by Peter David
Pavan eased down on the notes and slowly the Zeffers righted themselves. Finally the singing subsided and Pavan simply stood there, his face impassive.
“You killed them,” she said in wonderment. “You killed all of them. Why…why didn’t you do that earlier?”
“I was hoping I would not have to. But it seemed…unavoidable.”
The Zeffer that they were upon was still moving. It was rising through the air, and the other Zeffers were making room for it, as if according it newly acquired respect. Within moments they had drifted to within range of Arren and the others. Seramali was looking at them with wide-eyed wonderment. “You…you are alive. The Mandraque was telling the truth. He…” Then his voice trailed off as he realized the seriousness of his situation.
“Yes. I am alive. No thanks to you.”
“And you want me dead.”
“Yes.”
“But you could not bring yourself to kill me, and so you sent this Mandraque to do the deed for you.”
“Yes. But…”
The catch in her voice got Arren’s attention. “But what? What do you want, Demali? I honestly have no strong preferences one way or the other.”
“I think,” said Demali, “that it would be far worse punishment for him to live. To live knowing that all his plans came to naught. That his beloved Riders are dead. That his daughter whom he once loved doesn’t care enough about him to kill him. I think those would all be…good things.”
“So do I,” said Pavan.
And then he hummed.
One of the Zeffer’s tentacles reached down and casually slapped Seramali across the chest. The impact knocked him off the Zeffer. He screamed Demali’s name as he plummeted to the ground, and only the abrupt impact ended his screech.
“But I think that was a better thing,” said Pavan.
“You…you killed him,” said Turkin.
“He killed my parents.”
“And you said earlier that, even though you knew that, you could not bring yourself to kill him.”
“Yes. I know. Odd thing, though,” he said distantly. “After you kill the first hundred or so, it becomes much easier.” He looked to Demali. “I hope you do not hate me for what I’ve done.”
Her face was still wet as she shook her head. “No. No, I…I don’t. I could never hate you.”
But she wasn’t sure she believed it.
iii.
Evanna was unaware of the passage of time. All she knew was that she had been watching the one Mandraque burn, and the next thing she was aware of, she was seeing Arren Kinklash pulling his sword out of the head of the fallen Mandraque. Kerda was hurriedly explaining to him what had happened, and he was nodding and listening as he wiped the blood from his blade. Turkin and Berola were there as well, Berola with a comforting arm around Kerda’s shoulder, rubbing the top of her head in a calming manner.
Then he walked over to Evanna and crouched in front of her. “Evanna,” he said gently. “Evanna, perhaps he was lying about Xeri…”
Evanna shook her head. “No. He was…not. I heard Xeri’s screams and the awful way they just…stopped. He’s gone.” She paused and then said, “And what of you? Are you gone?”
He nodded. “At least for the time being. The Serabim are going to bring me to Norda. With any luck, Nicrominus will be with her and I’ll be able to bring him back to you as well.”
Arren then waited for her to give him a whole speech about how he was needed here, especially considering the damage that had been done to the city. “Everything is going to be fine here,” he said, anticipating it. “The few surviving Serabim and members of House Odomo are being hunted down, rounded up. They—”
“I want to go with you.”
Her response surprised him. “Ex…excuse me?”
“There is nothing for me here. Xeri dead. My father gone.”
“But your responsibilities—”
“To hell with them. To hell with treaties. If I don’t get away from all this death and destruction, I am simply going to go out of my mind. Take me away from this, Arren. Please.” She hesitated. “Do not make me beg.”
“No. No, not at all,” he said gently. He helped her to her feet. “It’s going to be fine. We will find your father. And everything is going to be all right.”
“Promise?” she said.
“May I die if I am wrong,” he said with as much sincerity as he could muster.
iv.
Clarinda sat on the floor of the sewer, staring at nothing.
She tried not to listen to the steady slurping sounds that were coming from nearby. The screams of the Mandraques as they had been drank alive by the Piri had faded away. Thulsa Odomo had lasted the longest, give him credit for that. He had kept on struggling until Bartolemayne had decided to simplify matters by snapping his neck. A familiar pair of legs stepped into her immediate field of vision. Slowly she looked up. Sunara smiled down at her.
“How?” It took all Clarinda’s energy to form the question. “How—?”
“Did I come to be here?” She chuckled at that. “My love…what did you think we were going to do if not find a new home? The Ocular are dead. We could not feed on them anymore, and our people deserve so much better than living the rest of their lives feasting on animals. Oh, make no mistake. When you left, at first I was furious that you had disobeyed me and was taking steps to return you. But soon I realized that I could take advantage of the situation. Especially because you did not understand just how close I was to you in your heart and mind. Even after all this time, you don’t quite comprehend the scope of my abilities.”
“Scope? I don’t…none of this…”
Then she realized.
Sunara smiled.
“You made me come here,” said Clarinda. “You were in my mind. You made me come to Perriz.”
