The Myth of the Maker

by Bruce R Cordell

  That made the ring a sort of golden ticket. Maybe I could use it to try what Jason had just done, but in reverse. I had to stop Jason. And maybe save myself in the bargain, because me 2.0 wasn’t long for the Earth.

  I whispered, “Kate, Raul. Paldridge and Banks, you too. Clean up what Jason put out on the internet. Scrub it, and stop whoever tries to duplicate it.”

  Kate rubbed her eyes. “If it is a virus, or a worm like the one that took out those uranium enrichment centrifuges in Iran–”

  “Idiot,” snapped Banks. “He uploaded schematics for how to construct a quantum computer. My schematics!”

  I didn’t know if I could convince Liza Banks of the danger she was in. She wasn’t interested in absorbing evidence that ran counter to her agenda. People get like that. When they do, they resist changing their minds, too invested in their old ideas, mistaking those ideas as a part of themselves. I was too mortally wounded to try to talk her to my way of thinking.

  So I turned my attention to Kate and Raul, and said, “Banks is right about schematics, I’m guessing. The problem isn’t merely a traditional computer virus or worm, it’s the knowledge the worm contains. Knowing how to improve current quantum processor technology is most of the way to building one. Make sure that knowledge doesn’t get out.”

  Banks cocked her head and butted in, asking, “You want us to become, what, code busters?”

  My instinctive laugh at the term “code buster” became a cough. Banks was obviously not a technical person. When I got my spasming lungs under control, I said, “If you care about safeguarding yourselves, your friends, everyone – the whole Earth and everything on it, you’ll do what I say.”

  “Right,” said Banks in a speculative tone. She’d gone from angry to looking vaguely concerned.

  I’d about run through my strength. Talking was done. Hopefully, they’d do what I said. Ultimately it wouldn’t matter if they found every bit of loose code describing “superposition best practices” if, in the meantime, Jason brought on Ardeyn’s apocalypse, collapsing the recursion. Without Ardeyn as a buffer, Earth would be exposed to the Strange, to the direct connection we’d unwittingly created three years ago. So my job was to stop him.

  I fumbled on the ring. The numbness spread from my stomach, reaching all the way to my fingers and toes. I closed my eyes and pitched back. Hands might’ve caught me, or maybe not. Cold was the only sensation, except for the tingle of the ring around my finger, hot as a coal. I concentrated on it, and let the cold claim everything else.

  A chasm opened beneath me. I fell into an abyss with sides as sheer as scissor blades.

  15: Suspicion

  Katherine Manners

  Kate watched Carter Morrison disappear. No sci-fi sparkle of lights or musical chord. Just blink, gone. Except for all the blood he’d left behind. That, and the ring.

  She retrieved it without thinking. A spark of static electricity stung her palm, but she didn’t let it go.

  What the fuck had Carter meant about scrubbing out knowledge? He should know it was virtually impossible to remove information from the internet. When people were wounded and the oxygen to their brain slowed, they got confused. Except now she was the one who was confused. Maybe she’d taken a bullet, too, and hadn’t realized it in the excitement. Kate started a visual inspection of her extremities, just to be sure.

  “Mierda,” whispered Raul. “Carter can translate. I wouldn’t have guessed.”

  “Translate?” said Kate. “What’s that mean?”

  Raul pointed at the empty spot where Carter had been. “He can move between recursions by willing it. And so quickly!”

  Oh, shit. Kate put the ring in her pocket almost absentmindedly. Now Raul was going funny, too. “Translate? Recursions? Explain that. Explain how you know that. Or… am I still talking to Jason?” She leveled the gun at her friend, wondering if any answer out of his mouth could satisfy her.

  16: Deception

  Elandine, Queen of Hazurrium

  A thick veil of blowing web strands settled across the jungle canopy. Each strand supported a single dark kernel. And each kernel, Elandine knew, would sprout a ravenous kray.

  The descending mass’s leading edge passed overhead, and she, Navar, and her entire detail came under its shadow.

  “We’re beneath it!” screamed the First Protector.

  “Maker preserve us,” breathed Elandine.

