Best Laid Plans

by D. P. Prior

  An odd feeling was gnawing away at what remained of his innards. He struggled to decipher it, shook his head, and then looked up into Callixus’ tormented eyes.

  Compassion?

  Surely not. He could almost hear Blightey laughing at the idea all the way from Verusia. Too late for compassion, my dear Ernst, the Liche Lord would say. You’ve stacked up too many tokens in the name of truth. Blightey’s truth—uncompromising, cruel, unforgiving. One act of compassion won’t make an iota’s difference. What would be the point?

  No point, Cadman realized. It would make no difference; there’d be no discernible gain.

  Nevertheless…

  ‘I release you.’ He clapped a hand on Callixus’ ghostly shoulder. ‘But I ask you—I implore you—stay with me a few more days. Maybe Ain would want that.’ —Now that’s stretching it!— ‘Maybe you could help me…’

  Cadman turned away, his heart thudding like a ricocheting bullet. Stop right there, Cadman, you cowardly, self-seeking, walking sack of rot! Fear, that’s all this is. Just put up or shut up. Take the consequences of your actions.

  ‘I will stay,’ Callixus said, his voice thick with emotion he should not have felt. ‘I know how hard—’

  ‘No,’ Cadman said, raising a hand for silence. ‘I don’t need to hear that. The Dweller is coming and there’s nothing I can do about it. It was my fault. I knew it was a risky gambit going after the statue, and now all the bad choices I’ve made are coming home to roost.’

  Cadman stooped over Rhiannon and started to drag her to the centre of the roof. He paused for a moment, looked over his shoulder at the wraith, and felt he would have wept if he’d been capable. ‘Thank you,’ he said, and then tried to put the matter out of his mind with counting.

  Rhiannon moaned and muttered something. For a moment she looked exactly what she was: a sacrificial victim dressed in virginal white. Well, I’m not sure about the latter. The effect was ruined by the filth staining her robe, but it was enough to make Cadman pause and reflect. She could have been a pre-Raphaelite heroine, perhaps even a saint. He bent closer to hear, but then realized she was probably just talking in her dreams. Whatever venom Ikrys had in his tail, it would undoubtedly give Morpheus a run for his money. Cadman shook his head and sighed. Not that anyone in this topsy-turvy post-Reckoning nightmare would even know who Morpheus was anymore. Mythology had fallen during the time of the Ancients, and religion along with it. There had been no place for anything that lacked utility in Global Tech’s world.

  And to think, at one time Cadman had trodden the path of science, a natural enough progression from his medical career. Odd that he didn’t end up like the Technocrat himself, especially as they’d both shared the same mentor in Blightey. But Blightey had moved on since his tutoring of Sektis Gandaw. He’d told Cadman they’d fallen out, but if what Cadman had gleaned from history were true, that was an unmitigated understatement. There’d been a conflict of terrifying proportions and Gandaw had emerged triumphant. Blightey had slithered away into obscurity, but he’d not been idle, and his threat certainly hadn’t gone away. If the Liche Lord’s millennia of existence had taught him anything, it was how to be patient. New protégés had come and gone—most of them had ended up on spikes outside Blightey’s castle in Verusia—and by the time Cadman had come to the Liche Lord’s attention, Blightey had immersed himself in practices far darker than science, far more primal and insidious.

  ‘Doctor!’ Callixus hissed.

  Cadman’s head snapped back and his pince-nez flew from the bridge of his nose. Rhiannon’s teeth were bared in a rictus grin, her fist drawn back for another blow. Before Cadman could react, Callixus smothered her like a vaporous pall, re-forming behind her with her wrists held in his spectral hands. She squirmed and cursed as Cadman fumbled around for his pince-nez. It was an automatic reaction, one he still cherished. He’d had no physical need of the eyeglasses for centuries, but that didn’t mean he didn’t need them. They were as necessary to him as Cognac and cigarettes. He twisted the frames back into shape and settled them back on his nose. Rhiannon flinched as if she expected him to hit her back.

  ‘Be still, my dear, be still,’ Cadman said, raising his palms. ‘Whatever I may be, I’m no brute.’

  She said nothing, but eyed him with undisguised malice.

