Canticle poi-2

by Ken Scholes

  Ria stepped over him as the door swung shut and the lock turned. She walked to the small dining table laden with exotic foods and sat down. He could not remember exactly when she had started dining in his room-the days had blurred into a scarlet haze. Vlad closed his eyes and tried to let the aromas from the table fill him, but they could not expunge the overriding odor of blood. He rocked back and forth there, curled up on the floor, and tried to find focus.

  “I think tomorrow,” Ria said, “you will be ready for your first cutting.”

  He felt the moan rising up within him and knew it for longing. If the blades are on me they will not be elsewhere. But he knew it was a false hope. He knew that his children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren would all take the knife sooner or later. Some to their death, others to take the mark of the Wizard Kings upon their hearts.

  He heard the sound of wine being poured, of meat being sliced, of a plate being prepared. “The cooks have outdone themselves. Are you certain you won’t join me, Vlad?”

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt hunger. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten, though he knew he hadn’t held it down. The part of him that watched and waited, buried underneath the surface, knew that would have to change soon. He said nothing.

  She ate slowly, making conversation as she did. “Today went very well, though I’m surprised. I thought the young ones would have more stamina than that.”

  He closed his eyes against the wave of nausea that hit him. The smell of their blood was everywhere. And if she weren’t here, grounding him with her voice and presence, the sound of their screaming would chase him into some dark, hazy place within that he was never quite sure he’d come back from.

  Again, he said nothing. She continued to eat. “Mal will return soon with more,” she said. “Our kin-raven scouts them even now.”

  Finally, he found words, twisting in a way that he could look up to her from the floor and meet her eyes. “How many more?”

  Her laughter was dark music. “All of them.”

  All of them.

  She continued. “Except the Great Mother and the Child of Promise, of course.” She looked at him, her fork poised halfway between plate and mouth. “But in the end, that broken kinship will be healed.”

  Great Mother. Child of Promise. He wanted to ask but did not. Instead, he filed it away with the other scraps of knowledge.

  She ate in silence after that, and when she finished, she stooped over him and kissed him on the forehead. “I will see you in the morning, Vlad. Get some rest. Try to eat. Tomorrow, I let your blood.”

  He recoiled from her touch but did not have the strength to strike out despite the will. She frowned, straightened and went to the door. She tapped at it and waited for the men to let her out.

  After she had gone, Vlad Li Tam returned. He stepped into himself slowly and gathered about him the bits of broken man as an old woman gathers a shawl around cold shoulders. He tested out his feet and his hands, he worked his mouth and rolled his eyes. Then, slowly, he crawled to his feet and went to the table. He passed the wine and food, taking instead a pitcher of water that was nearly too heavy to lift.

  Returning to the floor, he slouched against the wall, within eyeshot of the door, and sipped the water from the pitcher, holding it with both hands.

  Now, the soul-shattered father and grandfather lay cast aside like ill-fitting clothing. In its place was a cold river of a man flowing toward one purpose-to avenge himself upon his tormentors, upon the murderers of his family.

  To do that, he had to escape. He was in no condition now to mount any kind of vengeance. He could barely walk. He’d given up hope some time ago of being able to rescue his family from the clutches of this Y’Zirite madness. At the pace they moved at, they would all be dead, or in the case of the younger children, marked and shipped away, before he could ever find the strength to do anything about it.

  And he also knew that no one would come looking for him. Whatever remained of his family and iron armada would certainly have implemented emergency protocols and fled for a safe place to reassess the situation. Unless Ria spoke true; unless his first grandson even now prepared to capture the others as well.

  It left Vlad Li Tam with nothing to do but hold on and bide his time. He would have vengeance for this. He would have it one hundredfold.

  “Everyone has a weakness, Vlad,” his father had told him. “If they don’t,” he added, “you can create one within them if you are patient and crafty.”

  He thought about his father a lot these days. It was a source of his hatred and fury. He found now, in these few moments of clarity he allowed himself, that many of his father’s words had been clues in this Whymer Maze.