  Even riding full out, they couldn’t escape the krayfall. A few peacemakers tried anyway, spurring their steeds into a confused gallop across the broken plain, away from the plateau.

  The poor fools were already dead, thought Elandine. Maybe she was, too, and all who stood their ground with their queen. Except she wore Death. It would suffice, or nothing.

  Elandine raised her fist. On it her hope flashed. She concentrated on the Ring of Death, and a response stirred within its dark coil. It flashed like a black star, opening a sliver of its power to her. She flinched, as the shade of Death brushed past her. But what else had she expected?

  Elandine called upon the serene stillness of the grave, inflating that quiet until it swept away up and around her. The descending kray seedlings passed through it, freezing solid. They pattered down around the queen and her host like hail, creating a perfect white circle at their feet. The visage of Death stared at Elandine with its lidless eyes, then faded. Profound tiredness sapped her breath, as if she’d just run a mile at a full sprint.

  “Crush them!” gasped Elandine, ignoring the lassitude brought on by triggering the Ring. “Sweep them away. Quickly, before they thaw!” She brushed the rigid things from her garments and armor, stomping. Around her, peacemakers followed suit with barely-controlled alacrity.

  The casements of the kray seedlings popped and cracked beneath her boot heels. She wasn’t sure it was necessary – they might already be dead. She’d imprinted one of the Seven Rules directly upon them: in Ardeyn, all things are subject to Death. Amazing, really. She’d wiped the things out of the air, just by willing it! Death had done Elandine’s bidding. It boded well for when she’d need that power to extract her sister from the Court of Sleep.

  The queen’s gaze swirled past the white zone of dead invaders, and her flicker of exhilaration blew out. Except in the relatively small zone around her, the seedlings had found purchase everywhere. They were surrounded. Kray scurriers were already shrugging out of discarded skins of bark, feathers, grass, moss, rabbits, and from the skins of the few men who’d tried to get away. An army of Strangers was popping up all around them, more than she ever would’ve thought possible. She and her detail had escaped instant death, but it wouldn’t matter in another minute as the newborn kray converged.

  “I’m sorry, my queen,” murmured Navar. The First Protector knew the score as well as she.

  “As am I, dearest friend.” Fear, heady and fierce, tasted like acid in her throat.

  A sea of monsters besieged them, roaring, slashing, spinning webs, and snapping their pincers. They twirled and surged like the surface of Oceanus or, Elandine realized, like dancers conveying the essence of Strange itself, twisting and repeating patterns beyond knowing. A kray along the front reared up, its carapace green and glistening as a favorite candy sold by Hazurrium street vendors, and gave voice to a trumpeting challenge that curdled the air. The sound was like nothing Elandine had ever heard or imagined.

  But the pincered army remained outside the line of dead seedlings. Why?

  “Listen,” she said, hardly a whisper. “Listen to me!” she tried again, her voice louder as she pointed. “See? They fear to cross the line scribed by Death, and for good reason. Form up! We’re not dead. Far from it. To me!”

  The kray didn’t know the boundary meant nothing. The effect she’d generated with the Ring was long gone. Given how tired snatching at Death’s mantle had made her, she couldn’t repeat the effect anytime soon. But she forced herself to stand tall, to look confident. To be their queen.

  Soldiers’ eyes were fixed on
Elandine like she was an oasis in the desert. They wanted to believe survival was possible. They just needed a reason. All she had to do was provide one. Simple. And in turn, her dismay lessened as their anxiety fell away. People are eager to find hope. Including her.

  The soldiers formed the lines and defensive groupings that’d been drilled into them, creating a defensive circle, facing outward. They were trained by Hazurrium’s finest.

  “The shells are moving.” Navar’s ears flicked sideways. It didn’t need saying, of course, everyone could see it. A handful of kray among the thousands advanced on the boundary, and more lined up behind them. They weren’t in a hurry. They came on stiff and steady, pincers held ready before them, eyestalks on Elandine.

