Mindripper

by Baron Blackwell

  “WHO!”

  ■■■

  Unending whiteness.

  “You should be proud, Alapar,” someone was saying.

  Alapar focused on the voice, clang to it like a shipwrecked sailor. The white retreated, transformed into the sloped roof of a medical tent. The moans of the injured hung at the margins. The scent of festering sheets predominated.

  He lowered his gaze, stared up at Worship Osei, who stood beside his cot, hunched over a gnarled staff, watching him with cataract eyes.

  “The war is over,” she continued, gracing him with a warm smile.

  “Over,” he repeated, letting the word roll off his tongue. He probed his skull, felt a wet bandage wrapped about half of his head, wiped scarlet soaked-fingers across the bedsheets.

  She nodded. “We won.”

  “The Mindripper—” he began.

  “The God-King is dead and his army scattered.”

  Movement drew Alapar’s eyes to the Warlock-Prince that cooled his heels behind Osei, clothed in the black-and-gold uniform of a Lord-Inquisitor. “You’re leaving?” he asked the Worship.

  She sighed. “I’m afraid so. Duty is a forever demanding mistress.”

  “I understand,” he said, giving the Clansman a curt nod.

  “Fare you well, Lord-Captain, or should I say Lord-Marshal.”

  “Lord-Marshal?” Alapar asked, but Osei was already stepping past the curtain that cordoned off his cot from the rest of the tent, the Warlock-Prince trailing behind her. “You’re Worship . . . do you mean. . . ?”

  There was no response, yet neither did he truly expect one.

  He allowed his attention to drift back to the ceiling, contemplating those things gained as well as those things lost. The Immortal-Emperor had spoken true, but the price was too high. An exalted title in exchange for the severing of all remaining familial bonds. Even now his wife’s betrayal stung, brought heat to his leaking eyes.

  Phebe . . . Enk. . . .

  The swooshing of a jostled curtain.

  The Lord-Marshal used his knuckle to brush the moisture from the corner of his eye, felt the pinch of a remorseless gaze fixing upon him. A brown-skinned nurse approached him, humming, tapping fingers on her swollen belly. Her smile, much too wide, revealed far too many teeth, held no warmth, only cruel amusement.

  “Who—” he began, wetting his suddenly dry mouth.

  She touched his arm and whispered, “Quiet. You’ll not speak unless, I bid it.”

  Words refused to form, clogged Alapar’s throat with a soundless hiss. A multitude of emotion swelled within him, yet a steady stream of terror rose from his gut to overwhelm all others, like bent fingers thrusting up from the surface of a black pond, clamping shut about thrashing limbs.

  Placing all his weight behind the blow, he swung a fist at the nurse’s face, blotted out her grin, snapped her head back, sent her sprawling onto the floor. He flopped onto the ground next to her, groaned for the stab of fiery arrows puncturing his skull.

  The space in front of his eyes jumped and swam, crawled and wiggled, as if alive. Unbalanced and on his hands and knees, he scampered for the curtain, scurried for the salvation it concealed. The others had to be warned!

  A hand closed about his ankle.

  “Stop,” a breathless hiss.

  Alapar’s muscles seized, locked him to his plot of floor a hand’s span from safety. Golden-lantern light glistened the gap between curtain and ground, a glimmer of the promised land that would never be reached. He raged inside, desperate for help, yet unable to scream, unable to move.

  A girlish giggle, heart-wrenching for the masculine intonations hidden in its feminine tenor.

  “You won’t try that again,” she said, running her hand up his spine. “You won’t try to fight me in any way.”

  Alapar closed his eyes—or at least he tried to, but that too was denied him. He found himself guided back onto the cot, unable to do anything but careen like a marionette from unseen strings. Her hand never left contact with his skin, and this seemed important but he could not fathom why.

  “Easy, Lord-Marshal,” she said, dabbing a wet rag at his cheek. “You may speak, but at no louder than a whisper.”

  “How?” he asked in a voice as booming as a cat’s dying gasp. “You’re dead. Dead.”

