The beast roared, its three throats bellowing over the city.
“And they love me for it.”
Andy stood in silence, afraid that a single word of his would be a stain on the moment.
“Thrag used to sing once,” Caspian finally said.
Andy couldn’t imagine it.
“Look at him now.”
An image in the sky appeared. They watched Thrag chasing down the last of the brutox before finally turning on the remaining shambles of the city guard.
Andy gasped. “We need to stop him!”
Caspian snapped his fingers and Thrag fell to the ground.
“Back to a cage, old friend,” he said bitterly.
Andy raised a hand to comfort the man, but felt nothing there.
“Can I face myself? Can I admit what it took you to show me?”
They stood in silence as Caspian considered his next words.
“There is still much that is weak in me, Lysander,” he paused, as if his next words were the most important. “I will step aside and let you live your life.”
Something in Caspian’s face made Andy believe him.
“Now, be a good lad and get back down in that pit. Ziesqe still thinks his forces have control of the city. That beast circling the Guilt will walk among you; show it no aggression. Is that clear?”
“Yes—wait, I have questions! Caspian, don’t go yet!”
Caspian chuckled. “You will only be young once, Lysander. You will suffer these questions where you must, and you will endeavor to answer them where you can. I will not take that from you. There is violence where truth meets self, when a rare mind is purified in the struggle for understanding, understanding it may never find. Yet, the thousand folds of self resent unwelcome or unearned enlightenment, no matter how hard it is hammered, and its shape is lost before the morn. You may stand on the shoulders of giants, but I will not let the apathy of such richness infect you. This is my one charge on your life, so hold it dear: You will hunt every piece of knowledge. You will hunger for truth and value it, like I once did. Inside that forge, the spirit within, you will transmute knowledge, and maybe, years from now, you will learn what I never could.”
Andy wanted more, what, he couldn’t say, but this felt wrong.
“I will leave you with this, Lysander: Whatever hells you may tread, remember my words. It wasn’t the blade, Sight, or riches that defeated me, but that which I lost, which I may never know again, still alive and swirling, undefined, within you. You turned hate in the heart of an immortal to love. When you go naked into the cold scapes, you will always be armed.”
Andy was astonished. Caspian gestured to the pit. Despite his need to know more, Andy accepted Caspian’s request and went down to lay his hand against the Cogito. He felt calm and warm as the sound of flowing water filled his ears.
“The Usurper has failed,” Ziesqe whispered.
“No, he hasn’t,” Andy said, removing his hand. “I want you to look out onto the city,” he ordered, gesturing to the stairs. “Drop your Counter.”
Ziesqe and Kal shared a look before holding out their claws and manifesting their pieces of Counter. Both orbs sparked violently as the ryle dropped them and turned to the stairs. Andy looked back and watched the purple orbs shatter and burst. A dark cloud stained the side of the pit, but it evaporated. Moments later, the wall was stainless.
The Caspians and the goblins stepped aside for the ryle.
Andy led them to the edge of the ring.
Andy looked down on the rising columns of smoke.
If I’m going to do it, I should do it now, while I still feel hate.
Andy rounded on Ziesqe, ready to strike, but saw his shaking, bloody form leaning on the rail, as if he couldn’t stand unaided.
Andy clenched his fist and opened his mouth. “What will happen to your lands and palaces?”
“They will be carved up and fought over for decades. Zentule will descend back into the jungle.”
They were quiet for a moment. The people and goblins all around stood breathless, waiting for the final strike, but hearing only calm conversation, they became confused.
“Do you remember what you said to me?” Andy asked. “You told me about the genius, the fool, and the thousand steps.”
Ziesqe nodded, his eyes tense with uncertainty.
“I was ready to give myself to Caspian. Once I recoiled in hate, and the second time he wouldn’t take me. Have I fallen from the mountain?”
Ziesqe smiled, twisting his arm almost imperceptibly. Andy recognized the motion. Instead of anger or fear, he felt grateful.
He’s going to strike. He hid some Counter away in his body.
