by Matt Langley
A boom of white burst in Shryke’s skull. He felt his mind slipping, falling open like a flower. Something locked deep down inside burst out and spread through his thoughts, exploding like firecrackers and whizzing gunpowder rockets.
Shryke’s head lit up.
The Sun-Machine.
Yellow light burning through an impossible sky from whirling suns. Huge leathery wings flapping. Gusts of fire and the glint of diamond studded steel.
Shryke reeled where he sat, was on the verge of vomiting up the stew he just eaten and winced as a brutal headache unfurled in his head. His vision blurred and his jaw slacked, spilling saliva.
The scab on the wound over his neck cracked open and a gush of black ichor ran down his naked shoulder. Behind the ichor, blood bubbled and spat.
In his confusion Shryke got up blindly, holding his hand over the wound as blood and black seeped through his fingers.
Galdar and Carlow pushed themselves to their feet, unsure what to do.
Shryke howled as the hard tsunami of forbidden information raged through his skull in a curling wave race of uncovered memories.
The Sun-Machine
The Dreaming Army of the Plain.
The Failsafe.
The end of everything.
Shryke felt consciousness ebbing away.
He grabbed for Galdar, but his hand fell on Carlow.
Blindly he pulled the boy close to him and spat, “My neck. My neck…get this thing out of me. Cut me open if you have to but get it out of me now!”
Chapter 24
The punch came out of nowhere.
Barl doubled over, and fell to his knees, gasping for breath.
Master Rhoan looked down at the boy and wiped the skin of her fist with a towel.
“Don’t get complacent. Bantoscree Armour will shield you from a tactical nuke blast just out of arms reach or frustrate a flechette barrage from an air-bust above your head, but it’s not good for close-up fighting. It’s absolutely fine if you’re taking out a Barsogeneral in the depths of her Autoclade with a hand-held hydrogen cannon, but when you jump through the Quantum for a single-kill, a night mission, a silent one stop in and out solo gig, you won’t be clanking around under plates of Techtomesh and actuated exoskeleton. You’ll be in your Blacks. Light body armour and you will be killable. Being killable is not a good thing. So, you must be alert to dangers all the time. Do I make myself clear?”
Barl had recovered enough to nod. “I didn’t think class had started,” he managed between gasps.
Master Rhoan bent down on one knee, getting her three mouths close to Barl’s ear. Barl didn’t look up. He hadn’t yet got used to her crazy jigsaw face. It had more mouths and eyes than it needed and would reconfigure itself in to different ‘identity-expressions’ when the mood took her. She was a Shaper from the Articles of Zaymar. Barl didn’t know what that meant beyond her being scary as hell and the leader of the least favourite period in his training day. Today her session on Close Combat had come just after breakfast and he was regretting having eaten so much.
Rhoan pulled Barl up to a standing position by the scruff of his tunic and dusted him down with her prehensile tail. “Classes never stop. Clear?” Some of the other Trainees, especially the thin faced and arrogant Maxol had a good laugh at Barl’s expense. At least if Master Rhoan was sneak-hitting Barl, she wasn’t sneak-hitting them.
Barl nodded, pulling his tunic down over his now exposed, and still gurgling belly.
“Good lad.” Rhoan patted him on the shoulder and returned to addressing the class.
It had been six weeks on Pantonyle now, and Barl still hadn’t seen Summer, or had word of her.
He was growing concerned.
None of his tutors were forthcoming when he asked, and if Gharlin knew where she was, he wasn’t saying.
If it wasn’t for Gharlin being in his constant orbit between classes Barl might have sacked off training and gone looking for her himself.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Gharlin said when he admitted as much. “You think they’re not tracking you? They’d know where you were in seconds. Less.”
Barl knew Gharlin was right, but there was a God’s Heart sized ache in his guts and a Summer shaped hole in his day.
Training continued.