  “Dead?” She tilted her head and frowned. “Who do you think I am?”

  “Modin . . . the White Worm. . . .”

  A diabolical smirk. “I promised you vengeance, remember?”

  The pregnant woman jabbed a finger into Alapar’s forehead and his skull became as a cracked and seething cauldron. Liquid torment leaked and bubbled, spat and spewed molten globs across thoughts and memories. He jerked and spasmed, tongue lolling, bowels voiding. . . .

  ■■■

  Enk found himself staggering—precarious step after precarious step—away from the rocking chair in the basement of the asylum, somehow more weak than at any other time before. The lamp slipped from his numb fingers, clattered against stone, spluttered then died. Shrieking rising from the throat of one once venerated, screaming piping the very pith of existence.

  The young scion slumped to the floor, shrouded in rank darkness, shuddering in the brooding arms of all that had come before. The portal opened behind him, cast his shadow just short of the precipice of Father’s thrashing domain.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  His Darkling Soul

  Enk moved in the direction of the Army Recruitment Office the instant he stepped out of the asylum, striding from a place of lunacy into one of greater absurdity. In the distance, more solemn plumes rose to stain the horizon with obsidian smoke. He paused several spans from the madhouse, as if tugged taut by imaginary strings, shifted to allow himself one last glance at the building. It loomed as terror incarnate, its iron-barred windows glistening with phobic sunlight.

  Failed. He had failed . . . again.

  Despite his best efforts, the young scion had been unable to heal Father. Like so much else, it had proved beyond his current ability. This weakness gnawed at him, chewed at his breast. He shook his aching head, continued his journey, turning his back to the asylum once more.

  The only path left was forward.

  A new mission awaited, one he meant to complete at any cost. Let Dilgan burn! It did not matter. Modin had to be found, this was the only way he could see to free Father from his endless torments.

  Enk glared at the ground, ignored the shouts of those few people milling on the street, thought of Merka, rubbing soothing ointment across his chest. The memory plucked and goaded, but he repressed the surge of billowing passions. Dead. She was dead. And he had to focus on the still living.

  Father needed . . . Father needed. . . .

  Self-hatred beggared his throat, his being, his heart.

  The heir of House Gueye kicked a rock, sent it skidding into an alleyway hazy with afternoon shadows. A sound yoked his tired limbs to stillness, the faint echo of a canine yelp. He hesitated for several panting breaths, then followed the noise into the alleyway, only to falter upon its threshold, pausing upon the line that divided light from penumbra.

  A shaggy dog lay on its side, limbs akimbo. Glossy-eyed and short of breath. Wounded both in form and spirit. Beads of dripping scarlet braided the voluminous fur about its unspooled intestines.

  A moment of whimpering tumult ensued as the injured creature struggled to place more space between them. Its mangled limbs lammed emptiness, paddled air. Another dying thing in a burning city.

  Enk stood fixed, his gaze unwavering. The sight hollowed in a way watching the little boy get cudgeled could not, an accumulation of one too many misshapen absences, a void that thrust past another invisible perimeter.

  He had had a dog once.

  Once, but no longer.

  He found himself on his knees as he had ten years ago, lending comfort to a dying thing, caressing the area behind a floppy ear. The dog whined as Rufus had whined, with a voice full of lament
and turmoil.

  “It’s all right, boy,” he spoke with the tenderness of a heartsick six-year-old. “Everything is going to be all right.”

  Shudders careened through him, whirled like leafs on a noxious breeze. And even as he choked on the remembered stench of burnt fur, his fingers closed about an elongated snout, suffocated what could no longer be saved.

  The creature thrashed in abject terror, and each feeble twitch was a catastrophic plunge into the tragic past. Enk bowed his head in blubbering shame, felt his tears fall as hot as spilled blood. Then it was over, and he alone remained, a weeping boy in a world where everything else had died.

  His innards knotted about a profound sense of desolation.

  He stroked blood-slicked fur, inhaled through snot-filled nostrils.

  “Enk . . . is that you?” a voice called from behind him.

