Deathstalker Coda

by Simon R. Green

  And because Owen knew what it was, and embraced it, the scream washed harmlessly over him. He advanced into it, and took the Hazel memory's hands in his own. He followed the true emotions into the heart of the scream, and from there into the mad mind of the Terror, and deep within it he found the faintest glimpse of another presence, endlessly skewered on the pin of her own creation. A simple, still human presence, endlessly suffering, dreaming an endless nightmare in a sleep from which she could never awaken herself.

  The Terror tried to consume Owen, just as it had Donal Corcoran and his mad ship the Jeremiah, to absorb and subsume Owen's mind into its own much greater self, but Owen was too sure of his own identity for that, and there was no madness within him to invite the Terror in. But at the same time, he wasn't strong enough to fight it off. His power still had limits, because he was still sane. Owen and the Terror struggled together, and neither of them knew for how long, before Owen finally realized that the Terror was quite ready to destroy itself, to be sure of destroying him. And he couldn't allow that.

  So he gave in. He stopped fighting, and allowed the Terror to pull him in. It felt like dying, and yet something more. The Terror absorbed Owen Deathstalker into itself, and his mind headed immediately for the remnants of Hazel d'Ark he'd sensed at the Terror's core. They came together, and the impact of his presence shocked Hazel awake and sane, for the first time in centuries.

  Hello, Hazel.

  Owen? My God, Owen! They told me you were dead!

  I was, but I got over it. I had to come back, for you.

  For me?

  Not all of space, nor all of time, could keep me from you, Hazel d'Ark.

  You always were a smooth-talking bastard. Oh, Owen, I've missed you so much…

  I know. I know.

  And two minds held each other, as tightly as any two bodies that ever were. Two souls, as close as two souls could ever be.

  Why did you take so long to find me, Owen?

  I was looking in all the wrong places. And you didn't exactly make yourself easy to find.

  Where is this, Owen? Where are we now? Are we both dead?

  No. We still have a lot to do yet.

  He held her tightly to him, while Hazel accessed his memories of the Terror, and all that it had done. Horror shuddered through her, at what she and her madness had made possible. Owen showed her the future he had come from, and Hazel reached out and stopped the Terror's herald in its tracks, well short of its next chosen prey, frozen in a moment of space. Now that she was back, Hazel was in charge again, and the people on the threatened world looked on in awe and wonder as the deadly herald hung in space, apparently dead. Hazel was shocked and appalled at all the lives and civilizations lost and gone, because of her, and for a while her madness actually threatened to overwhelm her again. But this time Owen was there with her, to hold and comfort her.

  How can I be forgiven, for what I did, as the Terror? How can I ever forgive myself? Could we… put everything right again?

  Owen considered the possibility. Well, we're in the past, as much as we're anywhere. We could emerge back at the end of your trail, at the dawn of Humanity's homeworld, and then travel on into our future, changing and healing each event as we came to it. We know the future isn't set in stone. We've met alternate versions of yourself, from different timetracks. Their futures were just as valid as ours. We could undo everything the Terror did; but then our history would never happen. We would never happen. It wouldn't be our time line anymore. And it might be better or it might be worse; we have no way of knowing what changes our interventions might bring about. We could, with the very best of intentions, make a real mess of things. The only certain thing, is that you and I would never meet.

  It might be worth it, Owen—to prevent the Terror, and its crimes.

  Yes, it might be, if we could be certain of that. But what's to stop someone else going through a Madness Maze, and becoming something just as bad, or perhaps even worse than, the Terror?

  All right, smart arse, what do you think we should do?

  I think we should do nothing.

  What? Owen, you can't be serious!

  Think about it, Hazel. At the end of the war against the Recreated, the baby in the Maze worked wonders, bringing dead worlds back to life. Why didn't he bring back everyone who'd died in the war? Why not undo all the damage, all the wrongs?

  All right, I'll bite. Why not?

  Because too many miracles would have gone beyond helping. It would have been meddling, interfering. People have to make their own mistakes, and live with them, if they're ever to learn anything. The baby only put right what he'd done wrong, as the Darkvoid Device.

  All this time, and you're still bloody lecturing me.

  All this time, and you're still not listening. For all our power, Hazel, we're not gods. We don't have the knowledge or the experience to take on that kind of responsibility. We could make things much worse, try to fix them, and then make them really bad, and so on and so on… caught in an endless spiral of trying to put right our mistakes. We're still… only human.

  Hold everything, Hazel said abruptly. Something's happening. It's the Terror. It's… fighting back.

  I thought you were the Terror.

  No, I became the Terror, but the final entity evolved out of and around me. And all of those centuries operating as the Terror, exterminating other species and feeding on them, gave the Terror an identity in its own right. And it's not taking at all kindly to my suddenly waking up and trying to control it.

  So… the Terror wasn't you, after all?

  Well, yes and no. I'm the seed from which the Terror grew, but the final result created itself down the centuries, pushing its original creator deeper and deeper inside it, where you found and awakened me.

  So you're not really responsible for all the deaths and destruction!

  Oh no, Owen. I'm responsible. The Terror is my madness, my loss and rage given form. It's like I dreamed a nightmare, and the dream came true. And right now, it's mad as hell that I'm stopping it from doing what it was intended to do. You may have reached me and shocked me sane again, but my madness is still going strong. And…I think it's quite ready to destroy you and me, for getting in its way. I don't think it needs me anymore.

