But the Maker said, “Of course! And I mean to help you. No reward is too much to ask. Resurrection is well within my power.”
Elandine blinked, hardly daring to believe her ears.
“But first,” he continued, “we’ve got to return your Ring to its full power. With my return, a portion of its strength is back, but not all it once possessed. Not enough for your sister, I think, until we repair it. So lend it to me.” He mouth quirked as he continued, “I’ll take it to the Maker’s Hall, fix it up there, then bring it back here.”
She was going to see her sister again! Joy washed away her fear and pain, and made her impulsive. Elandine removed the metallic band and dropped it into the Maker’s gauntleted hand.
The Maker laughed. Something in his tone seemed off.
Elandine added, “As you know, the Ring was given to the first of my line. By you, of course.” She laughed, feeling stupid, but she pressed on, “The Ring has passed from mother to daughter in an unbroken chain since then. Maybe I should–”
“Don’t worry,” the Maker said as he waved at something high overhead. The dlamma. It descended as the conflict burned out. Only a couple of the Maker’s doubles remained, and they along with Elandine’s peacemakers seemed intent on pursuing a last of the kray that, too late, tried to escape into the underbrush at the clearing’s edges.
The rush of air pushed Elandine back a half step as the dlamma set down. The great metallic mask hiding the creature’s face was red and savage, bestial almost. Not a look she would’ve guessed for the Maker’s mount. The armored figure vaulted into the saddle. Events were rushing out of her control.
“Wait,” said Elandine. “You said you’d bring it back here. Would you prefer to return it to me at my palace in Hazurrium? I mean, when should I expect you?”
“Actually, Queen Elandine, I have bad news. I won’t be returning the Ring to you. Ever.”
“What? But my sister! You said–”
“Yes, well, I lied, and not just once. I’m sorry. But I’m not the Maker. Not the original, anyhow. Though the job has recently opened up, and I’m stepping in.”
Elandine gasped. “Who are you then?”
“You know me. People around these parts call me the Betrayer. I prefer Incarnation of War, or just War if you’re going to be informal. Your great, great, great grandmother called me Jason.” He laughed. “None of that matters any more. I’ve got your ring. Once I get a couple of others, I’ll have what I need to break into the Maker’s Hall and claim Carter’s mantle for my own.”
The dlamma leaped into the sky, bearing away the Betrayer, with Elandine’s last hope clutched in his thieving hand.
17: Namer
Carter Morrison
A furnace-bright point of fire raged in the sky, forcing me to squint into the glare and look away. Glass stretched away in every direction, like God’s own solar oven. The heat tasted like burnt sand.
My sweat was already drying. Not good. On the other hand, when I let my fingers run across my upper chest, they felt no salty red wetness or gaping hole – all evidence of the gunshot wound was gone.
“Holy shit, I’m gonna live!”
The emptiness swallowed my shout. The glass didn’t care. If anything, it seemed even warmer than before. That, and a strange lethargy clung to me, a feeling of hollowness in my belly that refused to depart despite the lack of wound. Was I going to live?
An inventory of my resources revealed a pale gray tunic under a blue coat. Cuneiform runes, vaguely familiar, stitched the coat’s hem. Where had I seen those designs before?
My boots were impressively comfortable, maybe because of their leather soles. A pack hung off my shoulder. A few pouches, a satchel, and a bulging water skin were clipped to my belt.
I pulled the water skin’s cork and sniffed. It smelled a bit leathery and wasn’t the least bit cold. Beggars couldn’t be choosers. Not hydrating in this heat would see me dead within an hour, tops. Pressing my lips to the skin’s mouth, I sucked down a gulp.
My mom used to set out pitchers of ice water for my friends and me in the backyard while we played basketball. That water had nothing on this. Yes, it was warm, but it washed away the taste of burnt sand in a lukewarm deluge. It promised life, and the hollowness in my stomach retreated. Enough water filled the skin to last at least a few hours in this unrelenting glare. Maybe long enough to see me somewhere less bright and oven-like.