  Cadman couldn’t really blame her. ‘If I could spare you, I would,’ he said with a gentleness that surprised himself. ‘Odd as it might strike you, I don’t actually want anyone else to get hurt. Too much has happened already.’ Too much that I didn’t intend. Or did he? Was he to blame for all the actions that had arisen from his initial action, his decision to seek out the statue? Was he culpable for accepting the path suggested by the Dweller, or was the demon to blame for tempting him?

  ‘I am…’ Cadman shut his eyes and tried to find the right words. Why the hell am I explaining myself? What does any of this matter? ‘I’m afraid.’ More than that: he was terrified. The longer you, lived the greater the fear of oblivion. He’d spent centuries running from death, outwitting mortality, sidestepping the big questions of his existence; but the Dweller made that impossible. Not only had it coaxed him from the shadows and back into the world of risks, but now it was on its way to exact payment for its services.

  ‘Tell someone who cares,’ Rhiannon said, looking at him as if he were something she’d ordinarily scrape off her shoe. ‘You expect sympathy, after all the people you’ve killed? Shog, you’re pathetic.’

  Cadman swallowed. He hadn’t expected that. Didn’t she know he had the power to kill her? Hell, he even had the power to raise her again and grant her an eternity of torment.

  She continued to stare at him with fire in her eyes. Life.

  ‘I didn’t want to become like this.’ Cadman couldn’t stop himself; he needed her to understand. ‘I just want to be left alone.’

  ‘Then crawl back under whatever stone you came from.’

  Callixus’ eyes smouldered down at Rhiannon, but she paid no heed. She wore her anger, or her despair, like armour.

  ‘Too late for that,’ Cadman said. ‘Far too late. Newton’s First Law and all that.’ She’d have no idea what he was talking about, but Cadman wasn’t really addressing her. He was speaking to himself. It’s what he needed, what he should have done an age ago. ‘I know what the right thing to do would be.’ Just the acknowledgment sent icy fissures through his bones. ‘I know I’m being selfish.’ Self-preserving; self-absorbed. ‘But I can’t do anything else. It’s my fault—everything that’s happened—but I’m too weak to make it right.’

  Some of the fierceness left Rhiannon’s eyes. She studied Cadman just like his mother had done whenever he’d disappointed her.

  ‘Then let me help you,’ she said.

  She sounded sincere. Impossible. She’s just acting. She just wants to save her skin.

  Her eye-contact never wavered and Cadman felt himself grimacing.

  ‘But…’ he wrung his hands. There was a tightness behind his eyes that extended through his cheekbones. It was as if the remains of his body remembered how to cry, but lacked the tear ducts to do so. ‘How…? I mean, what…?’

  Wind whipped through Rhiannon’s hair, fanning it out behind her like a black halo. Callixus turned his head to scan the rooftop as the gust raced around them faster and faster, sucking dust and detritus into a funnel of air until Dead Man’s Torch was the epicentre of a cyclone. Cadman staggered back, holding onto a merlon for support.

  ‘Too late,’ said the voice of a child.

  The wind dropped, leaving an ebon figure perched atop the crenulations. Its face was devoid of features, its body curved like a woman’s, with jutting breasts and tapered hips; yet between its legs hung an appendage as huge as a horse’s. A hazy miasma surrounded the androgyne, radiating a palpable malignancy as poignant as the plague that had ravaged Sarum. The head split down the centre, revealing a man’s face beneath, still black, as if carved from coal, yet unmistakeable in its dour leanness. />
  ‘Deacon?’ Rhiannon said, struggling, but still held firm by Callixus.

  ‘Shader?’ Cadman took a step back.

  ‘Appropriate, don’t you think?’ the Dweller said. ‘After all, it was his soul you promised me.’

  Rhiannon turned her ire on Cadman. ‘You did what?’ She looked from him to the black figure. ‘The thing from the templum? Is this…?’

  Cadman nodded, his hand slipping inside his jacket pocket, fingers caressing the warm fragments within. ‘Lies and deception,’ he said. ‘That’s all it is.’

  The Dweller laughed and hopped off the parapet, a leer spreading across Shader’s face. ‘What would you expect? Like father, like son, don’t they say? But I didn’t force you into any bargain, Cadman. You did that of your own free will. I did as you asked: I killed the knight. You might at least have had the courtesy to tell me he carried the Sword of the Archon as well as the petrified body of Eingana. No, no, no,’ the Dweller wagged a finger to forestall Cadman’s protests. ‘His soul, you said; either that or a suitable substitute. Isn’t that what we agreed? And if no substitute was forthcoming, then I could have you.’