  The stone corridors shook, the walls bowing in and out and the floor rising and falling like a swelling wave, as the endless scream of the Terror howled through all the passages at once. Joined together at the heart of the storm, Owen and Hazel fought to hold on to their sanity and their souls as madness raged around them, assaulting them from all sides. Hazel's madness, born of sorrow and loss and rage, given shape and form and its own identity through countless centuries of exercising its own unlimited power. The Terror only existed to do terrible things, and threatened by a progenitor it no longer recognized, it fought back. The child god, devouring its parents. But for all its power, in the end Owen and Hazel were sane, and the Terror was not. They had coherence, and the strength of purpose that brings, while the Terror knew only its old, old imperatives. Slowly, step by painful step, Owen and Hazel drained the power out of the Terror and into themselves. The Terror had only ever had power because Hazel gave it, and now with Owen's help, she took it back. And the Terror's howl changed, as for the first time in its long life, it knew fear.

  Terrified, it fought to separate itself from them, moving its presence out of the stone corridors, only to discover it had nowhere else to go. Owen and Hazel kept the only gateway closed, and forced away from its ancient bolt-hole, the Terror quickly faded away and was gone, like any nightmare faced with the dawning of a new day.

  First Hazel, and then Owen, materialized in a quiet and serene stone corridor, back in their old remembered bodies again. Not their original, limited human forms, but constructs created by an act of will, based on their memories of who they used to be. And Owen Deathstalker and Hazel d'Ark looked upon each other for the first time in a very long time.

  "So," said Hazel. "What do we do now?
Go home and tell everyone that the Terror is no longer a threat?"

  "I think they already know that," said Owen. "The herald's floating dead in space in their time. Let them examine it. They won't learn anything useful."

  And then they couldn't be bothered with words anymore, and they held each other tightly in their recreated arms, reunited at last.

  "You do know, we can't go home," Owen said to Hazel, eventually. "We're just too powerful now. We'd start off trying to help, then move on to meddling and interfering, for the very best of reasons, and finally we'd end up ruling them as gods."

  "But if we can't go home, where can we go?" said Hazel. "After all the evil I made possible, I have to do… something, to make up for it."

  "We know there are other, alternate timetracks; let's go explore some. Help people who need help. Have adventures. Find atonement. And always move on, before we outstay our welcome. Who knows; maybe even find others like ourselves. A new home."

  "Yes," said Hazel. "I like the sound of that."

  There were a few things they had to take care of first, before they could leave. Owen prepared a last message for his descendant and fellow Deathstalker, Lewis. To tell him what had happened, and why the Terror would never trouble their time again. He didn't tell Lewis everything; just what he needed to know. And most especially, why Owen and Hazel wouldn't be coming back, ever. He wrote the story out, by hand, on a long scroll he brought into being by an act of will. It was his last act as a scholar and an historian, and a sort of joke, because all the oldest records he'd studied had always been set down on handwritten scrolls. He took his time, choosing his words carefully. It was important to get it right. The last testament of Owen Deathstalker.

  While Owen busied himself with his history, Hazel removed all traces of her presence and his from the maze of stone corridors. Scrubbing the place that was not a place clean of all evil and madness. But still, she had to wonder…

  "Owen, as the Terror I created everything here. Based on memories of the worst time in my life, when I fell into the clutches of the Blood Runners and they brought me to a place like this. Now, did I create these corridors because they already exist somewhere, or, will the Blood Runners someday discover this place, and move in?"

  "I know what you mean," said Owen. "Time travel can play merry hell with cause and effect. I had the same thoughts when I created the Madness Maze."

  "Hold everything, take several giant steps back. You created the Maze? No wonder it never seemed to make any sense."

  Owen decided he was better off not responding to that. He checked through his history, making sure he hadn't left out anything important, and then summoned the shape-changing alien to him. It appeared in a cloud of glitter dust, in the image of the leper Vaughn. Owen gave the little gray figure a hard look.

  "Why?"

  "Because."

  "All right; what time period are you from?"

  "Who can say? Continuity is for lesser minds. What you want? Am very busy right now, watching over Humanity and messing with people's minds. Speak up! Or I'll make you left-handed."

  "I just know creating you is going to come back to haunt me," said Owen. "Have you given Lewis the Deathstalker ring yet?"

  "All time is same to me. It's a poor memory that doesn't work both ways. Haven't forgotten about Lewis and court. Always assuming I remember where I put ring. Had it just the other day…"

  "Well, when you do go, turn up as Vaughn. That should be good for a laugh. Now, take this scroll and keep it safe. Give it into Lewis's hands only, at the exact time and place I've just put into what passes for your mind. Oh, and one other thing. If at any time, anyone asks you who built the Madness Maze, or why, lie. Convincingly. Humanity isn't ready for that much truth."

  He dismissed the shape changer with a wave of his hand, and turned to Hazel.

  "And that's it. All done. No more business left unfinished."

  "It's time to leave, isn't it?" she said. "We've put it off long enough. We have new lives to begin."

  "Yes," said Owen. "We can do anything, be anything now. Why settle for just being human? We can have any shape we choose, be anything we have a mind to, limited only by our imagination, ambition, and conscience. But whoever and whatever we become, and wherever we go, we will never be parted again. I promised you… we'd always be together."

  "Forever and ever," said Hazel.

  And so they became great glowing beings, and left the place that was not a place. They undid the gateway, but left the stone corridors for the Blood Runners to someday discover. Great glowing wings sprouted from their shimmering shoulders, as they flew back into space and time again, and then further on, starting their long journey into somewhere else. Flying on vast butterfly wings, shining brighter than the stars.

  *

  The final words of the final testament of Owen Deathstalker.

  Last night I dreamed I was still human, but now I have woken up, into something better. Farewell, my friends, farewell.