There were no rest days, but mornings were taken with tutorials and lectures, and the afternoons were left to the Trainees to study in the Library Bubbles near the top of the Nest. Up there the view past the far mountains and onto the gigantic bruise of Hanshavo Prime often stole his breath away, thankfully in a less painful way than Rhoan’s punch.
Once lectures had finished with Rhoan, and Barl had showered and changed—close combat was always physically demanding and occasionally damaging—Barl made his way up through the Nest superstructure to the Library Bubbles. The ache in his being wasn’t so much missing Summer now, blooms of fresh pain in his torso and face took precedence. Trainees were encouraged not to hold back with each other in close combat, and although Rhoan tried to match each student with someone of similar build and power, Barl was still the youngest and smallest of the class by far and he took a physical pounding every time he went in the ring.
Maxol had dumped him off the safety-mattresses time and again with unexpected kicks and forceful punches.
Maxol was three years older, and considerably stronger than Barl.
Rhoan promised Barl that he would catch up eventually, but that losing was “good for the soul” and that he should grow to hate it so that in later life, when on missions, Barl would really not want to lose for real. There was logic to it, and as Barl nodded at the battlemaster, he seethed inside, hating it already. Maxol was nothing more than a bully who enjoyed beating the smallest member of the class.
Gharlin was already at a terminal near the back of Library Bubble Four. It was a quiet area out of direct line of sight from the grumpy Librarian, which suited Barl just fine; he had a plan to follow through today. He was glad that Gharlin had chosen the best place for him to carry it out without him having to persuade the Bantoscree to go there, raising suspicions.
Barl was still adapting to the technological marvels he had encountered since being taken from God’s Heart, but he was a quick learner, and had taken to the Terminals quickest of all. Not because they were easier to accept, but because of what opportunities they presented him in terms of escape.
Bantoscree Trainees in their pressure-cages didn’t take close combat for obvious reasons and so Barl met with Gharlin after lectures.
“Is your eye supposed to be that colour?”
“No. I got elbowed in the face by Maxol.”
“Interesting. One might interpret that colour as, “I feel stupid” in Bantoscree.”
“Well, I feel stupid in human,” Barl said, and grimaced with pain as he touched the still tender bruising.
Gharlin floated at the next terminal, his tendrils able to pass through active-airlocks to operate the keypads. The tendrils were the only muscled and cartilaginous part of his body, and could cope with the pressures outside the cage. It took effort and concentration but Gharlin said he preferred it to just using remotes—he felt less cut-off from everything.
Barl wished he had an airlock like Gharlin’s to allow him to reach back to God’s Heart. Thinking of those yellowberries he’d first tasted from Summer’s plan, Barl shook his head free of the idea.
Gharlin operated his terminal, and turned back to the holoscreen, cycling though various weapon arrays that could be attached to a Bantoscree’s Battle Armour. Barl looked around the library bubble to make sure no one was close.
The rows of terminals and book stations stretched pretty much as far as the eye could see in the enormous enclosed space. He saw a group of Trainees in the distance, clustered around the Librarian’s desk. The grey-faced old man with his shock of white hair seemed to be barracking them.
Perfect.
Barl fired up his terminal and entered the password. Today he wasn’t entering
his password. Today he was entering Maxol’s password. He’d let his sparring partner elbow him in the face on purpose. It gave him the perfect reason to go back to the Changing Bubble alone, telling Rhoan that he felt nauseous.
Once in the changing area, he’d made straight for Maxol’s kitbag and taken out one of his exercise tablets. Maxol was strong and fast. But only in the body. Last week Barl had watched Maxol read his terminal password off the back of an exercise tablet. It hadn’t taken much imagination to come up with his plan after that.
Barl scanned the tablet and found exactly what he was looking for; the password was etched into a piece of metal tape. He committed it to memory and returned the tablet to where he’d found it.
Now at the Library terminal, Barl logged in as Maxol.
Barl was working under the assumption that researching routes back to God’s Heart, travel times and possible ways of making the journey, would be something the Guild’s battlemasters might expect him to do.