  My family is my weakness, Vlad Li Tam understood now. But more than that, he understood that it was a weakness his father had built within him, intending Vlad for this very day.

  The depth of that betrayal, at first, had made him despondent. But now, it enraged him, and he exhilarated in the strength of that rage as it flooded him, driving out the fog and grief.

  He thought again about the slender volume his First Grandson, Mal Li Tam, had shown him. Your own father betrays you.

  But not just me, Vlad Li Tam realized. Behind his closed eyes, as the hot tears of anger coursed down over his cheeks, he saw the Desolation of Windwir and knew it for his father’s work.

  He has betrayed us all.

  Vlad Li Tam banked his anger and took another sip of the water.

  Tomorrow, when those firm hands reached for him, Vlad Li Tam would be gone again. The broken, anguished animal would be there in his place. For now, he needed rest.

  When he finally fell into fitful sleep, his dead children surrounded him, their mouths moving as they formed their last words beneath his watching eye and beneath the cutter’s knife.

  Even in his dreams, their poetry made him weep.

  Rudolfo

  Rudolfo laid down the last page in Petronus’s packet and rubbed his eyes. He’d read what he could-certainly none of the notes from the former Pope had been intelligible, but the other papers had made perfect sense.

  Gods, what have they done? As a general with firsthand knowledge of what Xhum Y’Zir’s spell was capable of, Rudolfo saw clearly that the Androfrancine maps and notations were the work of frightened strategists frantically reaching for some way to protect the New World.

  Sethbert had taken but one mechoservitor and infused him with the power of that devastating spell. But the Androfrancines had intended to make a dozen such weapons and deploy them to key strategic points along the coastlines of the Named Lands.

  There was only one sound reason to do such a thing: the fear of an invasion.

  Still, it wasn’t much of a leap in logic for the mad Entrolusian Overseer to see a threat in this-these maps showed three of the metal spell-casters on his Delta.

  Because the Delta was the path to Windwir.

  Rudolfo shook his head and shuffled through the papers again. He stopped again at the authorization letter, saw Petronus’s signature and stamp there upon that dread parchment and sighed. Certainly, the old man could not have been the one to bring back the spell. Rudolfo found that impossible to believe.

  And yet Vlad Li Tam’s life’s work had been making Rudolfo into a shepherd of the light-moving the library to the Ninefold Forest, set deeper north in a more secluded and strategic place. Another defensive move.

  They meant to protect us. It was the only note he could read on any of the documents, and it was in a small, pinched script that he recognized instantly.

  He’d known that Vlad Li Tam had visited the Ninefold Forest for the trial just before leaving the Named Lands; he’d learned it later from Jin Li Tam when the time for honesty was finally upon them a month later. And after the trial, Petronus had fled for Caldus Bay, weeping at what he’d done.

  Perhaps the two of them worked together, now, with Petronus gathering what he could through his bird lines and Vlad Li Tam sc
ouring the seas for evidence of some external threat.

  With recent developments being what they were, it was strategic and reasonable for them to act upon their assumptions.

  Windwir, he realized, was just the beginning. Everything about the Named Lands depended upon the Order. Their magicks and mechanicals, their knowledge and access to the glories of the former age made them a critical prop to the economic and social fabric of the New World. With Windwir out of the way and the Androfrancines broken, the gate was open and the sheep were nervous.

  And now, more chaos. The Delta was ineffectual, just now entering into a tenuous peace brokered with the potential cost of Petronus’s life if Esarov was wrong and the trial went badly. Once the strongest nation of the Named Lands, it was now crippled. And the problems in the Marshlands-the assassinations carried out by rogue scouts among Winters’s people-these pointed to further unrest brewing violently ahead of them. Already, he’d sent birds to dispatch his own Wandering Army to meet Pylos and Turam and try to avert another war.

  A war that would keep the eyes of the Named Lands focused upon its own internal strife.

  Somewhere out there, a master of Queen’s War moved nations like game pieces and drove them into a corner they could not come back from.

