by B.J. Keeton
Chapter Twenty-six
Headmaster Gilbert Squalt’s calm composure broke the second his professor’s flayed skull landed in his lap. He stood up to get away from it, and Nary Thralls' skull fell to the floor. Damien could see that he was sick and frightened, but somehow, the headmaster had the presence of mind to pick the skull off the ground and place it gently on his desk.
He looked at his hands, coated in someone else's blood, and gingerly opened a drawer to his desk with one finger and took out a handkerchief. He wiped his hands clean, and when that handkerchief was saturated, he took another out of his desk and wiped at the puddles of blood on the surface of his desk. After that, he turned his attention back toward Damien.
“What is wrong with you, Damien?” Squalt asked. His voice was forceful, stern, but cracked mid-sentence. Damien noticed and smirked.
“I said I wanted to know who broke into my house and stole my book.” Damien's face was stone and his voice was equally even. He had dealt with people like Squalt before: those who hide behind assumed power, but truly have none. With Nary Thralls’ death, Damien had raised the stakes and both men knew it. The time for barely-concealed hostility within friendly banter was over.
“I told you that I don't know anything, Damien. I meant it.”
“And I know that you're lying to me,” Damien said, walking toward Squalt's desk. “I know that you know who took it. You know who came into my home and made me break my vow.”
“Made you? How did they make you reactivate the nanites in your bloodstream? By threatening your life?”
“Oh, no, Gilbert. They never threatened me. In fact, they never saw me.” Damien leaned into Squalt's crescent-shaped desk, resting his weight on his knuckles. “I heard them. They were speaking our language.”
“Well, that's not terribly difficult, Damien. We are speaking our language right now. That's how we can understand each other. Do you see how that works?”
Damien Vennar stared at Gilbert Squalt. His eyes darted to Nary Thralls’s skull, its lifeless eye sockets staring into the distance. He could do the same thing to the headmaster, and it took everything Damien had not to. But he needed answers and a rash action—no matter how good it would make him feel or how much Squalt deserved it—would get him nowhere.
“You know what I mean,” Damien said, relaxing and standing straight.
“I'm afraid I don't.”
“Our language, Gilbert. Ours. The one that, if you recall, went out of fashion more than a couple thousand years ago?”
“And their talking frightened you into breaking a centuries-long vow to leave the order, Damien? Are you that much of a coward? Just what did they say?”
He said, “They mentioned the Untouchable, Gilbert,” as though that would be explanation enough.
“Then they’re terrorists.”
“What?”
“Have you lived in a cave for years?” Squalt asked. Without hesitating, he continued, “Oh, right. You have.”
Damien just stared at him.
“Really? You haven’t heard about this Untouchable mess?”
“I guess not.”
“Damien, you really are out of touch with the world around you.” The headmaster sat down and leaned back in his chair. He was relaxing again. “Five or six years ago, something happened. People across Erlon were beginning to be attacked at random.”
“I vaguely recall hearing something about that.”
“Mmm hmmm,” the headmaster said and continued. “They killed people, Damien. Mostly women and children, but men, too, if they were nearby. They used Flameblades to do it.” He paused to give Damien a chance to react. He did not. “They used the name Untouchable, which meant very little to the general public. But the combination of that name and their choice of weaponry made them quite interesting to the order. Their attacks became more frequent in the past few years, escalating from attacks on small groups of people to large-scale destruction of scientific research facilities and religious organizations. They have attacked sites in every city-state from Yagh to Bester.”
“What does this have to do with my book?”
“I love it when you play ignorant, Damien. Let me ask you this: in your book, you say you’re writing the truth about the Charons, correct?”
“Someone has to, finally.”
“Then I’m assuming that you are writing more than just a history, more than a play-by-play of events that led to the technomages’ eventual…withdrawal.”
“I’m telling the truth,” Damien said.
“I’ll take that as a yes. These terrorists, old friend, claim that they are working toward the same goal as your book. They want the truth to be public. So they’re destroying what they call perversions of the truth.”
“Get to the point, Gilbert.”