The water from the skin revived me, and my brain, too. How could I have forgotten the runes on my tunic? I’d commissioned the creation of an alphabet for Ardeyn, Land of the Curse years ago. Roughly, the symbols on my clothing read One Who Names, or maybe One Who Makes.
With that recognition, I also knew that the flat, reflective plane all around me was the Glass Desert, a part of Ardeyn called Kuambis.
I was in Ardeyn, Land of the Curse! It was all fucking real…
Intellectually knowing a place existed was one thing. Seeing the sky go on forever, and feeling the searing heat of an actual desert was another. It made me a bit dizzy. Or was it sunstroke?
I experimentally stamped on the glass with my leather soles. It shimmered with vibration, sending a hard shock back up through my heel and calf. Rubbing the back of my hand across lips felt entirely authentic. The sweat forming in my armpits and on my brow were just as prolific as if I had been sitting in the middle of Death Valley in California. And why not? Anything could be emulated if nearly unlimited processing power was on tap, which was what the dark energy network provided.
I had no recollection of ever coming here before. Well, no, that wasn’t entirely true. Something… Memory tickled my brain.
I had visited Ardeyn, after creating it. And when I did, I’d gained root access. I was Ardeyn’s designer. I’d known where all the code was buried, so to speak. So I’d stepped into the ready-made role of Ardeyn’s Maker, and offered to incarnate my friends the same way, if they wanted. They did. Why not? We’d been trapped. Alice, Mel, Jason, Sanders, and I had become like gods, thanks to me. Jason chose the Incarnation of War, Alice the Incarnation of Silence, Sanders Lore, and Mel considered the Incarnation of Desire, but finally settled on Death. Then–
A bead of sweat rolled off my eyebrow and stung my eyes. The insane recollection of handing out divine roles to my friends skittered away. Shit! I tried to dredge it up again. It shattered in my mental grasp like a soap bubble, like a dream facing daylight. Had it been real at all? If I was hallucinating from the warmth already, it wasn’t a good sign. Another sip from the water skin didn’t help.
I squinted into the glare reflecting from the glass stretching away to all horizons. The sun wasn’t directly overhead yet, or I’d probably already be dried out as a prune. Splintery cracks, and occasional glass dust dunes interrupted an otherwise smooth surface. A deep scratch passed not more than a few dozen feet from me, stretching away in both directions as far as I could see.
“Oh, wow,” I muttered, imagining the massive skate that had probably made the furrow.
When Ardeyn had been all code and art orders for animators, “glass pirates” had been conceived. They sailed on ships with iron skates instead of keels. The long groove in the glass might well have been laid down just such a skate. If I were lucky, maybe another glass pirate would sail by and offer me a lift to someplace with more shade. If I was unlucky, one would try to run me over for sport, or capture me so they could sell me as a slave in Kuambis.
Unless I could help myself first. Closing my eyes, I renewed my effort to recover the memory of my previous visit. According to Michael Bradley, I’d visited him after my supposed funeral, wearing some outlandish black outfit claiming that I had become the Maker. Why couldn’t I remember more? I concentrated. Fresh images surfaced, but they were fogged and broken. Sort of like looking through the pocked, shattered surface of the Glass Desert itself to the bedrock beneath.
Otherworldly scenes spun past: the Seven Sentinels walking, kray pouring through a breach in the world, and the Inc
arnation of War – with Jason’s grinning face – becoming a numberless army to defend Ardeyn. But nothing else. It was as if most of my mind had been cut away. Or as if it hadn’t really happened to me at all. Nothing else Ardeyn-related flickered in the recesses of my brain.
Time to face facts. Except for a few random impressions, I was missing crucial memories of my previous time in Ardeyn. There was nothing I could do about that, at least not immediately.
On the other hand, I perfectly recalled waking up in the Seattle storage space, and everything after that, including the events at the BDR office. It’d be hard to forget a gunman putting a bullet through me. And Jason showing up, with a hate-on for me that, frankly, seemed insane. His time here had obviously unbalanced him. The worm he injected onto the internet was supposedly bursting with schematics for a quantum computer chip capable of pinging the Strange. Why would he do that? It was an insane risk for him to take. I’d been too shot to ask him why at the time, and then he’d slipped back to Ardeyn. I’d tried to follow using his ring, and save my life in the process–
The Ring! Sometimes I’m such an idiot. Jason had hinted it was the Ring of Desire. Once I figured out how to channel its power…
Where was it? It’d been the catalyst for flipping across the boundary into Ardeyn. But it wasn’t on my finger. Nor was it in any of the pouches, pockets, or hidden compartments of my clothing, I was forced to admit after a thorough search.
