by Matt Langley
He stared at the thing for a good fifteen minutes, watching to see if it did something out of the ordinary. Nothing happened.
Eventually, he picked it up, holding the cube between thumb and forefinger, as he examined the tracery of intricate circuitry buried in its silver-blue surface.
There was a small switch on the side, which he assumed would activate the cube.
He’d used similar ones in class several times to research weaving particular codespells or aspects of combat.
He looked at the terminal.
Dare he use it to decode the contents of the cube?
Or was he holding another trap in his hand?
He put the cube back down on the bed and stared at it.
It sat there, inert.
Somehow it had been put there by magical means, despite the shielding and projections woven around the cell… But who had the kind of power to do that?
Barl sat, rippled with a creeping sense of unease.
‘o...t...’
A voice crackled in his ear. It wasn’t much. A mush of staticky nonsense, which buzzed around for a few seconds, then went silent.
The voice…
Had it been Summer?
Or was it someone trying to sound like Summer, knowing that Barl would intrinsically trust her?
Buzz.
‘Do…it…eakin…up. No…pow…r.’
It was Summer.
Do it?
Do what?
Buzz.
‘Cube…sw…tch…do…t…’
Barl picked up the cube.
He trusted her voice, as broken and distant as it was, and thumbed the switch from o to i. Instead of lighting up the terminal screen as he’d expected, light blasted directly into his eyes. The beam hit him with all the suddenness and physical force for a punch, spinning him around and dumping his arse on the bed.
“What happened?”
‘Shhh. Watch.’
Stars sped past at a crazy pace.
Galaxies flexed. A red rush. Crushed light. A planet. Golden seas. Green clouds. Down. Hands in his vision. Summer’s hands. Looking through her eyes. Down. A continent. A mountain. A castle. A window. A room. A throne. A King. A Mage. They don’t see me. They can’t see me. They’re planning. Planning a war. Planning a war against a foul warlord. They have armies to command. They have a land to protect. A people to save. A Guild Assassin. Stepping out of the air. The Mage. Killed. Beheaded. The King slaughtered. Later. The castle in ruins. The land conquered. The people enslaved. The Guild did this.
Stars. A planet. A different planet. A thousand-year war. Holding back the monsters. Monsters ready to burn and destroy. The war had kept them at bay. The line had held. Five huge batteries of automatic blast-guns ready to repel. In a line. A long line. A detonation. A battery blown away. Another. Another. Another. And then the last. A million monsters rushing forwards. Claws. Teeth. Murder in their eyes. The Guild did this.
Stars. A bridge high above a river. In mountains. An exchange of prisoners. A leader. Sent back to his people in hope that he will keep his word and end the conflict. The last hope for peace. A Guild Assassin in the uniform of the opposing forces steps forward. Guts the leader. Throws his corpse into the river. Hails victory. A war begun. The Guild did this.
The dorm bubble in the Nest. Gharlin waiting for Barl, happy, buzzing. Two assassins in their blacks appear behind him. Raise their swords to his pressure-cage… The Guild did this…
“Stop!”
The light extinguished.
Barl was back in the room, lying on the bed, tears running down his face.
“Why did you show me that?”
Summer sat on the bed beside him. She wiped the tears from his cheek with her warm fingers. She smoothed down his hair. “I’m sorry. It was the last piece of the puzzle. You’ve been looking at a fraction of my investigations. The Guild Assassins are being sent everywhere, being used to foment chaos. They are murdering good people to start wars. I’ve seen it everywhere. And now, it’s reached the Nest. You being here has forced the hand of whoever or whatever is behind all this. It’s corrupted the Guild. War is coming. The Nest is about to be attacked.”
Barl didn’t want to hear this; all he wanted to do was purge the image of Gharlin’s last moments from his mind’s eye. He couldn’t shift the glint of the steel and the unsuspecting flush of colours blazing then fading and dying out in the pressure-cage.
“Barl, you’re special, kid. I’ve known it from the start. But I didn’t know how special. They’re going to go all out to kill you. Removing Gharlin is nothing more than another first salvo in this particular war. And they’re going to be coming for me, too. I’m not naïve enough to think I’m safe. They want every obstacle in their path removed. And that’s Gharlin and me, most recently. We both stood against them. Without us in the picture, they have a better chance of getting to you. It doesn’t matter how drained your strength is, with me around you’re still safe. And they know that.”
Barl sat up. “Please take me home. I can change my name. I can stop it. I will never use magic. I don’t want to. I just want to be me… let me go back to how it was, before all this started. Let me be like I was… with my parents, with my family, with my friends. Just let me be a normal kid.”
Summer shook her head. “Things have moved too far. I’m sorry. I truly am. I wish it could be different. I still don’t understand exactly what or even who you are, not really, but I’ve an inkling.”
Before Barl could speak, there was an explosion outside the cell.
The bubble rocked violently, and through the opaque wall Barl heard the wail of sirens and people screaming.
“It’s started,” Summer said, standing up. She ran her fingers through her hair. “I hadn’t expected them to move this soon.”
“What’s happening?”
