by DD Barant
“That Asher has larger plans than just taking over Vegas…”
* * *
When we get back to the house, we find Tair waiting for us—but no Cassius.
“We got separated inside the story,” Tair says, leaning back on the couch and putting his feet up on the coffee table. He pops open a can of beer with one thumb and takes a long drink. “When it ended, I got out. He didn’t.”
“Not good enough,” I snap. “How do we know you didn’t stab him in the back? You could have betrayed him to your boss, or Asher, or even Stoker.”
“If I’d done that, would I have come back here?” He meets my eyes calmly. “Especially knowing how … volatile you are? Frankly, I’m surprised you’re not aiming that ridiculous weapon at me yet. It’s been, what, at least an hour since you pulled it out? I don’t know why you even bother with a holster.”
“Tell me what happened.”
Azura doesn’t say anything, but she’s staring at him just as hard as I am.
“Sure,” he says. “I mean, that was the point of this exercise, right?”
He sets down his beer, leans back, and puts both hands behind his head. “Okay. The story was about lems. When the very first one was made, who made it, how they spread all over the world.”
“Golems?” Azura says. “That’s not a myth from Nightshadow; there aren’t any golems there.”
“I’m just telling you what I saw. Do you want to hear it or not?”
“Go on,” Azura says.
“A wizard was responsible. He used another supernatural being as a template, a kind of zombie called an underdead. Used fundamental animist principles to instill the spirit of an ape into a stone body, then locked it in place with the underdead template.”
“Were magic fused with zombie magic,” Azura says. “That’s not been done since the birth of the Lyrastoi race … but lems aren’t pires.”
“No,” I say. “But pires start as were bats, and lems start as statues—statues that are animated by the life force of animals like bulls or bears, not bats. Same principle, very different end result.”
Azura frowns, rubbing her chin. “Not quite the same. The balance would have to be very different—more Chaos than I would have thought, less Order…”
“I wouldn’t know about all the technicalities,” Tair says. “Myths tend to paint a picture with big strokes, you know? Not so much on the finer points.”
“Any details at all could be useful,” Azura says. “Names, places, mystic items used—”
“The zombie’s name was Brunt,” Tair says. “The wizard’s was Ahaseurus.”
The second name doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone—Ahaseurus is widely known as the creator of the golem race, and the spell that animates them is the stuff of basic biothaumaturgy. Not much is known about the man himself, however—and I suspect very few people are aware that he’s still alive and going by the name Asher. Cassius probably does, though I’ve never confronted him about it.
But it’s not the wizard’s name that Azura reacts to—it’s the zombie’s.
“Brunt?” Her eyes do the impossible, getting even wider. “Are you sure?”
“Well, they only said it once, so maybe I got it wrong—could have been Grunt, I guess—”
She steps forward and knocks the beer out of his hand with a slap. “Are you sure?”
He glares at her. “Yeah, yeah, I’m sure. Why? Is he important?”
“Recount the myth. In detail. Now.”
I’m sure Tair could take her head off in one swipe if he bothered to transform, but he just looks up at her from where he’s sprawled. Blinks. Then says, very carefully, “Okay, I’ll do my best. All right?”
Azura takes a step backward, but keeps her eyes focused on him. Tair’s body language tells me he’s seriously considering bolting out the front door, though I doubt he’d get far. Tinker Bell, it seems, has a scary side.
“It went like this,” he says. “A long time ago, there was a wizard. The wizard was from … a mystical realm.” Tair’s voice changes in mid-sentence, losing the snarky edge and becoming both dreamier and more formal. I knew what was happening; he was in the grip of the same kind of repetition that had been drilled into my head by the first myth I’d encountered.
He came to this Earth from there, and was troubled by what he saw. Where he was from—though they were called by different names—pires and thropes and humans lived together in harmony. Though they sometimes warred among themselves, they did not prey upon one another as wild beasts do; but in this new land those that drank blood or changed form seemed to consider human beings no more than sustenance.
And so he decided to change things.
Mankind was not as long-lived or as strong as the supernatural races, so the wizard judged that they needed an ally to fight alongside them, one both loyal and invincible. They would be the protectors of men and women, and he would sow their seeds all over the world.
He chose to model his creation on man himself, to give it a form familiar but different. He chose to use earth itself for their substance, so that they would always be plentiful, strong, and difficult to destroy.
His last decision was the most difficult. He needed to instill them with life, but he did not want them to be merely offshoots of the human race, as both pires and thropes were. They needed to be something that did not rely on transforming humans to reproduce—as pires did—nor something that could prey on humans, as thropes sometimes did. A kind of life that would not compete for the same resources, but would still be dependant on the goodwill of human beings.
The problem perplexed him. He could have instilled this new form of life with energy stolen from pires or thropes, but that would put them at endless odds with two races, a war that would inevitably lead to the destruction or enslavement of one side. He considered using beasts of the field, but this would simply produce animals in another form, one with no more loyalty or intelligence than the most clever of creatures—a monkey or a dog, perhaps.
At long last, he realized there was only one person he could turn to for advice. It was a decision he would have preferred to avoid.