  Lines of webbing flapped over their heads. Strands that could cut through the Seven Laws like knives, before they finally burned away. She wondered how many web strands the army of kray could spin. Could such a large force cocoon the entire capitol city in their gauzy strands, and steal it away into the Strange? Imagining it made her feel sick. She sucked in a long breath. The battlefield was no place for distraction, her mother always said.

  It was for killing. “Ashurs ready,” she yelled, lifting her palms to the sky. The soldiers around her lifted their battle staves, sigils snapping with deadly soulmancy.

  The advancing kray exploratory party didn’t falter, or lose a step.

  “They’re not scared,” muttered a woman with an ashur raised before discharge. More’s the pity, thought Elandine. A human or qephilim company would flinch at walking into the sights of twenty-some battle staffs. But the kray didn’t think like humans. They were of the Strange.

  “Fire!” commanded Navar.

  Rune ashurs spit death spells into the advancing horde with a sound like thunder. Kray carapaces shattered, ooze sprayed, and several gaps appeared in their line, here and there. But more advanced, trampling their fallen kin. Some of the replacements were noticeably larger than the fallen scurriers who’d advanced in the first rank.

  Elandine frowned. An ashur sipped vitality from its wielder’s soul, but in the face of the advancing sea of enemies, peacemaker strength would give out first. The shells had them outnumbered fifty to one.

  She called, “Conserve your strength – choose your targets!”

  Navar pointed, directing her attention to the side. A particularly massive specimen trundled into view, a kray the size of a small house. Frightened cries sounded around her. Ashur beams caught and sparked on the monster’s carapace. It stumbled in the face of the onslaught, but came on.

  “Maker, preserve us,” she prayed, not for the first time. As if the Maker had ever heard or responded to a single entreaty in the history of Ardeyn…

  She half believed stories about the Maker were just that – tales for children and credulous adults. Then again, she had Death. The heirloom ring was supposedly the Maker’s gift to the first of her line. If she didn’t believe in the myth of the Maker, why was she here with one of his implements? Why make for the Moon Door and attempt to petition the Court of Sleep if she didn’t believe the Maker made it? The Ring of Death was tied to the Maker. A Maker who might have returned, given the Ring’s newfound strength. Maybe all that was required was a petition of a different sort. A prayer from a believer willing to take a chance on a vanished god. If he would answer anyone, why not the descendant of one of his ancient Incarnations?

  “Maker!” she screamed, Ring held before her. The behemoth kray lumbered closer. More ashur beams licked it, but their effects seemed less telling each moment.

  “Maker, hear me. I am Queen Elandine of Hazurrium, and I pray for your aid! If you care at all for what you wrought, now is the time to intervene. If you’ve returned, show it. Help me!”

  The Ring warmed on her finger. A bolt of pale light sparked into the sky like a flare, rising so high that it must’ve passed out of Ardeyn and into the Strange beyond. She gasped. The peacemakers stopped fighting and the kray paused. Even the big one hesitated, its eyestalks bending upward to take in the glowing trail.

  A handful of seconds trickled past. One of the peacemakers pointed skyward. “There!” he yelled.

  A creature soared overhead, leaving a streak of fire behind. It was like a lion wearing a metallic human mask, with eaglelike wings scratching the sky – a dlamma! They were rarely seen, and everyone who saw them counted it as a good omen.

  The dlamma winged closer, revealing its rider. Black armor limned with glowing red designs covered the rider like a bulwark.

  “Can it be?” yelled Navar. “The Maker?”

  Elandine’s breath caught.

  The dlamma raced just above the snapping pincers of the shells. The creatures jostled each other as they leaped and sprayed webbing at the interloper, but the flyer moved too quickly for projected strands to catch it. The rider leaped from the saddle when the dlamma was still dozens of yards away. The dlamma flew on up, but the dismounted rider fell into the circle where Elandine stood. The ground shook and earth sprayed up in a cloud where he touched down. Peacemakers backed away from the newcomer, who remained as he had landed: down on one knee in the center of the crater of his own making. The kray were agitated, but didn’t resume their attack.

  Elandine swallowed. She’d prayed to the Maker… and he’d come. The builder of Ardeyn was before her. Unbelievable. His armored form hinted that he was man, not a qephilim, as some thought he must be. She moved closer.