But not Maxol…
The risk was that Maxol was under a similar kind of scrutiny as he was, and soon as he started searching all levels of alarms would be triggered in the Tech Bubbles bringing the wrath of the Guild’s battlemasters down on him.
Making sure Gharlin was intent on his screen, Barl input a general search for God’s Heart.
A slew of text and diagrams raced across the screen.
Barl read it all hungrily.
God’s Heart had been discovered over 200,000 years ago by the space-faring races of the galaxy, long before the Guild, long before many of the alliances that had grown, decayed and been rebuilt between civilisations.
For many thousands of years, the structure of God’s Heart had resisted study. It was postulated that it held one or two stars at its centre—gravity readings and the orbits of many outer planets in the system seemed to bear this out.
It wasn’t until many years later as the use of codemagic and the skills for wielding it had advanced, that powerful Mages had been able to divine inside the sphere and see its endless lands and environments. From the inner geographical maps of God’s Heart Barl saw he was from a vast prairie belt encircling the temperate zones to the north of the equator. There were also endless jungle regions, enormous seas, and mountainous snow-capped peaks. Barl had no idea that God’s Heart had been so vast—the text informed him that the inner surface area of the sphere was larger than a billion continent-sized landmasses. Barl had no chance of imagining something that enormous, even though he’d lived there. Yes, he knew the horizon curved up, in direct opposition to the horizon on Pantonyle, but he had no idea of the sheer vastness the upward curve contained.
The Mages had progressed in their studies. Eventually they found ways to open small sections in the shell of the structure and had entered. There they had found simple, peaceful peoples who knew nothing of the universe outside. But what the Mages discovered too was amongst those peoples of God’s Heart there was a much higher than average level of innate magical ability latent in the population. Some of the most powerful adepts they had ever seen, though they did nothing with their incredible power.
Barl was one of these…’simple’…people.
He wasn’t sure what to think about that. He had said to Gharlin that he didn’t feel special, but he didn’t feel simple, either.
As the galaxy had fallen into a succession of bloody wars raging across systems, study of the God’s Heart had stopped. It wasn’t until the Guild had been set up to become The Surgeons of Peace, that their Mages returned to God’s Heart to recruit Assassins from the peoples there.
Barl sat back.
The rush of information was washing through him, swirling in currents he wasn’t sure he could keep his head above, or resist drowning beneath. He knew he had to focus. Nothing in this information could help him get home. Even if his conception of home had now changed beyond all recognition.
It took a few moments of the silver sigil blinking on and off on the holoscreen for him to realise a message was waiting for him…
Without thinking, Barl clicked on the sigil, opening the message, then immediately regretting it. It wasn’t a message for him. It was for Maxol. He was using Maxol’s login.
The sigil blossomed open into two words.
HELLO BARL
Before Barl had a chance to process what it meant in its incongruity, it was replaced by a screaming skull.
Two arms, all bones and festering flesh were bursting from the holoscreen reaching to claw out his eyes.
Chapter 25
They reached Saint Juffour, the town at the head of the valley, by the fourth Quarternight after leaving the mounds of fresh earth and ferns covering the slaughtered.
Galdar and Carlow had been forced to finish the burial work themselves as Shryke’s strength failed him. He paced the muddy ground muttering about Sun-Machines and Failsafes and when he wasn’t pacing he was on his hands and knees drawing diagrams in the wet mud with his fingertips like some simpleton.
As soon as Galdar and Carlow finished the last burial, the sky, glutted with clouds, had opened and a harsh squall of rain poured down upon them like nails made of water.
Shryke still pawed at his neck and pleaded with them to remove whatever it was in there, Galdar had refused and Shryke had relented, but had withdrawn into himself, whether consciously or because of the fever raging though his body, Galdar did not know. She didn’t want to contemplate what was going on with him until she had said last rites over the Congregation of the Moveable Church. Necessity might deny her a period of mourning for her people, but they would have the funeral they deserved.
