The Myth of the Maker

by Bruce R Cordell

  Aloud she said, “Navar, you knew her before she entered her dotage. Who really knows her thoughts now, and if she still fears the dark?”

  The First Protector’s ears twitched, first one, then the other. Elandine had learned that meant uncertainty. But Navar said, “Brandalun would’ve headed away from that cave, past the edges of Ardeyn. More likely to find fragments of that blasted device she was always going on about. Begging your pardon, my queen.”

  Elandine said, “Unless a sirrush or dragon caught her and her traitorous guards napping, and pulled them all into its den against their will.”

  “All right, all right, I yield,” said Navar. “But after we check the cave, we must return to Citadel Hazurrium. You made me promise to hold you to a deadline on this outing. And we’ve come close to missing it.”

  Elandine nodded impatiently. Ardeyn’s previous ruler was nowhere to be found, having apparently undertaken a self-appointed quest to find the parts for a mystical mechanism, a mechanism she learned about via a “vision sent from the Maker.” Elandine didn’t believe it for a heartbeat. It was more likely Brandalun had simply been unable to face her youngest daughter Flora’s demise. Either way, it wouldn’t do the queendom any favors if Brandalun’s inheritor was seen following in her mother’s footsteps. Flora… She blinked away the thought before it could take root.

  Elandine said, “Don’t worry about the deadline. Look, see that skerry out there? The one with the attending red tumblers? I’ve been watching it, and I think that, once we clear the cave, we–”

  “We’ll miss Flora’s interment,” interrupted Navar.

  Elandine froze. Then she shrugged.

  “Is that what this is really about?” asked the qephilim. “I can understand why, you know I do. But others may see it differently. Besides, Flora would’ve–”

  Elandine spun to face the First Protector. “Don’t you dare tell me what Flora would want! Do you think I don’t know? Do you think I don’t care? It’s not for you, or anyone, to judge me. Keep to your place, Protector, and all of us will be better for it.”

  Navar stiffened in her saddle, and her ebony ears laid back almost flat against her black-furred skull. The knight turned to regard the cave mouth again. She waited a moment and said, “As it pleases Your Majesty.”

  Which only made Elandine all the more furious. She yelled, “It doesn’t please me! My sister died, and all the royal power in Ardeyn can’t change that!” After that, words deserted her entirely. Rather than sputter, Elandine just glared at the First Protector, half-hoping Navar would offer some additional fuel for her fury. Being angry felt better than being heartlorn.

  Instead Navar called behind for the captain of the queen’s detail and a contingent of four soldiers to search the cave. “Watch for crawlers,” she instructed the captain.

  Five soldiers shuffled into the cavity, one with a lantern, two with spell staves called rune ashurs, and two with glittering swords.

  Elandine clasped her rage close. If she could keep that coal burning, images of Flora wouldn’t swim up from the depths. Flora, who loved to write poetry. Flora, riding behind her through Melis Forest at dawn, a grin plastered across her face as they evaded the royal escort. Flora, who was the only one who could make Brandalun laugh with her awkward puns…

  Flora, gasping in the healer’s hall of Citadel Hazurrium, her pain so extreme that she shuddered almost constantly, so that she hardly knew Elandine. The numbing influence of greenwasp venom brought only momentary relief, and the royal soulmancer offered no hope. When Flora’s end finally claimed her and she passed over, it was almost a relief, because her suffering was over.

  Elandine was bereft and alone without her younger sister, and her emotional barriers were tumbled to ruin.

  Flora died almost a month ago, and her spirit had descended into the Night Vault. But as was proper, on the thirty-third day following death of anyone in Hazurrium, the deceased’s remains would be interred west of Citadel Hazurrium, in the great wall called Ur. A funeral celebration would follow. By any estimation, Elandine should be there. When someone was interred in Ur, the queen should be on hand to say a few words. If that someone was the queen’s sister? Unthinkable that the queen should miss it, but that’s exactly what Elandine had decided to do.