“Lysander, you have failed to see that the mountain has grown beneath your feet and lifted you to a height greater than Caspian’s,” Ziesqe finished, summoning his blade. “He would have failed.”
Andy took a breath and turned, raising his blade to block Ziesqe’s attack. His friends gasped, and Letty raised her own blade to Kal, ready for anything.
“I’m glad that you fought to the end,” Andy said, grabbing Ziesqe’s wrist while holding his foe’s shaking figure in a protracted parry, “I couldn’t bear to execute you.”
“Still a boy then. You had better lose those trappings before the next ryle finds you, but what am I saying? I’ve always tried to make things easy for you, Lysander,” Ziesqe said, at peace with what was about to happen.
A piercing roar filled the air and the fighters broke off to back away from the rail.
The abomination latched onto the Guilt and its dragon maw bit an intervening pillar. The pillar vanished into a cloud of black and blue smoke. The creature pulled its muscled bulk into the high-ceilinged ring. The ground beneath its mismatched paws smoldered and blackened before flaking and giving way to orange and black lichens.
Ziesqe gasped in panic, while Kal’s eyes welled up.
Andy was surprised when Ziesqe lunged at him with his meager blade. “Kill me!” he insisted.
The abomination roared, and its scorpion stinger shot out, flinging Ziesqe to the ground.
Andy’s friends scrambled to get away. Emma and Dean had to be dragged in their blindness. The abomination kept its six eyes on the ryle.
The dragon head opened its smoking jaws and snapped them shut around Ziesqe. It released him in a flash and then snapped at Kal. The two ryle fell to their knees, crawling away, while black and blue smoke leaked from their wounds.
Their bodies slowly changed.
“Oh, God!” Andy’s jaw dropped as he looked down on a pair of crying children.
“They’re human,” Letty whispered.
“The will of the Maelstrom carries to every corner of the Netherscape,” a voice intoned.
Andy nearly drew his blade in fright as the massive abomination had been replaced with something nearly human. It stared down at the children.
“Neither Ascendant to the True God, nor Seer of the False, you shall live humble lives. The greatness of what could have been will ever clutch at your throats,” the abomination said, before looking up at Andy and Letty.
“The Voice of the False God, the Dead God, floats in the air. I see his whisperings in your ears, his mark upon your hands, but you are not Caspian.”
“Who are you?” Andy asked.
“We are the Right Hand, Chimerax, raised toward violent ends. Though your deaths have not yet been writ law, beware, Seers. If you ever let Caspian usurp your body,” he paused, his glance moving from Andy to Letty and back again, “you will see us again.”
Chimerax turned towards the railing. “Don’t think of this as a victory. If this city was meant to fall, it would have. Your lives will not change because of today. You will never know peace.”
Without a second glance, Chimerax morphed back into his monstrous form and leaped from the side of the Guilt, taking wing and banking towards the sea and the midnight spires far beyond.
Chapter 15
Going Home
&
nbsp; Andy, Letty, and their allies stared across the horizon. The first to break the silence was none of their company, but a mouse on a cyclostone.
“Lysander,” the mouse said, cautiously, “is there victory?”
Andy could only stare.
“There is,” Titus answered.
Andy turned to Ziesqe and Kal, clutching each other in agony. He heard Titus and Blue speaking with the mouse from the cyclostone about the once powerful ryle.
“You’ll have to take them,” Andy said to the mouse. “If anyone in the city learns who they are—”
“Is it safe?” Letty asked.
They turned to Titus and Blue.
“It’s the only thing to do,” Titus said.
Blue was scornful, though he finally nodded. They took their old foes to the balcony and left them in the care of the mice.
The ravagers, tired of clinging to the Guilt, found their own way down. Andy didn’t mind this, as he preferred to descend on foot. He went to give the Cogito one last glance, before noticing something in the pit. He gestured for his friends to wait as he descended and found the banner, bearing the name, Cogito, buried beneath coins. He freed it and, after cleaning it as well as he could, he draped the banner over the great orb’s frame.
