him.
    He rolled into a sitting position and shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Where are we?”
    “We’re on the thing. The flying island.”
    “How?”
    “You don’t remember anything, do you?”
    “No, I—I remember climbing the spur. And then …”
    His pupils rapidly dilated and shrank, as if he was trying to focus on something that wasn’t there.
    “The Hist,” he said. “The tree. It was talking to me, filling me up. I couldn’t hear anything else.”
    “You were pretty out of it,” she confirmed.
    “I’ve never felt like that,” he said. “There were a lot of us, all walking in the same direction, all with the same mind.”
    “Walking where?”
    “Toward something.”
    “This place, maybe?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Well, we’re here now. What is the tree telling you now?”
    “Nothing,” he murmured. “Nothing at all. I’ve never felt that, either. It’s always there, in the background, like the weather. Now …” He looked out at the light. “They say if you go far enough from Black Marsh, you can barely hear the Hist. But this—it’s like I’ve been cut away from the tree. There’s not even a whisper.”
    “Maybe it’s something about this place,” she said.
    “This place,” he repeated, as if he couldn’t imagine anything else to say.
    “We flew up here,” she said.
    “Your gunk worked.”
    “It did.”
    “Congratulations.”
    “That I’m not so sure about,” she murmured.
    “But this is what you wanted, yes, to be up here?”
    “I changed my mind,” she said. “In the end it was you who wanted to come here—only you wanted to go beneath, down to the ground. I wanted to go back to town. This was the compromise.”
    A sudden snap and flurry sounded behind them, and they