  Whenever she let her guard down, she was ambushed by the singular memory of her sister’s passing, literally in her arms in the brightly lit healing hall that smelled of candles and medicine. All Flora’s limbs had loosened in a slow but unstoppable wave, before a stillness more silent than the deepest sleep settled over her. After that, Elandine had only tears. And recollections, moments that played over and over.

  Time would heal her heart, she was assured by those stupid enough to brave her grief and rage. But after thirty-one days, the wound was just as raw. It was all she could do to not think about it, and focus on retrieving her mother instead. By the Maker, if Brandalun wasn’t around to attend the internment, then neither would Elandine.

  One of the soldiers assigned to explore the cave emerged. He sauntered up to Navar and said, “The cave holds the rotting corpse of a sirrush, dead for a month, maybe more. Nothing else.”

  “Dead?” said the First Protector. “Any sign of what killed it?”

  The man shrugged.

  Elandine frowned at the disrespect the soldier showed the First Protector. Plus, something tough enough to slay a sirrush should warrant something more than a shrug. She stepped up to the man, checked his insignia, then demanded, “Captain, answer the Protector’s question. What killed the sirrush? Where’s the rest of your detail?”

  The captain’s head swung her way, a bit jerkily. He said, “The others are becoming acquainted with their new shells. And yes, we found what killed the beast. It’s with me now.”

  Pale stalks parted the man’s hair, folding out from his head, questing like fingers.

  “Kray!” shouted Navar.

  The captain was gone; he’d been hollowed out and worn like a hat, just long enough to gestate a kray.

  The kray-wearing captain vomited a colorless gout of webbing. Elandine evaded the twining strands. Anything cocooned in it was changed or entirely removed from Ardeyn. She came up on the kray’s left and hacked off two emerging stalks with her blade, then dispatched the kray with a straight thrust before it completely emerged. Her relic breastplate, for all its sturdiness, was also wound with spells that made it almost as light as a simple shift.

  The Maker is merciful, she thought, providing a distraction from thinking about funerals. Where there was one kray, more would follow–

  Three more soldiers clambered from the cave, moving with suspicious awkwardness. Navar rode two down in a brutal display of horsemanship, but the third jumped away. The kray inside that last walking corpse was almost completely free, and when it stood up, it was on crablike legs instead of human feet. Two and half times as tall as its dead host, pincers with spinnerets at the tips aimed at the First Protector as she wheeled her mount.

  Elandine raised the Ring called Peace and called on its only remaining function. She wasn’t close enough to distinguish between Navar and the kray, so all were engulfed in a dim haze of tranquility that slowed thoughts, hearts, and even time.

  Outside Ardeyn, the Ring had little power over the kray. But by entering the world, they bound themselves to Ardeyn’s rules. So Peace snagged the Stranger as surely as if it was a native.

  Elandine rushed to close the distance. She had just seconds to end the fight.

  The kray jerked back to awareness. It swung the hollowed man that’d birthed it like a bludgeon. Elandine was knocked sprawling. Her head rattled against a boulder. She scrambled to regain her feet, but everything was spinning.

  The thing advanced, holding the dead husk high, ready to strike again. Elandine gasped, “Motherless son of Lotan! Get away from me!”

  A thunder of hooves heralded the remainder of her detail. Twenty-some soldiers strong, they rode the last kray down. Rune ashurs inscribe
d with potent-enough sigils were deadly against most Strangers, but halberds, swords, and hooves did just fine, too. What remained after the charge was only a mess.

  “Your Majesty!” yelled Navar as she rode up, “Are you hurt?”

  “No,” Elandine said, and stood. “Truthfully, I haven’t felt this fine in days.” She wished more than four kray had emerged from the cave. But the fight seemed done.

  Navar said, “Let’s have the physician take a look, shall we?”

  “In a moment,” Elandine said. “After we make certain nothing else infests that hole.”

  “How in the Maker’s name did they get across the border this time?”

  The queen shrugged. “They have a knack for bending the Seven Rules. Or they paid, or tricked, someone into opening a door, however small.”