  And even I am distracted. Jakob’s illness had trumped even this imminent threat. Yet it had been the simplest decision he had ever made, if he were truly honest. Perhaps because he knew he could trust the woman he had married despite her origins. He would truly have to work hard not to honor his vow and kill Vlad Li Tam when he found him. Her father’s role in the death of his brother, parents and closest friend was a constant and gnawing thing-something that kept his heart lost in a Whymer Maze when it came to loving her, though he could trust her with his Ninefold Forest.

  But there was no Whymer Maze when it came to Jakob, the off-spring of their alliance. He would risk the safety of the Named Lands for his son and do so without shame. Fatherhood redefined love in a way that Rudolfo had not thought possible.

  Still. Rudolfo shuffled through the papers one last time, then retied the string that held them together. Standing, he stretched and picked up the packet.

  Adjusting his green turban in the small mirror, he let himself into the corridor and slipped two doors down, tapping lightly on the wood surface. He heard the bed creak and footsteps approaching.

  It opened slowly and Charles looked out. “Lord Rudolfo,” he said, inclining his head.

  Rudolfo returned the nod and smiled. “Are you rested? I had hoped to speak with you for a bit.”

  The old man held open the door and stepped aside so Rudolfo could enter.

  The room was like the other cabins he’d seen about the Kinshark, small but well ordered. A bookcase, a throw rug from the silkworms of the Emerald Coast, a small desk and a narrow bed.

  “Please sit,” Charles said. He closed the door behind them.

  Rudolfo pulled the wooden chair out from the desk and sat. The old man still looked haggard, but Rudolfo imagined he should after so long in Erlund’s care-and before that, Sethbert’s. He handed the stack of papers to Charles. “These are from your hidden Pope,” he said. “There are some surprises here for me.”

  The Arch-Engineer untied the string and scanned the first few pages, his face paling as he went. He moved quickly to the bottom of the stack.

  “They’re coded,” Rudolfo said. “When we return to the Ninefold Forest, I’ll ask one of the mechoservitors to decipher it.” His eyes narrowed and he leaned forward. “But I would ask you now: Is it true?”

  Charles went back to the beginning and started again. This time, his eyes moved a bit slower. He shuffled ahead, paused, moved back. When he looked up, his mouth was grim. “These say it is, though I have a hard time believing it.”

  “Were you aware that your mechoservitors were intended to be weapons?”

  Charles shook his head. “No, absolutely not. Certainly, Xhum Y’Zir used them as such-but even his mechoservitors were intended for higher purposes than war.”

  Rudolfo leaned even farther forward. “And during your time with Pope Introspect, did you have any knowledge of a threat against the Named Lands that might require such a potent defense?”

  Charles swallowed, and his eyes shifted slightly. Rudolfo noted his caution and continued. “I hold the reins to the Order now,” he said. “Most of the Androfrancine remnant works with me to rebuild the library in the Ninefold Forest. Your last Pope passed all of the holdings to me before he disqualified himself from office with no named successor.” Here, he lowered his voice. “Including the mechoservitors.” And the spell, he thought but did not say. “I am named Protector of Windwir, and I bear Petronus’s grace.”

  “There were whisperings,” Charles finally said. “Secret projects in high places. Unprecedented funding to research defensive and offensive capabilities-both magickal and mechanical.”

  Including the metal men. “Surely as the Arch-Engineer you knew something of all this.”

  Charles chuckled. “You’d be surprised. There are many smaller orders with the Order.. ” His face fell. “There were, I mean. Work was often divided up in pieces. When they started using the metal men for spell translation, I made sure the work was expunged from their memory scripts.”

  Charles’s words jarred Rudolfo. Memory scripts. “My men at the Keeper’s Gate encountered a metal man bearing your name and a message for Petronus. You scripted the message into him.”

  Rudolfo watched the hope spark in Charles’s eyes. “He made it then. Did he cross into the Waste?”

  Rudolfo nodded. “He did. I had men pursuing him. I’ve redirected them to deal with matters elsewhere.”