The artifact hadn’t made the trip back with me. Well, shit.
Picking a direction along the furrow in the glass, I began walking. The boots would protect my feet from burning, though care would still be required if I was going to travel across the desert. Stray splinters could cut the boots, and my feet within, to shreds.
After a few hundred yards, I shrugged out of my blue coat and hung it over one arm. If anything, the heat was even more oppressive without the coat to block it. The weakness was back, and growing dizziness made each step more of a risk than the last, comfortable leather soles or not. The heat was too much. I needed an edge, and quick.
“If you have anything of the Maker in you,” I told my reflection in the smooth surface between my feet, “it’s time to wake up.” My reflection looked back at me stupidly.
My gaze shifted to the runes on my coat. I spoke the symbols aloud, “One Who Names.” What did that mean? The phrase had the sound of a title. Maybe it was my title? We’d added a bit of true-name magic into some of the subsystems for Ardeyn during the beta. Did this fully realized version of our make-believe land have anything like that?
My gaze drifted to a crater-like blemish in the glass not far from the groove I’d been following. Lying in many pieces in the crater was what might have been a broken stone sculpture, I couldn’t be sure. I wondered if it had fallen from the sky.
Kicking through the pieces, I found a few other bits of splintered wood, a rusted sword blade, some shattered ceramic that might have been part of a large tankard, and a metal sphere that must have been a cannonball. Did glass pirates have cannons? I couldn’t remember, but evidence argued yes. That, along with what was obviously a belaying pin hinted the entire mess had fallen from a glass pirate ship.
I fished the cannonball from the jumble. It was silvery gray, and not especially large – just big enough to fit in my palm, rough and sun-warmed. Rust patches specked the sphere, and it wasn’t perfectly round. But it was solid. The discoloration and irregular shape almost made the thing look like a metal skull. I addressed it, “What’s your name?”
I felt only slightly foolish when it didn’t answer. Mainly, because I sensed it had no name to give me. If it was to help, it needed a voice. I decided a name would help wake it. And not any old name, I felt with a thrill of certainty. A name that only I could give.
“Jushur,” I named the metallic ball, though I didn’t quite know why; it just seemed right. More words bubbled up, “Jushur is your name. I invest you with the gift of sight and knowledge. Wake from sleep, and greet your maker.”
I didn’t quite drop it when the iron sphere vibrated in my hand, and a voice answered, “Jushur is my name. I greet you, Maker.” But it was a close thing. I did sort of juggle it.
Holy shit, I’d made a talking cannonball. I just didn’t have the first clue how I’d done it. Best not look a gift horse in the mouth too early, though. Surprise made me forget what I’d taken as heat stroke symptoms.
“What can you tell me?” I said, recalling that I’d promised the inert thing the gift of sight and knowledge.
“Many things,” Jushur replied. “All things are reflected here in the glass. What do you wish to know?” The voice was a whisper, and the vibration was creepy. I decided to ask my most pressing question rather than directions to the nearest shade. If the gift for gab bestowed was only temporary, I might only have one shot at finding Jason.
“Tell me where I can find War.”
It whispered, “War is on the move. He returned to Ardeyn just this day, like you.”
“Oh,” I said. Of course, I’d already known that. The sphere might merely be reflecting my own knowledge back–
“He returned in another’s guise, pretending to be one greater than he.”
What the hell did that mean? A soft hiss in the distance sounded, but I tuned it out.
“Jushur,” I ventured, “Can you tell me where Jason is now?”
“His mind is concealed from me.” Well, crap.
“What else can you do?” I said.
“Only what your naming bequeathed me.”
“All right, so you know stuff – you have ‘sight and knowledge.’ How wide is your knowledge?”