“Alright, let’s go,” Andy said.
As they descended, they met scores of curious faces. Andy and his friends were alive; this was proof of something, but none dared to ask more. At the base of the Guilt, they found cheering people and the high Exegesuits, along with the chief Archatians. The battle had long since been won and the sewers made secure.
The leaders of Degoskirke asked that the events be recounted. Everyone looked to Andy, who told the story, though he kept what Caspian had said to him private. The potentates insisted that they be feasted in the great Secular or at the chapter houses of Archatia, but Andy refused and instead asked Blue to recommend a tavern. The Exegesuits looked scorned, but none raised complaint. Andy told them they would be leaving that night.
The Exegesuits wouldn’t hear of it, and the Archatians, filthy from their fighting in the sewers, booed, but Andy, Letty, and their friends insisted. Some in the audience commented that leaving now was only prudent, despite the general complaint.
They readied their packs and Andy realized that he had no decent clothes to ascend in. A goblin was sent to buy a pair of pants, that Emma had helped design, from a local shop, and Quill gave Andy his wardrobe, borrowed from Letty’s father.
Andy and Letty begged Quill and Staza to return to the surface with them, but the two balked. Quill cited a need to return home and prepare for the territorial wars that would crop up in Ziesqe’s absence. Staza was quiet on the issue.
“Maybe we can claim some territory; we do have advanced knowledge,” Quill said, considering the prospect.
Thrag was nowhere to be found, though a broken cage and battered guardsmen pointed down a trail of wreckage. The guards claimed that they would search after enough of their numbers had recovered from the battle.
Andy demanded that the statue the Archatians had planned to build in his honor instead be built in Thrag’s likeness.
“The guy wrestled a ravager to the ground! You should have seen it!” he declared.
Clang and the Broken Teeth lamented the loss of their late mentor, Martin. Though his body had not been found, a quick, goblin-styled service was put on by the city, in the tavern to which Blue led them.
The establishment was called the Nooked et Alcoven. The tavern, like the city of Degoskirke, was a ramshackle and exuberant place, filled with conversation and host to talkative mice and silent brutox. Even goblins had tables in their corner of the place. Though all present turned silent at the entry of Andy and his friends. The owner, a woman named Miranda, promised to clear the place and serve the heroes of Degoskirke for free.
“Of course not!” Andy snapped. “I want to hear conversation.”
Andy had the sense that Miranda was bright eyed and thoughtful, and that the Alcoven was rich with wonder, though he saw or felt none of this.
The Teeth had a private section of the tavern roped off for Martin’s memorial, though, when Andy approached, Clang refused him entry. The private section was empty, and the Teeth stood around, looking out of place, and eying their commander.
“There will be no memorial,” Clang insisted. “Not until the Martin is found.”
A few Teeth were sharing stories of Martin, yet, at a scowl from Clang, they ceased.
“There will be no tears,” Clang insisted. “You must enjoy victory—or they might become confused.”
Andy wasn’t certain what Clang meant, but then he realized that he was referring to the people of the city.
Andy followed Miranda in silence, and they were directed to a table on a balcony above a stage, where a thousand-mouse symphony played bawdy music for ychorite tumblers and young arguers.
An ychorite, accompanied by a pair of young men and a silent mantis, approached Andy’s table.
“Fair sir, I had sought drinks with thee, weeks hence,” the ychorite said.
Andy looked up and recognized Mascutio, from his first day in the city.
“I’m sorry—” Andy started.
“I won’t hear it,” Mascutio insisted, and then he saw the state of the table. Sad looks filled faces and something in Andy scared him. “Please, forgive me. I didn’t realize—If you come again, mayhap we will trade words once more, though your friend here frightens even me,” Mascutio said, nodding to Dean. “I saw him on stage.”
Dean smiled, and Andy laughed sadly.
“He frightens me as well. If I return,” Andy said, taking Mascutio’s hand, “I’ll get you and your friends that drink.”