  “Thank you,” she said, her voice hoarse, “for answering.”

  The figure finally rose. The helm covering the Maker’s face was bestial and horned, save for the scarlet lines that glowed almost like fiery tears from his eyes, matching the flame burning on his staff, which he held in one hand. She’d never seen a likeness of the Maker before, but if she’d tried to guess how he might’ve looked, this wasn’t it.

  “Hello, Queen Elandine,” came a male voice, normal as anything. “I’m here to help.”

  He turned to face the swarm of kray. Tired of waiting, they surged forward again.

  Ashurs came up to shoulders, burning a new volley of webbing to cinders before most of the lines could reach the defenders. A few still got through. Cords touched the shoulders, the hands, and the boots of the queen’s detail. Victims screamed in unbelieving pain. Louder yet came the Maker’s roar as he raised his massive staff of black and red iron that burned. He dashed straight past the peacemakers, into the advancing kray, toward the behemoth. Trying not to think about what she was doing, she raised her own sword and charged down the lane the Maker had created with his passage. “For Hazurrium!” she screamed.

  She slashed a few kray as she ran, but those closest to the Maker’s path were mostly shattered and dissolving. Ahead of her, he waved the massive stave around as if it weighed nothing. Impressive, but nothing compared to what he did next.

  The Maker split into more than a dozen duplicates! The newcomers flowed from him like water from a tap, each one armored in red or in green, none black like the Maker. In seconds, a small army of at least thirty Makers swept out through the sea of kray, fighting, killing, but also falling, and dying, and crying out in their own voices of pain. The Maker stopped spawning copies when he reached the behemoth. Battle was joined.

  Elandine accounted herself an able swordswoman, especially given the power in her relic blade. But the man before her knew warfare like she knew the back of her own hand. Better. It was nothing short of magic.

  She realized she’d stopped fighting. She closed her mouth and renewed her advance. As she did, the behemoth lashed out. The Maker grunted as he deflected a pincer the size of a dragon’s wing on his burning staff. He spun away to smash an elbow into a normal-sized kray that’d slunk up behind. The thing’s shell crunched through like a pastry.

  “Watch out!” Elandine yelled as the behemoth’s second pincer slammed down. He almost avoided it, rolling up and away through the air like an acrobat on a wire. Given his armor, such a move was a miracle in its own right. But not mir
aculous enough. The pincer clipped him with a sound like a hammer to the blacksmith’s anvil.

  The Maker went down. Elandine snapped out Rendswandir without thought, severing the pincer as it descended on the fallen warrior. Then the Maker was up again, fighting.

  Together, over the course of a hard-fought minute, they brought the behemoth down.

  “Thank you for that,” the Maker offered, ever so slightly out of breath. She said, “I doubt you required it,” then wished she’d stayed quiet.

  Around them, the kray were dying. Her peacemakers, bolstered by the might of the Maker’s red and green-hued avatars, were winning the day. Losses were steep, but it seemed clear the kray would be defeated. The few remaining just didn’t realize it yet. It wasn’t in their nature to retreat.

  “So,” she ventured, trying to read the Maker’s visage, looking for eyes behind that armored helm to focus on. “Should I call you Maker?”

  The head jerked to regard her. Then laughter echoed from the suit. Finally he said, “You might, you might indeed. And you have my thanks, truly. That thing might’ve actually had my ticket if you hadn’t distracted it. You’re quite the warrior, Queen Elandine.”

  “You’re too generous.”

  He shrugged, his armored shoulders magnifying the movement. “Could be, could be. But enough. Do you have the Ring? I need it, if we’re going to fix all this.”

  “Peace?”

  “Death.”

  Elandine nodded, and lifted her hand. A feeling of lightness filled her up. She was in the presence of the Maker! He was real. He would fix things… he would help her get her sister back!

  “There it is,” said the Maker, his voice gleeful.

  Elandine said, “With this, I could enter the Court of Sleep. My sister died. It wasn’t right. With Peace – I mean, with Death, and you returned…” Elandine trailed off. She was babbling, not making it clear that she wanted the Maker to return Flora to life.