“The Guild has been compromised. The enemy…our enemy… has brought a field guard of compromised Assassins from the Outer Rim to attack the Nest. They are here to kill me, and in the process neutralize you.”
Barl got off the bed, unsure what to do, but knowing he couldn’t just sit on his hands. “Then what will we do? Tell me. How will we escape?”
“I need you to go to The Plain.”
“Now?” He couldn’t quite believe what she was suggesting. Going there left them vulnerable here.
“I’ll meet you there,” she promised.
Barl couldn’t bring himself to shut his eyes.
“Trust me,” Summer said, pulling a complex looking hand-blaster from her blacks.
Barl looked on in horror as she put the gun against her temple and pulled the trigger.
Chapter 31
Shryke roared and leapt towards the seven Assassins as they came towards him. He ducked into a combat roll, twisting, black blade clutched to his chest, as the seven fired. The hand-cannons ripped the deck asunder, shredding the wood. Shryke was gone. Vaporised. The smoke reeked for fire and plasma.
Galdar screamed.
The Townsguard threw down their weapons, running for the bow of the gondola, she assumed, to hurl themselves off the side and exchange one certain death for another as the Assassins turned their weapons on the rest of the crew.
Lucillian, too shocked by Shryke’s demise to do anything, closed her eyes and waited for death.
Their weapons had weakened the deck below themselves; it collapsed.
They fell into the dark hold of the gondola.
A savage series of cannon blasts, several screams, and then Shryke emerged from the gaping hole in the deck, carrying one of the Techtomesh helmets in his bloodied fist.
He reached inside the helm and pulled out the Assassin’s severed head like he was pulling a mollusc from its shell and tossed it over the side of the gondola with contempt.
Galdar ran across the deck to throw herself at Shryke, gripping him in a fierce embrace that he returned every bit as fiercely until he realised he was smearing blood across her and instead kissed her forehead w
ith a smile. “Take some of our boys into the hold. Strip the armour from the dead and buckle up. Where we’re going, we’re going to need it.”
Shryke’s codemagic cast a misty pink sphere of warmth that slowly spread to envelop the gondola as it rose ever higher into the night.
Klane begged the Quantum Assassin over and over not to send the airship to greater altitudes, but Shryke dismissed the fat man’s concerns. The airship shuddered and shivered, the strain on the timbers threatening to tear it apart at the seams, but his magic would protect it until they reached their destination.
Crove muttered and sighed and shook her head, but she was obviously impressed with Shryke’s tampering to the steam engine. It was pushing out much more power but consuming considerably less coal. “I want to know your secret,” she told Shryke. “It’ll make me a fortune.”
Shryke grinned.
“If we ever get back, the airship’s yours.” Which earned a grunt from Klane. “You’re more than rich enough to buy yourself another, fat man.”
“Not anymore I’m not.”
“You have your health and a future in front of you. That makes you a rich man in my eyes,” Shryke told him, ending any argument.
Galdar finished laying out and cleaning the seven suits of armour they had retrieved from the dead assassins. It was incredible stuff, so light and yet stronger than any material she knew. She marvelled at the tiny servos and engines arranged on the joins between plates, which made the armour move of its own accord. As she cleaned, the armour flowered open, preparing itself for her to step inside as if she were the rightful owner. The exoskeleton possessed an innate intelligence and was driven to protect those closest to it. Galdar drew some reassurance from that.
Shryke stood on the gondola’s forward deck, hands lashed to ropes to steady himself.
“Where are we going?” She asked, coming up to join him.
They were moving towards a huge black expanse of nothing.
It curved from horizon to horizon but tinged at all four edges as if it were holding station in front of an enormous source of light.
“We travel beyond the Shadewalls,” he answered, as if this was meant to explain everything. Galdar opened her palms and raised a questioning eyebrow. Shryke sighed, “We don’t have time for a lesson in the mechanisms of the world. Guild Assassins will locate us again, it’s only a matter of time, and we have to steer the airship past the Shadewalls without getting burnt to cinders by the Sun-Machine or the dragons that protect it.”
“Make time, please.” Galdar said. “If I’m going to die, I’d like to know where I’m dying. And why.”
“Seconded,” Lucillian said with a small wave as she approached. “I don’t even know why I’m here, other than I was unlucky enough to meet you. No one was trying to kill me yesterday. I have to say, between the three of us, I much preferred yesterday.”
Shryke set his face towards the expanse of the Shadewalls, looking for danger.
“When I came to the Chain I came on a mission, this mission,” he explained.
“To protect the Mage in Forthana?”
“No. Forthana was destroyed many years ago, long before I got here. I lied to you. My real memories had been…masked from me somehow… stolen. When you asked, I didn’t know the truth. I needed you to trust me, so I lied. You wouldn’t have followed me if you knew only half of my mind was there. That purpose, the memories of that mission, were implanted in my mind, and used to lock away my real memories.”
“Who would do such a thing?” Galdar asked.
“The God-Queen. My real mission was to travel to the Sun-Machine. There I was to ensure the God-Queen failed in her attempt to re-animate the Dreaming Army. If the army are brought back to this realm, they will lay waste the entire universe.”