He made his way to the top of the very tallest mountain in the land, a journey of several weeks. There, on a barren, windswept peak, was a deep crevasse in the rock, filled with snow. He made a fire upon the snow, and used his magicks to keep it burning as the snow melted. When the fire had melted a shaft down into the bottom of the crevasse, he extinguished it and then lowered himself down on a rope; there, behind a glassy wall of ice, was a great door carved into the rock itself. The wizard kicked aside the ashes of the fire, settled into a cross-legged pose, and began the chant that would unseal the door.
For three days and nights he chanted, for the spell was a long and involved one that needed to be repeated several times; any mistake or error would cause the crevasse to slam closed like a giant clapping his hands, crushing him instantly.
But he made no mistakes. And after three days and nights, the stone door swung open, smashing the ice into shards at the wizard’s feet.
The wizard whispered a few well-chosen words, and a ball of light appeared over his head. He entered the dark, bitterly cold doorway.
Inside, steps carved into the rock led down. He followed them for many hours, deep into the very heart of the mountain. They led him to a single room at their base, a simple cube with nothing in it save a slab of table-shaped rock in its center.
On that rock lay chained a monster.
He was of the race known as the underdead, an unliving creature that was once a man. He resembled a man, though a very large and ugly one.
His name was Brunt.
“Hello, wizard,” the monster said. “Have you come to torment me further?”
“I have come to ask your advice,” said the wizard.
“And why should I advise you of anything?” the monster replied. He did not turn his head to look at the wizard, instead keeping his gaze fixed on the roof of his stone prison
cell. It was a view he was accustomed to.
“Because if you do I will free you,” the wizard said.
The monster considered this. “Tell me what you seek advice upon.”
The wizard told him of his dilemma. “You exist to be of service to the living,” the wizard said. “Tell me, should I base my new creation on you?”
“No,” the monster said. “You should not, and you already know this. My kind needs a steady supply of fresh corpses to thrive, and that’s the sort of thing that can get out of control. What you need is cold reason wedded to the hot flame of life, mixed in a crucible composed of neither.”
The wizard thought about this. He had not told the monster about shaping bodies for his new creations from clay, but now he saw what needed to be done; the clay would be fired from within by the heat of life, and cooled to a durable shell without by cold intellect.
“I thank you,” said the wizard. “And I believe I know where to obtain two of the three elements required. But the cold reason you speak of—only the underdead possess this in its purest form, and you are the last of your kind.”
“Then use me to create this new race,” the monster said. “For I am tired of being alone.”
The wizard weighed his words carefully. The monster was imprisoned for a good reason, but perhaps his legacy could be one of good and not evil. “Very well. But be warned; the experience will not be pleasant, nor will you survive it.”
“After an eternity chained here, any experience will be welcome,” the monster said.
And so the wizard—
Tair pauses, his eyes refocusing. He starts to speak again, then stops. “—the wizard worked his magic on the zombie. He diced it up into a thousand pieces and put each of those pieces into a different golem. When he infused the golems with energy from sacrificed animals—the first one he used was an ape—they came to life. They had some of the characteristics of the animals that powered them, but also the intelligence of the underdead that—ironically—had granted them life. Or at least some version of it.”
Tair stops again. “That’s about it. Everybody knows what happens next, anyway; he starts in China—guess that’s where the mountain was—then travels around the globe, teaching other people the spell so they can make their own.”
Azura’s studying him coldly. “And what happened after the thousand pieces were used up?”
Tair shrugs. “The story didn’t cover that part—”
“Perhaps he ordered out for more. But no, that wouldn’t have been possible, since Brunt was the very last of his race.” The edge in her voice could cut steel. “You’re lying. That ending makes no sense. There are millions of golems alive today, and none of them has a piece of an underdead warrior at his heart.”
And suddenly she’s a lot closer to Tair. I don’t see her move at all; she’s just there, and she’s holding her fist about six inches from his right eye. Something long and slim glints from between her knuckles.
“I can put this needle into your brain before you can twitch,” she says. “Pure silver—your eyeball will smoke and explode in the instant before you die. Now tell me what really happened to Brunt.”
Tair keeps himself very, very still. “Hey, Jace,” he says. “Are you really gonna let this psycho stick a needle in my eye?”
“Not if you cross your heart and hope to die,” I say. “She’s right. Your story was terrific most of the way through, but you blew the dismount. See, you might be able to pull off the whole I’m-just-a-dumb-thug with everyone else, but I know you’re a trained biothaumaturge—that’s what got you into a life of crime, remember? You helped make illegal lems for the gray market. And someone with that kind of experience doesn’t fudge the details of how the very first lem was made. Not unless he doesn’t want anyone else to know them.”
Tair smiles. “Worth a try, right? That’s what I like about you, Jace—you don’t let me get away with a thing. But I’m afraid the details of what really went down have to stay locked up in my head for now.” He stares into Azura’s eyes. “Unless you think you can extract the story from my skull with your pointy little stick.”
“I’m less interested in what happened to a zombie in a fairy tale,” I say, “than I am in what happened to my boss. What did you do to Cassius, Tair?”
“Nothing. That part was true.”