“I think it was a year ago, maybe—perhaps two—that they released a very peculiar statement to the public. Until then, they were just boogeymen for the world. People knew their attacks were happening, but could do nothing about them. They were random, and they didn’t happen very often. But then people started to pick up, and the terrorists released their demands, their manifesto, really.”
“And?”
“They said, Damien, that they were tired of the world being kept in the dark by secret societies. By a secret society. They said that they were only going to stop when the Charons went public and stopped—oh, how did that man put it?—feeding the world the scraps of our technology, I think. The whole thing went on for a very long time, but it boiled down to them believing that the Charons are still active today and that we are keeping technological advances from the general public.”
“That’s not entirely untrue.”
“It’s not, is it?” Squalt agreed. “They said that they would not stop their crusade until the technomages shared their work with the world, helped it become a better place. He went into some political or religious rhetoric at that point, but you get the idea.”
“My book,” Damien prodded.
“If your book contains the truth about the Charons, Damien, from your perspective, then it would be very highly sought after by this group. Especially if you were to include any instructions, blueprints, design schematics, equations, formulas, et cetera in it. Did you?”
Damien cocked his head to the side. It was an oddly comic gesture for such a serious moment. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not.”
“Well, if there is even the chance of it, I would say that is why your book was taken. They’ve have done their homework so far. The world is in a panic, actually. You may not have heard about it in your cave in Ternia, but everywhere else is demanding that the Charons go public. These terrorists have released teasing proof that the order still exists, and people believe them. Pretty soon, we’ll have a full-scale rebellion on our hands.”
“A rebellion from what? A shadow organization no one knows about?”
“There have been riots everywhere, but they’re worst in Yagh.”
“Are they, now?”
“Yes, they are. They attacked Cernt Academy, and destroyed it. Damn near burned it to the ground, actually. Hardly anyone got out alive.”
“Huh,” Damien said. “Always did like that place.”
“I know you did,” Squalt said. “Folks in Bester and Ferran have already tried to retaliate—they’re on the verge of revolution. People are upset at their governments, Damien. Whether their leaders know about us or not, the people are going to rebel because they think they do. They aren’t rebelling against us, only because of us.”
“Why? I’m not sure what you’re getting at, Gilbert.”
“They think we’re controlling their lives, influencing world events, and subjugating them by limiting the flow of technology.”
“Is that not true?” Damien asked. “Is that not precisely what this organization has come to? And besides, is my book going to stop any of that?”
“Of course not! It’s only going to fan the flames. If they use your information as pr
oof the Charons exist still, things are only going to get worse.”
“Then go public.” Damien suggested. “Stop playing shadowman and—”
“Give in to terrorist demands?”
“Save people’s lives. Maybe actually make the world a better place by going public, sharing the technology and research you’re doing.”
“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you, Vennar?”
“Don’t.”
Squalt leaned forward. “I know you would. You come in here like you own the place—”
“I do.”
“You gave up any claim you might have had hundreds of years ago, Vennar, when you left. You come in here like you own the place, killing a teacher, and destroying property, for what? Because someone stole a book you were writing?”
“No, because someone made me break my vow, Gilbert.”
“Don’t play dumb with me, Damien. No one made you break your vow. You broke it yourself. And if I had to guess, you broke it a long time before this incident ever happened.”
“No. I did not.”
“So you’re telling me that all of this is coincidence? That your boy finding a Flameblade, bonding with it, and being recruited into the order because of it, was coincidence?”
“I never wanted that for him.”
“I know. It wasn’t your choice, though. And right around that same time, a terrorist group began to attack and kill people with Charon technology. But you’re telling me that was a coincidence? That their demands for the release of information and technology—a goal, I might add, that you once fought for under that same name—”
“I said don’t.”
“Oh, what? You don’t like to be reminded that you’re the reason for all of this, Damien? You don’t want people to know? You don’t think I know about it? That you’re the one behind these attacks?”
“I’m not,” Damien said. “I don’t know anything about it.”
“I doubt that somehow. I find it a little too perfect for a man who once called himself the Untouchable, who went on a crusade to unite Erlon, to share information, and make everyone aware of the Charons, knows nothing about the same damned thing happening right now.”
