Howling Dark

by Christopher Ruocchio

  “Can’t we wave the ship from here?”

  Yume spoke up. “No electronic or quantum communiques are allowed in-system save at the Master’s behest.”

  Unafraid of the machine, Valka rounded on it. “Then tell your Master we wish to send a message to our ship.”

  “I am sorry, madam, but I am afraid that will not be possible.”

  “And why not?”

  “The security of this installation and the privacy of its people is paramount.”

  “The security of . . .” Valka trailed off. Under her breath, she added, “You can’t be serious.”

  The android said nothing, implying by its silence that it was deathly serious.

  Switch shifted uncomfortably where he stood, torn—I think—between fear of the android and a desire to put himself between the machine and me. In a small voice, he said, “I’ll go. I can explain everything to Captain Corvo and return here with the Pale. I . . .” He broke off, realizing the gap in his planning. “Had, I’d need you or the doctor to go with me. I don’t speak monster and I don’t trust its Galstani.”

  Valka and I exchanged a look. I did not wish to volunteer her for a trip back up the orbital lift to the docking platform and the Mistral, but neither did I wish to leave her or any of the others behind in that awful place. Having so recently dealt with Kharn, I was content to wait Valka out, sensing her impatience.

  I was not disappointed, for not a moment later she said, “I’ll go.”

  “You should all go,” I said, crossing my arms. “I’ll remain behind and see if I can’t make progress here.” To my astonishment, Switch did not argue that he should remain behind. He would not meet my eye. I thought him only tired, strung out on the weight of his imprisonment and eager to be gone.

  Still unmoved from his place by the wall, Pallino said, “You sure you’ll be all right?” He glowered at the machine, one cyclops to another. Yume did not seem to notice, or care. It was hard to remember, when it was not moving or speaking, that the android was animate at all. One might have imagined it only another of those misshapen bronze statues. But I knew whose eye it was in Yume’s face—one eye in ten thousand—and knew that Yume was no statue at all.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said, dismissive, and clapped the other man on the back. Turning back to Yume, I asked, “How long will it take to return to orbit and back?”

  “The orbital lift takes just over fifteen hours to ascend,” Yume replied.

  “So two days,” I said, stifling my surprise. The descent had not felt so long on our way into Vorgossos, but then . . . fear does strange things to time. “Permit me a word with my people and the time they need to gather themselves?”

  The golem bowed its head and withdrew. The heavy metal door grated closed behind it, and we found ourselves alone. I was a moment banishing the morbid thought that the grinding of that heavy door was the moving of a temple slab to seal us in our tomb. The impression faded, retreating like Kharn’s flying eyes into the dark of the pyramid chamber.

  “I do not like this place,” Switch said darkly, looking at me for the first time.

  “If you had seen what I’ve seen,” I said, more darkly still and meeting his eye, “you’d like it even less.” I did not tell him about Lord Song and the others, about the Titans waiting in preparation for their youthful feast, or about the dark ocean beneath the city, or the surgeries I imagined taking place. I did not describe Kharn Sagara. His flashing eyes! His floating hair!

  My lictor and dearest friend half-turned away. “That golem . . . and the fucking guards. It’s sick. It’s all sick.”

  “We know,” Ilex snapped, hugging herself. “That isn’t helping.”

  “The Chantry should lance this place. Burn it to the ground.” I could see him working himself up to some kind of frenzy, his words all tumbling one over the next. “That was a daimon!” He pointed at the door. “A daimon!”

  “That’s enough!” I said, conscious of the fact that we might be observed, and that such talk would not endear us to our host.

  “But Hadrian!”

  “Enough, I say!” I threw up one hand, and hoping to cut off the conversation before it could worsen, I turned to Valka. “Are we being watched?”

  The doctor bit her lip, “I’m not sure.”

  “What do you mean, you’re not sure?” I asked.

  Valka flicked her red-black hair back and pivoted, turning on one heel. “I mean I’m not sure, Marlowe. There must be a datasphere here—they took over the Mistral somehow. But I can’t feel a thing.”