  “Good,” Charles said. “Following him would be dangerous for them.”

  Something in the tone gave him pause. “Why? And how did you come by a metal man in Erlund’s care?” But already, a memory pulled him back. He remembered the night he’d first met Jin Li Tam, when Sethbert’s metal man sang a song and they had their first dance. This, he realized, must be the metal man whom Aedric and the others pursued.

  “That particular model doesn’t have the restraint scripts Isaak’s generation has.” Charles’s brow furrowed. He hesitates to answer me. Finally, the old man spoke. “The first generation of mechoservitors-thirteen of them-were the best we could do at the time. We found barely enough fragments from Rufello’s Book to bring them back-but of course, as we leveraged our own technology forward by studying the first model, we found ways to line them up more closely to the original specifications. I’m not sure how Sethbert came by that one-he’d not had him long, and I can only assume it was through some kind of treachery with my apprentice. They were scripted to return from their assignment periodically for maintenance.”

  “Assignment?” Rudolfo scowled. “What happened to the others when you created Isaak’s generation?”

  Charles sighed, his gaze falling for a moment. “They became one of those secret projects. Against my will, I might add. They were to be unsupervised, given tremendous behavioral latitude and sent into the Churning Wastes.”

  Suddenly, it made sense. It was not unlike what he did now, up north. “To reproduce the Great Library from their memory scrolls.”

  “Yes,” Charles said in a quiet voice.

  Rudolfo stroked his beard and thought for a moment. “Sanctorum Lux.”

  Charles nodded again. “Yes.”

  The notion of it staggered Rudolfo. Certainly it was a sound strategy to rebuild in a hidden place-to set the light even farther apart. Especially if there was an enemy at the gates. But the size and scope of such an undertaking was massive. Even now, there were mechoservitors in the Ninefold Forest, metal hands moving fast as sparrows’ wings over the parchment, reproducing entire books in less than an hour. The materiel management of it stretched his ability to lay in the supplies for his endeavor. And that didn’t even take into consideration the stonemasons, the carpenters, the army of laborers and servants that w
orked tirelessly to bring back that light. “It would be an impossible undertaking for just thirteen mechoservitors,” Rudolfo said.

  Charles shrugged. “Nothing is impossible with enough effort.”

  When the thought struck him, it was a stone dropped into a well. There was a moment of disconnect and then the splash of realization. “The entire library,” he said incredulously.

  Charles’s face took on an earnestness that bordered on ferocity. “It must be protected,” he said.

  Yes. The packet of papers still fresh before his eyes, Rudolfo knew Charles spoke the truth. He didn’t have to cipher out Petronus’s notes to know that the old Pope and King believed a threat existed beyond the Named Lands. Vlad Li Tam had most certainly withdrawn his network to protect them and to investigate these developments abroad.

  Someone had wanted the Androfrancines out of the way for some dark reason of their own.

  And their library.

  Whatever had been hidden in the Churning Wastes in the care of these metal shepherds had to be found and guarded. Rudolfo locked eyes with Charles. “And you’re certain that it is the entire library?”

  Charles nodded. “It is.”

  Rudolfo closed his eyes, suddenly feeling tearful but not knowing why. For weeks he’d wrestled with an untenable task, digging for some way, any way to find Vlad Li Tam’s iron armada. A tiny leaf in an impossible lake. And each day that he was away, the Ninefold Forest’s neighbors slid farther and farther toward war with his kin-clave in the Marshlands. Petronus was imprisoned, and the Androfrancines at the Papal Palace had no doubt been attacked-maybe killed. And far away-too far away-his infant son lay gray and fading.

  The entire library.

  Rudolfo realized he was holding his breath and released it. He knew the answer to his question before he asked it. “Including the pharmaceutical sciences and magicks?”

  When Charles nodded, Rudolfo said nothing. He stood and looked at the old man for a moment before turning for the door.

  Then Rudolfo let himself out and went, trembling, to give Rafe Merrique his new course.