“Slow down,” Galdar said. “I’m struggling. This doesn’t make any sense. You don’t even believe in God.”
“Not God. Gods.”
“Are you telling me Gods are real?” said Lucillian, shaking her head.
Shryke turned on them. “Now do you understand why I didn’t explain? You think I am mad.”
Galdar shook her head. “I don’t believe you,” she said. “You are wrong. There is only one God.”
Shryke looked on her with pity and compassion. “The Gods are beings. Unimaginable beings, but life forms all the same. They create universes, they create matter. They fill those creations with people for one reason and one reason alone: faith has a power. An energy all its own. When you pray, when you worship when you suffer and pay penance, that energy is transferred to the realm of the Gods. The God-King and his people want you to worship them because…it tastes good.”
“So, there is no Safehome? The Quest was for nothing?”
“Of course, there’s no Safehome, but that doesn’t matter. What you believe brings you comfort and gives you purpose. It’s the way of the God. It is benevolent. Mostly.”
“Mostly?” said Lucillian sharply.
“When a universe breaks down into constant war and conflict, when faith is replaced by fear, then the energies transmitted to the Gods through faith become poisonous and dangerous to them. They leave a Failsafe. Once the people no longer provide the energies they require, they destroy them so they can start all over again.”
“They’re going to destroy everything?”
Shryke nodded. “The God-King and the God-Queen have fallen into war against each other. The God-Queen has been using the Guild to throw a cloud of chaos over the whole of creation. The universe is on the brink of triggering the Failsafe, sending it across creation to end…everything. My mission was to go to the Sun-Machine and protect the Dreaming Army from the God-Queen.”
Galdar felt the rush of revelation running through her frame.
She wanted to take some earth and pray for the Congregation of the Moveable Church. She fell to her knees and did the next best thing, she wept. She didn’t want to believe Shryke. He was telling her that her whole life had been a lie.
“I am sorry,” he said.
“Why?” She could have meant why are you sorry, or why is this happening, why the war, why try to stand between warring factions when they are immortal beings?
Shryke said, “If the Dreaming Army leaves the Sun-Machine and destroys everything, it will leave the God-queen free to remake creation in her image. Everything we know will be gone as if it never existed. I came here to stop her.”
“You can stop a God?”
Shryke nodded. “Yes. Yes, I can. That is why my memories were locked away. It was an attempt to keep them secret from her. The message you gave me from Summer was a trigger. It unlocked the codespell around my memories.”
“Summer?”
“The woman who saved us. The creator of your battle-mace.”
“Hold on,” said Lucillian incredulously. “Why didn’t this God-Queen just kill you?”
“That I can’t tell you.”
“Why not?”
“Because within that answer you will learn the secret of how to kill me. I’m hard to kill, but it isn’t impossible. I can be incapacitated—I can be infected, maimed and tied in chains and so much more. Being hard to kill doesn’t mean I can’t be stopped. But the fact that the Guild keeps sending more of its people to die is proof they still have no idea how hard I am to kill.”
“My head hurts,” said Lucillian. She stood, arms folded as Shryke continued his incredible story.
“The Chain was built by the Gods many billions of years ago, think of it as an experimental anvil of creation. All life in the universe originates from here, from these sixteen links. The Chain is Jonderell, Mephak, Fallow-Thorn, Eden, Panthorc—whatever name you have for the Cradle of Life; the Chain is its Origin. The peoples and environments of that experiment are what were left once the Gods had finished with this universe and moved onto the next.”
“Are you trying to tell us that all life is an experiment?”
“It is, and the God-Queen has decided that the expe
riment has failed.”
“But why? Why would she do that? Why would any god destroy their creation?”
Shryke sighed. “What brings down every great house in the end? Power. Envy. Shame. Fear. A combination of all four? The God-Queen is determined to destroy everything. She seeks to save herself and punish the God-King.”
The airship steamed towards the Shadewalls, leaving a trail of ice crystals from the steaming engine in its wake.
As the atmosphere thinned to nothing, the airship’s speed increased, and the loop of Chain below became as distant as the loop on the far side of the sky.
They continued to accelerate.
The airship headed towards the top right corner of the Shadewalls.
Under Shryke’s instruction, Crove pushed the steaming engine for all it was worth. Pistons pumped and the airscrews at the back of the ship, outside the pink haze of protection Shryke had cast, moved at impossible speeds. Crove feared that without any atmosphere, the airscrews would no longer work, having nothing to push against for thrust. Shryke told her simply, “Don’t worry, they are pushing hard enough against magic to make up for the lack of atmosphere.”
Which didn’t exactly convince her, but after all she’d seen today, she wasn’t surprised to hear they were flying through rings of magic towards the Shadewalls; the Shadewalls that brought night and day to the myriad surfaces of the Chain.
Galdar railed against the idea of there being more than one God who had created everything. She refused to accept that everything she’d believed over the years had been a lie, that they were nothing more than cattle, and every time she ate dirt, she was feeding a God with energy. This heresy hurt her deeply inside. All that death. All that pain. For this feeling of…hollowness.
Carlow, crossbow wound patched, arm in a sling, joined her on the bulwark. “Shryke is a heretic.”