  That took me aback. Understand: I knew and know next to nothing of networked machines. I am as I was born: a son and soldier of Sol, of the Empire. But I knew enough to know that that couldn’t be right. Sagara must have communicated remotely with his android. For that matter, Sagara must use some kind of network to control his SOMs, to see through all the City’s camera eyes. “Not even on the golem?” I asked, jerking my head toward the door. “Not even on the door lock?”

  “Door lock’s mechanical,” Crim said. “That was the first thing we tried.”

  Valka worried at the back of her neck, massaging the implant at the base of her skull. “’Tis all very strange. I can sense the android in the hall, but ’tis behind layers of encryption I don’t think I could decipher if I had a hundred years to try.” After a long moment, she tossed her head, took her hand away from the base of her skull. “No.”

  Letting the subject drop, Crim asked, “Not that it’s my place to be asking, but what do you hope to gain by staying behind?”

  I turned to regard the Norman-Jaddian man in his padded red kaftan. Alone of the company Crim remained seated, one long leg crossed over the other. He might have been by a poolside in some Jaddian satrap’s palace. Absently I massaged the hoop of cryoburn scar about my left thumb, addressing some phantom pain. Half-shrugging I said, “It took three weeks to get a word in. I’m afraid if we all leave it will look like we’re beaten.” Conscious of my posture, I squared my shoulders and stood straight, imagining as I often did that I stood upon an amphitheater’s orchestra, speaking to a crowd. A thought struck me, and I said, “Sagara didn’t believe we want peace.” I had not realized it was true until the words were spoken. “He thinks we mean to jeopardize his relations with the Cielcin. He thinks he’s called my bluff, and if we all leave that will as good as confirm his suspicions. If I alone, if I put myself at his mercy, it demonstrates good faith.”

  As if on cue, the door scraped open again and Yume appeared, entering like the messenger he was onto my stage. Without pretense or preamble or a clearing of throat it said, “I will escort you all to the tramway.”

  “I’m staying,” I said, bowing ever so slightly. “I will take your Master up on his offer of hospitality. My people here will repair to my ship and return with our Cielcin emissary.” The golem gave no sign but to tilt its head to one side. “If that is still allowed, of course.”

  “Of course.” Yume pivoted, sweeping one arm to indicate that the others should lead. “This way, please.”

  The tramway by which the upper labyrinth of the Undying’s palace was accessed, like the tramway far below, hung from a single rail embedded in the roof of what once had been a lava tube. The tunnel ran straight for what looked like several miles—broken and jagged in places from millennia of tidal stress—to a faint, white haze in the middle distance. The City dome, I guessed. White lights stood at irregular intervals along the tunnel, and the metallic shine of artillery stood guarding the approach.

  Behind us, the great door of the palace stood open. Two meters thick it was, and solid steel. The bunkers which honeycomb the earth beneath many a palatine castle had such doors, proof as they were against orbital and atomic bombardment. I imagined our Legions breaking themselves on this approach under the command of Chantry Cantors, imagined Inquisitors calling down fire with their superweapons. The for
tress—like Kharn himself—could out-sit eternity.

  We had not brought anything by way of luggage, and my friends’ departure was a thing totally devoid of circumstance. The air in the tunnel was still as a sea becalmed, damp and chilly. A single brazier stood at the end of the concrete pier. Like the graven metal door below it was: an after-market addition, a thing not of the original construction. Its base was an inverse pyramid of white stone, graven with the image of a weeping eye like the one Yume wore on its face. Blue flame burned without flickering from it, fed by some gas from below. I could not shake the sense that I stood now on the opposite bank of the Styx, looking up and out from Hades toward the living world.

  “He’s ignoring us!” Crim said, and jostled me in good humor.

  Coming back to myself, I said, “I’m sorry, what? I was just thinking . . .”

  “The hell sort of name is Anaxander?” Switch said, repeating his joshing question a second time.