“I cannot ‘make’ you do anything. I could only suggest. But you are my daughter, and so you embraced the suggestion. Because I knew of the sewer system. I knew that, sooner or later, you would wind up here. It is your nature. It was unavoidable. We followed you, my dear. We did not have to stay especially close because I had no trouble keeping track of you,” and she tapped the side of her head, “here. And when you found your way through the sewer and emerged, I saw through your eyes, and thus you showed us the way in. Thank you for that. Thank you for,” and she indicated their environment, “all of this. We owe this all to you.”
“You’re going to…to stay here?”
“Of course we are, my dear.” She took Clarinda’s hand in hers. “And no one is going to know we’re here. We are going to be very, very careful about that. We are going to emerge at night, at will, find stray Mandraques or Firedraques or Ocular…and we will bring them down here, and we will make them last. I allowed my people to devour these,” and she indicated the fallen bodies of the Mandraques, “because it has been a good long while since we truly feasted. We will live here forever. And you will have a home here so that you will have a nice, safe environment to come to term with your child. And once he has been brought into the world, we will kill him, and then we will kill you. Or, as an alternative, leave you begging for death and then not giving it to you. If you’re a good girl,” and she kissed Clarinda on the forehead, “I may leave it up to you.”
The Spires
It was exactly as she had seen it.
The place where the Traveler had brought her, the street, the building…it was all precisely as she had seen in her dreams. The difference was that here she could smell the air, truly feel the street beneath her feet. She tried to imagine thousands of humans like herself pouring out of the entranceways that were sunken into the sidewalks, but the entire street remained eerily empty and silent. The only ones there were herself, the two Travelers who had found her upon the ship, and several other Travelers who were simply standing there, looking on.
“Is the Overseer going to meet us here?” she said to the Traveler who had brought her there, the one whom she had come to think
of as her Traveler.
“Stop talking,” he said tonelessly.
“Does he have a name other than ‘Overseer?’ For that matter, do you have a name? We were together so long, I feel as if—”
“My gods!” he sighed. “You never stop. Don’t you understand what’s going to happen here, you stupid woman? The Overseer is going to kill you.”
“Why would he do that?”
The Traveler who was standing next to him tried to say something to him in that same eerie, whispering manner that she had heard earlier. The Traveler ignored his friend. “Why? There is no why involved. He is the Overseer. Questions such as ‘why’ do not concern him.’”
“Questions of why concern everyone. Everyone has reasons for what they do.”
“If they are bad reasons, what does it matter?”
“It matters,” she said softly. “It just…it matters. What is your name? I think it’s time you told me your name.”
“Graves!”
The Traveler jumped as if jolted and he turned toward the voice that had just spoken.
A Piri emerged from one of the stairways that led down into darkness. “Graves!” he said again, and began to run toward the Traveler.
“Gant?” said the Traveler.
“Gant?” echoed Jepp. She couldn’t quite understand why this Piri was being addressed as Gant. She knew what Gant looked like, and this certainly was not him.
Then the Piri abruptly staggered and started screaming in pain. His skin began to redden, to blister under the influence of the daylight. and he staggered back toward the stairs, screeching.
More Travelers were now emerging from the stairs, and they were blocking Gant’s means of escaping from the glare of the sun.
“Gant!” shouted the Traveler. Jepp forgotten, everything forgotten, he ran toward the Piri, pulling off his cape and hood as he did so. He remained clad entirely in black, but Jepp gasped as she saw him for the first time in the full light of day.
He was beautiful. She had not thought that any living thing could be so beautiful. Long, purple hair framed his face, but the rest of his face looked like living silver that glistened in the light.
He threw the cape and hood over Gant, who collapsed to the street, gasping for breath. “Thank you…thank you,” Gant managed to gasp.
“Why are you still in that form?”
“I…didn’t want them to see…I didn’t—”
That was when Karsen emerged from the darkness.
Jepp could not believe it. It seemed impossible. It had to be impossible. For a moment she thought that she was dreaming. That was the simplest explanation. Her dreams had become so vivid that she was no longer capable of distinguishing the imagining from the reality. She could not even find the breath to say his name, so stunned was she to see him.
It wasn’t necessary. He saw her.
He cried out her name and ran toward her. Jepp dashed toward him, calling out to him, and when she drew close enough she literally leaped into his arms. He held her so tight that it threatened to squeeze the life out of her, and at that moment she would not have cared. She would have been content dying in his arms, because there was nowhere else in the whole Damned World she would have preferred to be.
The other Bottom Feeders were emerging as well, with expressions that ranged from surprise to pleasure to annoyance (the last naturally being Zerena.). The Travelers said nothing, although they were taking care to give the one called Graves a wide berth. It was as if they were somehow embarrassed to be anywhere near him, as if he had violated some sort of code of conduct for Travelers.
“How did you get here?” she said to Karsen.
He laughed at that, sounding weary but happy. “It was a lot of work,” he said. “But it was worth it.”
“If we die, I have to think that diminishes the worth somewhat,” said Zerena.