  Cadman took another step back as a ripple ran through the Dweller’s phallus, which began to stiffen.

  The demon winked out of existence and appeared directly over Rhiannon, stroking itself to rigid attention. ‘So, lady,’ its voice was husky, urgent. ‘I assume you are here for me?’ The Dweller looked to Cadman, who nodded. ‘I need to know,’ it ran its hand up and down the length of its member, ‘what are your feelings for Deacon Shader?’

  ‘Shog him,’ Rhiannon said without hesitation.

  The Dweller’s hand stopped moving. ‘What, no love? No affection.’

  Cadman studied her face, searching for any sign she was lying. She was expressionless, utterly pokerfaced. She may have been a hustler; she may have been bluffing. How would he know? How would the Dweller—?’

  ‘Fuck him,’ Rhiannon said. Her eyes dropped to the Dweller’s appendage and she sneered.

  As if she’d uttered a word of power, the Dweller lost all cohesion, splashing to the floor in a liquefied pool. Cadman sighed with relief and was about to release the fragments when a bubble popped on the surface of the puddle. A rill of blackness oozed from the edge, twisting and coiling. The liquid began to simmer, tendrils sprouting, the central mass growing, roiling, churning. One after the other, heads burst forth from the rapidly solidifying bulk, drool trickling from their mouths, eyes rolling. Callixus dragged Rhiannon back and released her so that he could draw his sword, but all the Dweller’s eyes were on Cadman.

  ‘Not good enough,’ one of the heads said.

  A multitude of others leered at him, their eyes burning through his disguise, baring his true form; revealing him for the skeletal aberration he’d become.

  ‘No,’ Cadman moaned. The black dread of annihilation he’d fled all his life boiled up from within. ‘No!’

  ‘NOT GOOD ENOUGH!’ All the heads yelled in unison.

  Cadman screamed, his bony fingers fastening around the fragments of the statue, wringing force from the petrified remains of Eingana.

  Fangs of lightning ripped through the night sky, flaring with amber radiance. The air withdrew with a hissing rush, and the scene atop the tower was suspended for an instant. Cadman stood outside of himself, looking down. The Dweller ceased its writhing and stood like a petrified insult to life, a mass of heads and tentacles, a glistening sculpture of malice. Rhiannon was held in midflight, halfway to the stairs, and Callixus—oh, Callixus—was frozen as his black blade arced towards the demon. Not only had the air withdrawn, but it seemed to Cadman that time had retreated like the waters before a tsunami. Pressure built—he fancied he could see shapes cordoning them, a ring of horrors from some unimaginable nightmare. The hiss was still present, but not in a true audible sense. No sound, just the sense that his ears needed to pop, that something was about to blow.

  Cadman plunged back into his skeleton. Callixus’ sword resumed its swing and the Dweller lashed out with flaccid tentacles. With the screech of a thousand banshees, the air rushed back, slamming into the demon and tearing it apart.

  Cadman staggered and fell, but Callixus caught him.

  ‘The woman—’ Callixus said.

  ‘Let her go.’ Cadman lay back in the wraith’s ghostly embrace. He was tired. So tired. He thought about the undead outside. They would kill her. If he wasn’t so tired he’d call them off. She didn’t deserve this.

  The pieces of amber in his hand flared and started to throb. Cadman struggled to sit up, opened his fingers and stared in horror at the segments pulsing like a beacon. ‘Oh my God, oh my God—’

  A fissure appeared in the sky, a jagged split of cobalt. Callixus turned to look up at it, at the same time helping Cadman to stand.

  ‘What is happening?’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Cadman said. ‘It’s him. It’s him!’

  The fissure widened, permitting them the vision of a man upon a throne. The image zoomed closer and Cadman simply watched with paralysing dread. It wasn’t a throne, he realized: it was a metallic chair bedizened with crystals and lights, an array of leads dangling overhead, terminating in the scalp of the seated figure. The man himself was dressed in grey, his hair slick and unnatural, his face bloodless. Worst of all were the eyes. They were cold, sharp as scalpels. They examined Cadman as if he were nothing more than an ant, a specimen.