  I grunted, not especially ashamed of the old name. “What sort of name is Switch, eh?” I riposted, knowing full well.

  “Anaxander . . .” Pallino repeated, squaring his own shoulders in what I must admit was a credible impersonation of me. “Hadrian Anaxander. How is it in all the years I’ve known you you ain’t dropped that gem on us?”

  “I should think the reason for that’s obvious,” I said acidly. But even Valka was smiling, and I did not bristle to defend my name, or to explain that Anaxander had been a king on Old Earth, long forgotten, and the eleventh Lord Marlowe of Devil’s Rest. It did not matter.

  Crim, Ilex, and old Pallino filed onto the tram car—the last pausing to clap me on the shoulder. Valka went behind them, but stopped on the platform to adjust one of her high boots.

  Switch turned back, caught my arm. “I don’t like this. You staying here.”

  “I’ve stayed here three weeks already!” I replied, tapping his arm to release me. He didn’t. His grip tightened and his eyes fixed on the android behind.

  “This is wrong. Shouldn’t be dealing with daimons like this. Cielcin’s one thing, but this?” He broke off, made the sign of the sun disc discreet at his side, thumb and forefinger encircled. “We shouldn’t be here.”

  Valka was still fiddling with her boot on the loading platform, and with the golem standing just behind me I was finding it difficult to think. “We won’t be here long.”

  “How do I know it’s even you anymore, eh?” He jabbed me in the chest with a finger. “How do I know you ain’t some . . . replicate? Some changeling?” Decades of being around me had sanded a portion of Switch’s plebeian dialect from his speech. That he was using it again was not a good sign. His eyes were wide as ever I had seen them, and his freckled face stood white as Tanaran’s.

  “Switch.” I reached out and embraced my oldest and dearest friend. “It’s me.” I didn’t argue or try to reason with him. He was beyond reason, and perhaps justly so. We’d come to a house of horrors, to the deepest corner of the Dark.

  Switch returned my embrace. “I know, man. I just . . .” He broke off and drew away. “We shouldn’t be here.”

  I looked around the cavern—listening for the sound of birds that would not come, for the crash of waves, for any sound beyond the quiet guttering of that single blue flame. No sound came, no shout of human voice, nor groan of the damned. No cock crowed. At long last I said, “No one should be here.” Switch looked on the verge of a response, but I waved him on. “The sooner you go the sooner we can all go. Go on!”

  He said nothing. That was the worst part. Only bobbed his head and turned, matte-black armor dull against the deep red of his uniform. With a leap he bounded the steps to the tram platform—passing Valka as he went. His disquiet lingered like a phantom haunting the platform. Disquieted myself, I turned to go, not willing then to watch them depart.

  “Hadrian.”

  Valka caught my elbow and turned me around. She had doubled back from the tram car—lacing her boots indeed! An echo of Switch’s discomfort showed in her austere face, betrayed by furrowed brows and the way she pressed her lips together. She did not speak at once, and I sensed she was choosing her words with exquisite care.

  “I’ll be back with Tanaran before you know we’ve gone,” she said at last, lamely. I closed my mouth and gave a sharp little nod, sensing that it was unwise to interrupt her. She looked away, and for a moment the light of those golden eyes was quenched. Then something happened I could not have expected in a hundred years.

  She embraced me.

  I confess I froze. It was so unexpected—from her, there, in that hideous place—that my thoughts all fell to pieces. I stood numbly a moment, long enough to hear her say, “I’m glad you’re all right. I—we were all worried about you.” Some part of me was acutely aware of the golem at my back, of Yume watching and of Kharn Sagara watching through its eye.

  She’d withdrawn before I could return the embrace, retreated up the steps to the tram.

  At once it seemed very cold on that platform.

  I watched the monorail glide away on casters, its running lights seeming so much like the ghostly lanterns of a gondola poled on black seas. It shrank into the middle distance, leaving me alone with the android. In the torch-lit gloom, I drew my coat around myself and turned up the high collar.

  To no one in particular—to the memory of the moment past—I said, “I was worried about you, too.”