Damien leaned closer to the desk. His voice was barely audible. “That was years ago, Squalt. I don’t have anything to do with this. I am not a terrorist.”
“No, you’re not. You’re a lot of things, Damien Vennar, but you are not a terrorist. I’ve had people watching you since this all started—”
“You officious little—”
“Can you blame me? It was too easy, too obvious, though. If you were doing something like this, you wouldn’t have used the same name. I know you’re not behind it, Damien. You were the Untouchable once, but you aren’t anymore. Someone else is. You can’t say that you bear no responsibility—if you hadn’t gone on your little crusade so long ago, none of this would be happening right now.”
“And if the rest of you hadn’t turned against me back then, the world would be a much better place today, too.”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” the headmaster said. “You know as well as I do that the general public is too stupid to deal with the things we deal with. They can barely handle the new screenless holonets. They’re going crazy over having three-dimensional images for their stories. Can you even imagine them with something serious, something that matters?”
“They deserve to know.”
“Always back to the same old lines with you. It doesn’t matter. The Untouchable and his terrorists are using your name to get what they want. They are trying to get what you want, actually. And now that they have your book, I think they’ll succeed, or have a better shot at it than before. So to answer your question, I believe that these terrorists broke into your home, stole your book, and plan to use it to stage an uprising, a rebellion, a coup, whatever you want to call it. Somehow they learned about the Charons; they adopted our names and our technology, even our—” he coughed, “—your goals.”
“They’re going about it the wrong way,” Damien said. “Are they Charons?”
“From what we can tell, yes. But they aren’t sanctioned. They aren’t us. They’ve been Rited, they have Flameblades, and they know we’re here. But they aren’t us. We don’t know who these people are. When they went public, people saw magic again. The technomages weren’t just legends anymore, and places like Ennd’s were no longer artifacts being controlled by some stodgy old teachers. Whether we go public or not, the effect is the same, especially now that they have your book. Anything they didn’t know before, they do now. For all intents and purposes, they are Charons.”
“What are you going to do about them?” Damien asked.
“We’re going to fight them.”
“Are you? In public? You’re going to completely negate the victory you all won over me, just like that?”
“Goodness no. What, do you think just because they have made people aware of Charons that we have to go public? No, no, no. We’re going to covertly infiltrate them and destroy them from the inside. Most of the pieces are in place for us to begin our strike. I won’t deny that the theft of your book complicates matters, but it shouldn’t hinder us too badly. We should still be able to play shadowmen, as you put it, and put an end to this mess without the public knowing anything about us. We’re just waiting on Ceril to report in with his team.”
“I don’t think I heard you correctly, Gilbert. I could have sworn I just heard you say my grandson’s name, and I have to be mistaken. You couldn’t be stupid enough to involve him in something like this.”
Squalt smiled at Damien, and for the first time, it was genuine. “Oh, Ceril is involved, old man. We haven’t had much luck on Erlon tracking down this new Untouchable. But coincidentally, Ceril is just amazing at seeing connections in myths and stories. His thesis is quite inspired. And you see, these terrorists are so fervently adhering to the way you did things once upon a time—”
“I hardly see the connection.”
“Oh, please, Vennar. Don’t give me that. You were a real son of a bitch, and you know it. Killing randomly might not have been your style, but the way they took down Cernt Academy? Those nanite bombs and ritual Conjurings reeked of you a world away.”
Damien huffed, but he couldn’t deny what Squalt said. He hadn’t always been the technology-hating Gramps who Ceril had grown up with.
“Someone has to be wearing the mantle of the Untouchable and leading them, which means that anything you created once upon a time will help us find them. Plus, we do not believe there is any better agent to make those connections than Ceril.”
“Where is he?” Damien demanded. He spread his hands out on the desk, his fingers splayed. He rested his weight on his hands, and the nanites in his blood reacted automatically to the anger rising in him. Pools of blackness formed beneath his hands.
“Jaronya.” Squalt’s mouth barely moved as he spoke.