“I’m not so sure. Convince me.”
He sighs. “I went first.”
“Excuse me?”
“When it came to swapping myths. I told you mine first—if I was planning on a double cross, wouldn’t I get you to go first? That’d give me better options. I could tailor my lie to something you wanted to hear, or just hit the road—I don’t think Miss Jabby here could keep up with me if I really poured it on. Instead, I told you what I know—mostly.”
“You’re going to have to do better,” Azura says. “Or I’ll put this through the center of your pupil. Mostly.”
He shakes his head, ever so slightly. “I don’t think so. See, you need what I know—”
He pauses. His nostrils flare, and his smile gets wider. “Oh, and you’re going to need my help in a minute or so. You can’t smell them, but we’re about to have visitors…”
“Who?” Azura snaps.
He sniffs again, theatrically.
“Mercenaries,” he says cheerfully. “Heavily armed, too.”
ELEVEN
“Before you get the wrong idea,” says Tair, “they’re not with me. They’re Stoker’s men.”
“You mean the guy you came to Vegas to broker an arms deal with?” I snap. My gun’s already out.
“You know any other homicidal human terrorists with that last name?” he says. “Seven of them. A pire female and six male thropes—Dobermans, I think they call themselves.”
“Mbunte,” I say, with a glance at Azura. “Guess she recovered from the inoculation you gave her—if Tair isn’t trying to con us. Again.”
“Oh, they’re out there,” she says. “My nose may not be as keen as his, but it’s not the only thing I rely on.”
“If you’re going to kill me, hurry up and get it over with,” Tair says. “I’d really like to be in a position to defend myself when they attack, if you don’t mind.”
Azura stares hard at him for a second, then takes a step backward. The needle vanishes. “This conversation isn’t over,” she says.
“Oh, I know,” he says, getting to his feet. “And I’m really, really looking forward to continuing it…”
I’m trying to cover every entry point in the place with my gun simultaneously. Any second now, a thrope or a pire is going to come crashing through a window or kick down the door—unless they decide to soften us up with a barrage of crossbow bolts or nerve gas first …
I dive for my bag and fish out the comic. I toss it to Azura. “Okay,” I say. “Do something impressive.”
She gives me an incredulous look. “Like what?”
“Whatever that thing does!”
“I told you, it doesn’t do anything—”
“I know, I know. But you were lying, right? You were going to swipe it later and use it yourself to take out Asher but that’s not going to happen if we’re both dead so quit blinking those oversize Bambi eyes at me and do something, damn it!”
“Hey,” says Tair. “I used to have that issue.”
Azura stares at me, then grabs the comic and rips it in half. “I. Wasn’t. Lying,” she growls.
“The love and trust in here,” says Tair, “is making me choke up a little. Really.”
“Oh, crap,” I say wearily.
“That was a collector’s item, you know,” Tair says helpfully. “Unless it was a fake, of course. I used to own one of those. Looked like the real thing, though.”
“Oh, crap,” I say again, just in case the first time didn’t take.
There’s a knock on the front door.
I look at Azura. She looks at Tair. Tair looks at the door. I shrug.
“Who is it?” says Tair i
n a falsetto voice.
“We want to parley,” says Mbunte’s voice.
“Hey,” says Tair, “great. I’m always up for a good parley. Did you bring snacks?”
Incoherent Teutonic muttering from the other side of the door. The only phrase I can make out is was sind diese snacks?
“Just come in, already,” I say. If they were going to attack, they’d have done it already. “We won’t shoot if you won’t.”
The door opens slowly. Mbunte looks a little worse for wear than the last time I saw her, her clothes torn, her hair and skin streaked with grime and dust. She glances around nervously, then walks in, signaling for the Dobermans to follow her. They all crowd in, the last one shutting the door behind him.
“Glad you could make it,” says Tair, beaming and clasping his hands together. “Bathroom’s down the hall, you can put coats on the bed in the master bedroom, and try to keep the door closed—we have a cat.”
“Not to look a gift merc in the mouth,” I say, “but why aren’t you trying to kill us?”
“That was never our mission,” says Mbunte. “We were tasked to bring you in alive.”
“Not all of us,” says Azura.
“No, not all of you,” Mbunte admits. “Just Valchek. But that’s ancient history now.”
“Yeah, Asher’s really kicked over the anthill,” says Tair. “I don’t know about your boss, but mine wasn’t really expecting a full-fledged revolt. Would have brought more party favors if he had.”
I was still mulling over the fact that Stoker wants me alive. “And I didn’t expect my partner to go rogue—all of us got caught with our pants down. What’s your point?”
“My point is that we should unite against a common enemy,” Mbunte says. “We’ve been on the run since the lems took over; you’re holed up here. I say to hell with Stoker, Asher, and Blue—let’s pool our resources and get out of town in one piece.”
“Ah, the loyalty of the mercenary,” I say. “It’s inspiring, it really is. Why, I’m prepared to trust you with my life already—I mean, I will as soon as I can scrape together some funds. Do you take debit?”
Mbunte glares at me. “I don’t have to justify myself to you. This is about survival. We have a much better chance against the rockheads together than standing alone—”