  The young scion lurched upright, turned on a madman’s pirouette, saw a teenage boy standing where he once stood, upon the threshold that separated light from dark, wearing an all too familiar look. Gusts blew past the dark-haired boy, whipped curls about the margins of his concerned expression.

  “Ilima?” Enk said, swatting water from his eyes.

  “You’re alive? You’re alive!” A boyish laugh, joyous for the release of clotted tensions. A monstrous step, ending with a crushing hug.

  For a panicked instant, Enk stood pressed against a much larger frame, then he was liberated from his friend’s sweltering embrace.

  “What were you. . . ?” Ilima continued, only to become mute as his gaze fell upon the dead dog.

  The young scion stiffened. No matter how far he ran his past always caught up to him, and here it was again, manifested as someone who had been with him since the beginning. Someone who was the shining example of what was possible, here to judge and judge and. . . .

  Enk stalked past his bewildered friend, staggered out of the alleyway, the ghosts of traumas suffered coagulating his periphery. The horror that hammered his chest became a wooden fist for the unreality of it all. He glimpsed Obares, Ilima’s carriage driver, watching the growing crowds milling in the streets from a place of vantage, and spun away from the vehicle before the man could lash him with his gaze.

  “Enk!” Ilima cried, his tone one of seething frustrations.

  The young scion did not slow, did not look back; to do either was to put himself under the sway of another’s cyclopean presence. His eyes ached for the blossoming of regrets.

  Ilima yanked him to a stop. “Where are you going? Do you even understand how long I’ve been searching for you?”

  “The Army Recruitment Office,” Enk snapped.

  “What?”

  “I’m joining the army.”

  “What? Why?”

  Enk freed himself from the dark-haired boy’s grasp, strode directly into a crowd of knife-armed malcontents, dared them with eyes that burned for the rancor of distilled malice. They parted before him, a pack of witless fools, eying his sword and blood-smeared uniform. Their cowardice made his own seem less all-consuming, and, for a heartbeat, there was an easing of stinging torments.

  An anguished cry scuffed the air at his back.

  He whirled, saw Ilima slam the hilt of his sword into a man’s face. The fool collapsed, spewing inky scarlet, and the raucous mob retreated from Ilima’s glowering aspect.

  “I don’t need your help!” Enk spat, rage contorting his insides.

  Ilima sheathed his blade, stood resolute, said nothing, watched his whimpering victim scamper after his fleeing cohorts.

  A sob wrenched itself from Enk’s breast, dropped him onto his knees. “You don’t understand,” he wheezed, his face snarling for perceived weakness. Recrimination, renting flesh, puncturing through. “All of this happens because of me, because I was not strong enough.”

  “I hate seeing you like this,” Ilima whispered.

  “I found him. I know who the Scarlet Apron is.”

  “You and the whole of Dilg—”

  “No,” Enk hissed, shaking his head, “it’s not Minos Jamal. That’s a smoke screen. A lie. The true Scarlet Apron is still alive. He’s like me . . . he’s a Mindripper.”

  “A Mindripper?” Ilima repeated, then seemed to swell into something even more titanic, even more unyielding, a little boy robed in rain and lightning, a triumphant hand closed about something treasured. “All right. What are we going to do about it?”

  The heartsick scion lowered his gaze. “Nothing.”

  “You’re going to let the man who murdered Merka get away with it?”

  “You don’t understand!” He glared at the cobblestone, bobbing as if ready to vomit. “I’m not like you. I’ll never be good enough to do what needs to be done, I see that now.”

  “You make me so sad, Enk. I wish you saw what I see when I look at you. You always try to fight your battles like you’re me, but you’re not me.”

  “I know!” Enk heard himself wail upon a gasping intake of air.

  “Do you remember that summer you spent trying to scale the side of your house? And all because of that stupid kite? You almost killed yourself, but you wouldn’t stop trying, not until—”

  “I remember!”

  A blow cracked the side of Enk’s face, sent him sprawling onto his back, staring up at the sky, pressing fingers to a bloody lip. Ilima stood peering down at him, fiery but indistinct.