Mascutio nodded gracefully and left them in peace.
Letty, Dean, and Emma struck up a conversation about the day’s events, if only to keep Andy from his despondency.
Their dinner, featuring a large rack of lamb, was protracted, with city officials discovering their location, and news continuing to find its way to them during the evening.
Word of Martin’s sacrifice spread, and the Exegesuits pledged to have a second statue commissioned to honor him. He had died in what people were calling the Coup of False Confidence.
When Taptalles heard that rebellious, ex-Vychy mice had built a new Occidentalis city near Steustace, he found several other mice ready to unhitch their cyclostones and fly there immediately.
When asked by Letty to join them on the surface, Titus was ambivalent, but Blue asked, “Why? Aren’t you just planning on living a slave’s life? I’ll be with the other mice, heading for the new settlement.”
Titus hesitated. “He makes a fair point. If we can regroup and capture Sentinel’s Watch again, I might be able to return to my duty: safeguarding young Seers from the ryle.”
Andy perked up enough to look hurt. “When was the last time you actually saved one?”
“Before you? Well, it’s been a while.”
“Why won’t you stay with us?” Letty asked, as hurt as Andy.
“If you gave up the slave’s life, we would take our places on your shoulders. If you ever grow tired of the surface, you know where to find us,” Blue said, looking to Titus for confirmation.
“Titus?” Andy asked.
Titus looked away.
“Well, how’s that for a goodbye,” Andy spat, shouldering one of Letty’s bags and leaving the tavern. “We’re meeting the Caspians at the Sunken temple; they’re seeing us off.”
Andy apologized to Miranda for not being able to pay and he saw distress in her eyes as he refused to listen to her entreaty to stay and have dessert, nor spend the night.
Emma, Dean, and Letty joined him in the street.
A mer fighter stood by to walk them to the temple. “Your Eminence,” the fighter said, bowing his head before turning to lead the way.
A few minutes later, they were confronted by Blue and Titus again.
“May we accompany you to the po
rtal, at least?” Titus asked.
Andy crossed his arms. He could tell they were upset, and it wasn’t easy for them to watch their humans leave.
“Come on, they don’t want us here,” Blue said, grabbing Titus.
“No! See us to the portal, please,” Letty said.
Andy released his arms and nodded. The mice took their places.
They passed through a raucous plaza, half-filled with the broken carcass of a ravager, but the debates had resumed, despite the destruction.
A man in a black suit of armor spoke with a rousing voice, “From whence does our failure to see a foe arise? That failure is borne from within, from our lack of purpose! If we lack meaning and drive, how can we ever know who are friends and who are enemies? We will ever stumble off a path we do not know to follow! Today has exemplified this truth and enshrined it in rotting husks! The dead have died doubly, for we now know who our true friends are, while they suffered before the mirror held by death. Only in their final moments did they grasp, bleeding, and afraid, to something greater. And that tragedy is our crime! Let us never again brook such a plague of cowardly apathy! Let us never again allow it to fester in the closed halls! Let us never again allow our children to face death without ever having faced themselves! For too long has this city been home to the emancipated, who look and despise the slaves without, never realizing that their lives, unyoked, grew even less fruit than those pressed. Is that all we are? The people who escaped the ryle?”
The crowd cried out, “No!”
“What does this man promise?” an older, Egalitarian Redistributionist asked the crowd. “He packages more war and violence as if it were nourishment. Tell me, young man, will pride feed the people? What can you promise besides adversity? Why should the people hand the ship of state to you, who would steer us into conflicts across the scape? When you ask if we are the people who have escaped the ryle, I say, yes! Let’s keep it way!”
“Fair guardian of the impoverished and leveler of men, I say to you that your people have been starving for so long, that your sense for it has atrophied. Food is plentiful, housing is cheap, jobs are there, but the font of meaning is parched. The distraction of this stage is all that keeps their minds sharp and away from the crushing truth that their lives carry no meaning! We are purposeless!”
The Immortal of Degoskirke Page 27