That was when the ground began to shake steadily beneath their feet. Something was coming from a nearby street. Karsen held Jepp tight, but she gently—but firmly—slid his arm off her. “It’s going to be all right,” she said. “But I have to face him. I have to be strong. There has to be…”
“What? Be what?”
“Order,” she said. “Things have to be…just so. I have to make them just so.”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
“I’m not sure I do either.”
The Travelers converged around the Bottom Feeders, Eutok and Jepp. It was clear why that was so: in order to forestall any thought they might give to fleeing.
Slowly, ponderously, the powerful armored figure of the Overseer stepped out into the intersection. He simply stood there for a time, looking at them.
Then, finally, he spoke.
“What have we here?”
No one answered at first. And then Jepp stepped forward, squaring her shoulders, and if she could not look him in the eye, she could at least take a guess as to where his eye might be and look there. “I am Jepp,” she said. “I am a human.”
“Yes. I know that.”
“And I…”
“You what?”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, tremblingly. She realized that she was being seized with an almost primal urge to flee the scene. She had never heard the term “fight or flight,” but if she had, she would have understood how it applied right then.
“I want there to be people again,” she said. “People like me. Lots of people like me. I want the streets of this city to be filled with them. So many of them that, no matter which way you look, there are just…
just people. Lots of them. And I just…I don’t see why this world can’t be big enough for the Twelve Races and human beings. I don’t understand why the few humans who remain alive have to be slaves. I don’t understand why everyone cannot be free to live their lives.”
“You do not understand that? Would you like me to explain it to you?”
“I…I wasn’t looking for an explanation actually. I just…”
“Human have always been slaves, child. Slaves to their desires. Slaves to their sex organs. Slaves to corporations. Slaves to their stupidity. To their greed and arrogance. To their endless, unrelenting pursuit of more and more pointless possessions, or drugs, or mindless entertainment. Corporations enslave employees. Religion enslaves minds and souls. Everywhere you looked, even when mankind was at its height, there was nothing…nothing but slavery. And the sick thing—the truly sick thing—is that everyone believed that they were free. They all thought they had free will. They all thought that they were masters of their own destiny, or at least could be if they had enough money or power or sex partners or whatever they needed in order to feel good about themselves. But it was all a joke. Just a big goddamn joke. Do you know what Voltaire said? No, of course you don’t. He said that God was a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. Well, look where we are now, big guy. Look. You killed the audience. Absolutely killed them. Now who’s laughing?”
Jepp just stared at him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said.
“No. No, of course you don’t.” He strode toward her, the ground shuddering beneath him.
Karsen’s leg brushed up against hers and she could feel that he was trembling. She put a hand on his shoulder reassuringly. “Breathe,” she said softly. “Breathe steadily.”
“So you want to repopulate the Earth, then? Is that it?”
“The Earth? What’s—?”
“My God, is there anyone with a brain left on this planet? How many times am I going to have to explain it! This! Here! This planet! Where you are standing! It’s called ‘Earth’. All right? Not ‘the Damned World.’ Earth! Urrrrrrth. Earth! Are we all clear on this?”
Jepp nodded, not knowing what else to do.
“And I am supposed to just do what? Wave my hand and bring humanity back in full force? In case you haven’t noticed, I am not humanity’s biggest fan. The fewer humans there are, the better. And I would just as soon
get rid of the ones we have. Which reminds me, Travelers, did you get rid of the ones who were scurrying around underneath the streets?”
One of the Travelers bowed slightly in a manner that indicated an affirmative.
“Good. There aren’t all that many more. A handful out west, I believe, hiding out. Or at least they think they’re hiding out. But they’ll be found and dealt with. Just as you will be now, my dear…Jepp, was it? Yes. Jepp. And these are your…dare I say it…friends? You will all be dealt with.”
“What do you mean?”
“You want to know? Really? All right, then. You have obviously gone to a great deal of effort to come here, and I feel it only right and proper to make it worth your while. And, most importantly, you deserve to have my personal attention. So here is what is going to happen:
“There is going to be a hunt. A huge, magnificent hunt. The lot of you are going to scatter, or stay in one group; it doesn’t make any difference to me. I will give you a full day’s head start. Go as far as you want. Run as fast as you can. Feel free to breathe a sigh of relief because you think I cannot possibly find you, and pat yourselves on the back for your own cleverness. And then I will hunt you down. I will use all the resources at my command, and I will track you and come after you, and I will kill you. You will all die, because that’s just the way life goes in the big city. I will hunt you, Jepp with no last name, would-be savior of humanity. I will hunt you and I will kill you, and your friends, and your little dog, too.”
“My little what?”
“Never mind. It’s not important. What’s important is that humanity never, ever get a toehold on this godforsaken world ever again. You will die, and those who have tried to befriend you will die, and the handful of humans will die, and then—if we’re very, very lucky—everything else will follow. Because the late Nicrominus told me that without humans, everything goes dark, and I’m fine with that. And even if it doesn’t, well…at least this was a way to kill some time.
“Now run, little Jepp with no last name. You and all your friends. Run!”