  CHAPTER 34

  IN THE HOUSE OF KHARN SAGARA

  “I SHALL HAVE A meal prepared and brought to you at once, Lord Marlowe,” Yume said when I was returned to the suite my companions had previously occupied. All signs of its previous occupation were gone: the food cart was cleared away, the bedclothes changed, the furniture ordered, the bathroom soaps recharged. “You’ve been waiting a long time.”

  “Three weeks,” I said under my breath, suddenly eager for a shower.

  Undeterred by my tone, the android replied, “And two days, four hours, and thirty-seven minutes.” It pointed. “There is a sonic cleaning unit for your clothes in with the bath—unless you would prefer that I take them?”

  It waited, and realizing that I might be expected to disrobe then and there, I said, “No, thank you. I can see to it myself.”

  “As you wish, sir,” Yume said, continuing my tour of the chambers. “You are free to explore the installation and its grounds, so long as you remain within bounds.”

  “Will I be able to speak with Lord Sagara?”

  The golem stopped midway through a demonstration of the laundry service unit.

  “You already have.” If I didn’t know better, I might have said the creature was perplexed. It tilted its head as a dog might, and almost I imagined a frown on that blank curve of metal it called a face. I could see its gears whirring through the crystal windows in its shoulders. I caught myself making a warding gesture with my first and final fingers. How strange that I who did not believe should fall upon religion in the face of that machine.

  “I had hoped to speak with him again.”

  “The Master will speak with you in his own time,” the golem said.

  “When my friends return?”

  Yume’s single eye studied me a moment. Talking to it was not like speaking with any human in my experience. There was no presence to it, nothing of the sort that might cause the hair to stand on end, the skin to crawl. It was dead space. Shape without form. Shade without color. In its polished, patrician accent, it said again, “The Master will speak with you in his own time.”

  In my own time I washed and laundered my clothes, and so newly ordered I set myself to exploring that strange palace. The installation Yume called it. The word implied a sort of military order, and indeed the heavy blast door and the spartan geometry of hall and stairwell spoke to me of some ancient fortress built beneath the surface of that lightless world. How many hours I lost in those barren corridors I co
uld not say, nor count the number of sealed doors that barred my way.

  In my time since that first sojourn on Vorgossos—and before it, on Emesh—I had the privilege of standing amidst the ruins of ancient civilizations. The black-walled tunnels of Calagah with their walls smooth as glass; the Marching Towers on Sadal Suud, broken fingers rising above the fungal forests; even old Simeon’s tomb on Judecca. Old though they were—their histories measured in scores of millennia—none felt so old to me as that blasted labyrinth. There was a humanity in its bones unlike that in those strange structures built by alien hands. Familiarity aged it. I knew concrete, and so marveled at what depth and span of years must pass to crack and weather those walls. It was not—as the pyramid below—the palace of a great king or emperor, but something else.

  Installation.

  Who had built it in the deeps of time, and to what purpose? Who had quarried out these caverns and raised these halls? Whose hands had placed those chipped, square columns in the vast and empty spaces, hangar-like, that processed down one arm of that seemingly endless complex? One could yet see where the mark of some ancient trowel had smoothed the cement and badly.

  And I was alone.

  Yume did not reveal itself as I wandered, nor any of Kharn’s ghastly guards, nor the homunculi who had served us in the vestibule. Once or twice I passed one of Kharn’s blue-eyed drones, floating like a small and lonesome fish in the dark airs. I tried to find Lord Song and his companions, but after some time decided that—wherever they were—they’d been left behind a locked door. Once or twice I thought I heard a human voice and ran to meet it, only to find an empty hall. As I walked, at times one of the great bulkheads would open or close of its own volition, and I thought about what Valka had said: that this place had no datasphere. Not one she understood. Then I remembered older stories, ones I’d told to Cat in another lifetime. They said that when Kharn Sagara took Vorgossos from the Exalted and drove them out, he took from them a demon of the ancient world, a daimon such as the Mericanii had made.