  “No, you don’t,” the shadowy figure said, kneeling down beside the young scion. “If you did, you would know the first few times I tried to scale the wall I failed. It was only after you helped, after you showed me the best places to put my hands and feet that I succeeded. We retrieved that kite together. You and me, as a team.”

  Enk inhaled sharply, permitted Ilima to pull him into a sitting position. His skin tingled with a shuddersome realization, an understanding that reduced all else to spheres beyond oblivion. It was all so simple. How had he missed it?

  “Except your limitations,” Ilima continued, rising from his crouch to stand aloof. “You’re not me, but you exceed me in so many other ways. You’re one of the smartest people I know. I have no doubt you can defeat the Scarlet Apron. Just work to your strengths instead of his.”

  Enk sat numb and manic, gaping at the apparition that was his blood-stained hand. This was the only way forward, he decided, but the truth of it hobbled him nonetheless. The cost. The cost was too high.

  “Hey . . . did I hit you too. . . ?” Ilima began.

  Enk lifted his head, allowed his only friend to gaze upon the face of his future horror. The keening sound that escaped his chest was equal part laugh and sob, soul-wrenching for its ethereal tenor.

  Ilima took a hesitant step back. “Why-why are you staring at me like that?”

  “No one. . . .” Enk’s throat croaked and cawed. “No one can hurt you more than those you love.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Eye of the Storm

  Kalum sat heedless of the bustling chaos about him, muscles yanked taut by an intensity that twisted and spooled within him—the craving for Dust, the longing for action. His fingers tapped the table, thumbed the edge of a map of Dilgan, pincushioned with needles threaded with color-coded pennons. Each pin marked a place where the Worship had sensed the Mindripper using its power, and if not for the pandemonium consuming the city, the creature would have long since been murdered.

  Yet . . . perhaps that was the point.

  The Lord-Inquisitor closed his hand into a fist, forced himself to recline in his seat. The back of the chair bumped into the wall, and he fought back a frustrated groan. He had chosen this chamber to establish his command, not only for the view it provided of the rioting city, but because its smallness kept the hangers on limited as a necessity. The second aim had been a complete failure. The idling throng of church functionaries simply hovered at the door, peering in at him, as if he were the latest exhibit in a grotesque menagerie

  He flicked them a quick glance. This time he could not quite contain the
groan that escaped past his lips. A large part of him longed to send the effeminate fools fleeing in terror and outrage, but the Worship had told him to play nice.

  “If the sight of them bothers you so much, have them close the door, ” Lord-Inspector Sargon Turay said, peeling an orange with the care of a well-trained surgeon. He sat across from Kalum, sprawled on top of a plush chair, with another standing as his footrest.

  “It’s fine.” Kalum scrubbed at his face. It was anything but, yet some pretense at calm had to be maintained. Lord-Inquisitors could not be seen to be fretting over inconsequential nonsense like an adolescent girl, especially not in the midst of such a crisis. Besides, Bodua, the room’s only other occupant was doing enough of that for the both of them.

  “Fuck,” Lieutenant Bodua muttered under his breath. He stood rapt before the chamber’s only window, gazing out at the ensuing turmoil that had engulfed them all.

  “Language, Lieutenant,” Kalum said, rubbing at his aching eyes. “Don’t forget our hallowed guests.”

  The thunder of discharged muskets cracked the air.

  The shriek of untold thousands, voices joined in a bovine keen.

  “Fuck-fuck,” Bodua hissed, whirling away from the window. “They’re pushing our men back toward the—”

  “Go,” Kalum yawned, dismissing Bodua with an air of boredom he was nowhere near feeling. Yet appearances were important, now more than ever. Leaders, his father had once told him, were the iron in their warriors’ bones. The harder the leader, the stronger the men.

  “Sir. Yes, sir.” The Lieutenant executed a perfect salute and stormed out the chamber, charging straight through the throng arrayed about the entrance.

  Sargon bit into his peeled orange, squirted citrus juice across the map. As ebony shapes careening across something less bleak, large inkblots contorted into maddening patterns along the surface of his black cloak.