Carlow explained that there was a town at the head of the valley the Congregation had passed while Galdar was away with Shryke, so they had made their way to it. Saint Juffour, a holy settlement with a large church of its own, was their best hope of finding a Mage-Doctor to treat the pus-leaking wound on the side of Shryke’s neck.
The weather remained filthy, matching Galdar’s mood. She was steeped in death and it was clawing at her faith and her sensibilities. The God of Safehome had never felt so far away.
Shryke was able to ride, just, but he was mostly distracted, and sometimes delirious. His lips moved as if completing a vast new inventory of ideas in his head—he didn’t have the wherewithal to explain what was going on in there, and Galdar could not work out if it was to do with the wound or the sudden change in him when she had mentioned The Sun-Machine. More than once, Shryke fell asleep in his saddle. If Galdar hadn’t been riding alongside, he would have fallen to the ground.
On the second Halfnight after leaving the buried Congregation behind, Galdar found herself studying the liquid surface of the battle-mace. She had been in two minds as to whether to leave it buried with her people, but she felt a strong attraction between the weapon and her heart. Leaving it behind would have been as unthinkable as leaving Shryke behind to suffer. The bonds were fierce.
Saint Juffour was built at the head of the river and served as a mercantile trading post and warehousing facility for the various peoples of the Thalladon ranges. The river washed through a network of widening tributaries across a foul marsh into the dark waters of Lake Tarsh.
Lake Tarsh itself was an enormous, mist-shrouded and chill body of water prone to harsh storms. The walled town sat at its head like a big friendly face, but still the face on a body that held a sharp dagger behind its back.
Once they persuaded the Juffour Townsguard that friend Shryke wasn’t carrying plague and the wound on his neck was that of an infected injury, she and the half-delirious warrior were allowed in to meet Klane, the chieftain. Carlow was made to wait outside with the horses because, as he put it, Klane, “Didn’t like the look of the arsefaced-boy before and didn’t like the look of him now.”
Galdar was wary of leaving Carlow, not because she worried for his safety but rather because she expected him to have sold two of the horses and ridden off with the profits before they returned.
Klane met
them in a small counting house on the other side of the gate. He looked with distaste at the pair, his small piggish eyes glistening with more than a little fear. “If it’s not plague,” he asked, “what is it?”
“We need a Mage-Doctor to tell us,” said Galdar.
Klane held a handkerchief to his bulbous nose and took a step back. “You may see Lucillian, but Mage-Doctors aren’t cheap, and as her agent in Saint Juffour…”
Galdar sighed and pushed a small leather bag of coin Shryke had passed to her in a more lucid moment this morning, across the table.
Klane opened the bag and squinted at its contents and smiled coldly. “This will have to suffice, I suppose…”
“There will be more if I am cured…” Shryke managed to whisper.
“Afford every access!” Klane called to the leader of the Townsguard waiting outside the room wearing the most suspicious of faces. Klane was obviously more interested in the acquisition of cash than anything else and it was the way to get him to oil the wheels of assistance.
Klane got up and shooed them both out of the counting house, tossing the bag of coin into the pocket of his robe. “Off you go then. Get better and visit me at my residence before you leave, then we can work out the rest of the…business.”
Galdar just sighed and helped the sagging Shryke back out onto the street.
Saint Juffour was a dark, narrow-avenued, heavily populated town with wet muddy streets. Food and human waste ran in the gutters, washed along by the fresh torrents of rain that sluiced from the pitched roofs and eves of the claustrophobic buildings.
The inhabitants were a suspicious lot.
Those who had braved the elements made no eye contact with them. The closest to human interaction they came was when someone registered how sick Shryke looked and yielded to give them right of way in a narrow passage, not wanting to get too close. Galdar had to move sideways several times with Shryke leaning heavily on her as they splashed through the ankle-deep mud.