  Navar looked thoughtful. She said, “There’s so many choices. One of the Betrayer’s homunculi, a wandering devil, a saboteur from the Court of Sleep, or just some poor wanderer who strayed too close to the edge. The answer might be any of those, or just a surge out of the Strange.”

  Elandine frowned. The elation from the fight was fading, though not yet completely gone.

  “In any event, this represents a serious intrusion, wouldn’t you agree?” Elandine said.

  The First Protector nodded. “Of course! The region could be compromised. It would be foolhardy to ignore this. Not all of us need to return for the internment–”

  “None of us will attend,” Elandine interrupted. “Especially me.” She raised the Ring of Peace so Navar couldn’t miss it. Peace was their most potent weapon against Strangers. “In fact, once the physician has her say, I’ll lead a sortie…” Her eyes focused fully on Peace.

  Instead of its normal golden hue, the Ring was red as blood. It’d never done that before.

  Then it chimed. Completely new behavior, too. The sound rolled across the landscape. The chain on which she normally wore it parted and slipped to the ground. Elandine nearly dropped it in surprise.

  “Did you do that?” said Navar.

  “No.”

  Elandine studied the Ring. Brandalun used to tell her stories about Peace. The Maker had given each Incarnation a mighty weapon in the form of a Ring, a sort of manifestation of their abilities. Elandine was descended from one of those Incarnations, if family histories could be believed. Elandine never had. The story had it that when the Maker was betrayed, the Rings lost most of their strength. The Incarnations became mortal, and the Age of Myth ended, ushering in the Age of Unrest.

  Brandalun had sometimes wondered if the Rings would someday remember some of their ancient power, when – not if – the Maker returned. Peace was one of those Rings, though it started with a different name. When first forged, its power was more fell, and feared.

  The Ring of Death, it had been named. Death had the power to slay whosoever the wielder chose, and raise back from death anyone the wielder touched.

  Elandine said, “It’s clear some measure of the Ring’s old power has returned.” Her plan crystallized in a moment. The queen slid the Ring onto her right index finger. It settled as comfortably as if she’d always worn it there instead of on a chain around her neck.

  “Navar,” she said, “I’ve changed my mind. We must leave the Borderlands. Thank the Maker, we’re close to where we need to be.”

  “Your Majesty?”

  “I aim to see my sister smile again.”

  8: Reconciliation

  Carter Morrison

  The phone from the plastic bin had an address and phone number for Michael Bradley. When I called my old friend, Bradley didn’t pick up. I didn’t leave a message.

  An electronic fob with a Chevrolet logo meant my benefactor had probably left me with wheels. My benefactor. A funny concept, considering that he… was me. Right? The thing was, I certainly didn’t remember arranging for this storage unit.

  I wasted a minute trying to remember it anyway.

  Then I opened the garage door a crack and peered outside. A normal Seattle day waited for me, complete with familiar skyscrapers on the skyline, clouds, and drizzle. No sirens, no columns of smoke, or any other sign of planetovores claiming another mote in the normal universe as their own. I breathed easier.

  Surprised I hadn’t already, I checked the date on the phone–

  Three years. Three years had passed. Jesus.

  For me, it seemed like only minutes. What happened in all that time? Especially in the dark energy network we’d touched, after I’d returned the second time? It was a blank, as if whatever had happened, had happened to somebody else.

  The Ardeyn release poster came off the garage door with a few gentle tugs, and I began to roll it up. Thinking better, I laid it on the floor to study it one more time. Ardeyn, Land of the Cursed.

  In the fiction of the game, Citadel Hazurrium was a central bastion in a land cursed to be the literal prison for Lotan the “Reaper of Sins,” our mythical “big bad.” Qephilim – my word for angelic beings – of all sorts lived on, above, and beneath Ardeyn, including Lotan’s celestial jailers, the qephilim who made up the Court of Sleep. The Court of Sleep in turn answered to demigods called the Incarnations of the Maker, who watched over Ardeyn from the Maker’s Hall…

  I shook my head.