“Test me and see,” came its whispered reply, like a dare.
A new thought struck me. I said, “Before Ardeyn, there was only a starting grid. The starting grid had, um, controls. Can you show me similar controls in Ardeyn?”
“No,” said Jushur. I frowned. The hiss I’d noticed earlier was louder now and had gained a scratchy undertone, but I wasn’t going to let it distract me.
I asked, “I once assumed the mantle of the Maker of Ardeyn. Do you know how I managed that?”
“No.”
Jushur was an artifact of few words. Actually, the less an inanimate object spoke, probably the better. Especially something created by me in what was essentially a stab in the dark. Who knew what kind of dangerous shit I’d stirred up? My hair was damp with sweat from the heat as I scratched it.
“Jushur,” I addressed the metallic lump again, “as your namer, I command your first allegiance. Is that clear? You answer only to me.”
The sphere vibrated in my grip before it replied, “I will not betray you to the Betrayer, Jason Cole.”
That had come oddly out of the blue. Moreover, the title bequeathed on Jason was like a fist to the gut. It was familiar, but I couldn’t quite remember why. “The Betrayer? Jason’s name here in Ardeyn is War. Isn’t it? What’re you–”
The sound of the scratchy hiss I’d been hearing for a while finally grew so loud that I could no longer ignore it. I turned.
A ship under full sail supported by a single massive iron blade beneath it was bearing down on me across the Glass Desert. I goggled. It sped toward me without slowing. When I threw myself out of its way, it was almost too late. The blade narrowly missed cutting me in half.
Glass pirates! I should’ve been watching for them. I’d designed the fuckers to be aggressive. I was following the tracks of one, for God’s sake. Except I hadn’t actually expected my own creation to manifest as something real, then try to kill me. Because I’m dumb. I’d have to cure myself of that quick if I wanted to live out the rest of the day.
The ship skated clear of my rolling body. Questioning shouts became excited cries of discovery and joy, as pirates at the rear of the craft spied me regaining my feet. The hunt was on, and I was the prey.
I considered my options. The pirate ship was executing a wide turn back toward me, its sails snapping to tack with the wind.
Fresh shouts of delight echoed sharply off the glass surface.
The figures on the ship’s prow wore brightly mismatched finery. I spotted a couple of eye patches and limb prosthetics, and an overabundance of weapons. In other words, they looked like pirates.
Most were human, but not all. One had a head like a jackal’s. I noticed him because he screamed “Take him alive! The Citadel’s paying double for fresh slaves!”
In Ardeyn, humans with jackal heads could be only one thing: qephilim. Qephilim were the angelic servitor race I’d imagined as having once served the various Incarnations. This one had obviously shed every ounce of its angelic history.
Jushur observed, “They mean you no good.”
I resisted the urge to respond sarcastically, because Jushur was right. The ship was coming at me again. I stuffed my coat and Jushur into the satchel, then bent and retrieved the belaying pin I’d noticed earlier.
This time the craft slowed as it approached. Half a dozen pirates tumbled down ropes let over the side and smashed onto the glass, apparently unconcerned with the blazing warmth. I backed a few steps, but what else could I really do but confront them? It wasn’t like I could outrun anyone in this heat.
One who dropped onto the glass was the qephilim I’d seen on the ship’s prow. When I focused on him, I realized two things. He was actually a she, and I knew her name, despite never having met her before: Siraja. No time to wonder how I could possibly know that because they sprinted toward me.
“Siraja, hold!” I yelled. “Don’t you know who I am?”
The qephilim’s head rocked back when I named her, and she slowed. Those behind her did likewise.
“No. Who are you?” Siraja said. The tips of her ears swiveled forward as her eyes tried to pierce mine. The tiniest glow of light flickered in the air between her tall ears. “How do you know me?”
“Who cares?” said the bulky man at her side. He carried a hammer so large it almost looked ridiculous. Almost. Besides him and Siraja, three other pirates had come down onto the glass. One was tiny, one was dressed all in red, and last was a woman with braided hair that seemed to move of its own accord.
The Myth of the Maker Page 13