  The eyes flared with argent, searching out the hidden spaces of Cadman’s mind. He tried to pull away, but was held entranced. Suddenly, it seemed as if he were tugged towards the chair, but at the same time a spectral image of the man upon the throne shot towards him, hit him with the impact of a fist and sent him tumbling in on himself.

  Cadman saw the chair and its figure withdraw, the fissure closing behind them, but the man’s image—his doppelgänger—was within him. It was inside Cadman’s body. No, he realized. It was inside his mind.

  The man reared up like a giant, immense and powerful beyond all reckoning. Cadman squealed and ran, but where could he go? How could he run? He was in his own head.

  ‘Do you know who I am?’ the intruder asked in a voice devoid of expression.

  ‘Yes!’ Cadman wailed. ‘Yes!’

  Cadman whimpered and crawled away—not in any physical sense, there was nothing physical here—but he backed into the shadows of his mind, covered himself with emptiness as if it were the soil of the grave.

  ‘Say it!’ the intruder’s voice boomed through every cell and synapse, forcing Cadman to bury himself deeper and deeper in forgetfulness. ‘Say it!’

  Cadman screamed as he plummeted into an abyss within himself. ‘Sektis Gandaw!’ he cried, falling, falling, gyring and spinning.

  He tried to slow himself with his arms, but when he extended them there was nothing there—only wisps of blackness as wraith-like as Callixus.

  Something sucked at him, tugged him to the side. He yelped as he hurtled forwards, hit a hard surface, and bounced. No—not bounced: dispersed.

  Cadman saw movement as if through glass. Wait—it was through glass. He was inside something made of glass. A tube. He was in a tube. Giant fingers closed around the tube as he fought to orientate himself. God, what was he? He lacked substance. He was roiling about in a test tube like trapped gas.

  A gigantic eye peered in at him.

  Let me out!

  There was no sound.

  The tube rocked and images passed by in blurry succession. Finally, with a jolt, it settled. It seemed to be standing upright. There were other tubes beside it, each with their own gaseous contents swirling about.

  Where am I? Cadman screamed silently.

  Where am I?

  ***

  Sektis Gandaw looked through Cadman’s eyes and sought to synchronize the experience with his own body back inside the Perfect Peak. Bi-location took some getting used to. Just a slight calibration…His fingers on Aethir tapped out a sequence. The interior of the mou
ntain shimmered and superimposed itself over the top of Cadman’s vision. Mephesch was kneeling beside the projector seat checking connections.

  ‘You have him?’

  The words must have come out of both bodies simultaneously as the ghostly figure that had been atop the tower with Cadman inclined its head towards him.

  ‘In a test tube with the others,’ Mephesch said. ‘No doubt to linger there forever, unless you come up with some use for him.’

  Unlikely, Sektis Gandaw thought. Not with the Unweaving so close now. Nevertheless, Cadman’s memories might still prove useful in the meantime. He’d learnt long ago, from his conflict with Blightey’s unnatural minions, that there were no organic memories to pilfer. Cadman had rotted away to little more than bone and cartilage. But the power that animated him, the strength that allowed him to endure, was eminently accessible, if you had the technology to process it.

  ‘Sever the link with my own body, but not with Cadman’s test tube,’ he told Mephesch. ‘Being in two places at one time is disorienting.’

  There was a faint click in his skull—Cadman’s skull—and then the images from Aethir vanished.

  Sektis Gandaw gazed at the amber fragments in his hand: an eye and a fang. The body of the serpent and the other fang were inside the Perfect Peak, ready for the work of Unweaving. Just one more eye to locate. One more piece and Eingana would be whole.

  The wraith insinuated its way into his vision. ‘Doctor?’

  With an effort, Sektis Gandaw closed his eyes and drew upon the memories of Cadman’s essence, stowed away beneath the Perfect Peak. Callixus. Yes, that was it. Cadman had bound the dead knight to his service and then released him. Sektis Gandaw could soon remedy that.

  Cadman’s control over his creations was strong, almost innate. With the merest thought he shackled Callixus to his own will.

  The wraith rippled, his eyes flaring with surprise or rage. ‘But you promised—’

  ‘Be silent,’ Sektis Gandaw said, striding to the edge of the parapet and gripping it with skeletal fingers.