  The important thing was the poster, and my handwriting on it. Its presence implied, at minimum, that I’d come back here after trying to download into Ardeyn. Except, I didn’t actually remember anything like that.

  Had I fallen into some kind of hibernation, and only awakened now in the garage? But then why the poster? Why my handwriting?

  No, the implication was that my frantic upload of Ardeyn to the network had worked. And that I’d gone there, even if I couldn’t bring it to mind. And then, had I printed myself back to Earth a second time? Why? Maybe only an instance of me had printed back here, if that was possible. Maybe I was that instance. Jesus.

  Regardless, the poster was a cryptic message from myself. It’s how I would’ve done it. If some random stranger had entered, the poster’s significance and short note would be completely opaque. It was a contingency “I” had set up as some sort of failsafe. I just wish I knew what I’d been thinking when I’d done so.

  I called Bradley again. The same recorded voice picked up, “Hey, I can’t come to the phone right now. You know what to do.”

  This time, I said after the beep: “Hey, Bradley, it’s me. Sorry about the toolbox-to-the-head thing… Yeah. Hey, apparently you have some something for me? I don’t remember what. Anyway, I’m heading over to your place.”

  A canary-yellow Camaro waited under the dusty tarp. I’d never been a sports car guy, but on the drive over to Bradley’s, I realized that was maybe because I’d just never had the opportunity. Now wasn’t the time to check out the car’s ability to handle at top speed. But driving it put me, somehow, in a better mood.

  Bradley still rented a tiny house in Queen Anne, a neighborhood northwest of downtown. It was a safe part of the city, but I didn’t like seeing that his door was ajar. Since he still wasn’t answering his phone, I crept in through the front door quiet as a cat.

  Tumbled books, overturned furniture, and liberated pillow stuffing covered the front room. The scene fit my movie-bred expectations for the aftermath of a home invasion. Swallowing, I wondered what the hell I should do next.

  Weapons hadn’t been included in the garage stash, not even a tool box for bashing heads. Whoever’d created the mess in the front room carried, at minimum, a knife for slashing paintings and helpless cushions. Damn it, I hated being indecisive, but I was positive that I’d hate being stabbed even more. So I dithered.

  But I didn’t leave. Bradley might be inside. And whoever’d done a number on the furnishings was probably long gone. Only one way to find out…

  “Bradley?” I yelled from the entryway. I examined the broken furniture in the next room for an improvised weapon.

  When neither Bradley nor a guy in a ski-mask appeared, I screwed
up my courage and darted into the living room. Snatching a rusted fireplace poker, I yelled, “I’m coming for you, you bastard!” hoping to rattle the ski-mask guy if he were actually still around.

  After searching the whole house, it was apparent that the home invaders were gone. But I found Bradley out cold on his bed. His head was haphazardly wrapped in a towel, which was bloodstained. He was breathing, thank God.

  Once I elevated his feet with a pillow, I applied ice from his freezer to the swelling on his scalp. He made small noises, but didn’t wake.

  Too bad the phone I’d found in the bin wasn’t a smart phone, or I could’ve searched the internet for how to deal with an unconscious person. Instead I relied on memory. Let’s see… I pinched his thumbnail to see if he responded to harmless pain. An EMT friend told me it was one way to see if someone was really unconscious.

  “Ow!” Bradley moaned.

  “Hey! Wake up!” I said. “How do you feel?”

  “Oh, man,” he said. His eyes opened, and he groaned. Then “I feel like shit. What’s the…”

  His bleary eyes finally focused on me. They widened. “You!”

  I wanted to ask him what’d happened, who’d trashed his house and beat him up. But I realized he probably had a few questions of his own. “Yeah, Bradley, it’s really me. Weird, huh? Believe it or not, I’m probably more surprised than you.”

  He tried sitting, but I kept gentle pressure on his chest. I said, “Slow down. You might have a concussion.”

  He settled back. “Might have? I definitely have one, because I’m talking to a hallucination.”