Rendel smiled down upon his monster, not unkindly.
Well, the Hiveking is right to be nervous . . . He might as well fidget. To be pulled away from the heat of the conflict with the Centek at such short notice. A normal man would be sweating rivers.
But Mosk was not a normal man. A dry voice—like sand being sifted through dead leaves—rustled from his armored throat. “My blood to your tongue, Sire. Command me.”
I’ll never tire of that—the needful plea of a monster craving the leash.
Rendel dimmed the lights in the surrounding niches and dilated the rose window high above the altar. The resulting column of light silhouetted his crowned form—or at least, this most human appendage of his form. Most supplicants were unaware, but the entirety of this mechanized cathedral was Rendel’s true body; even now he felt the soft tropical breeze spilling over his coffered spine, smoky incense from the censers warm against his nave. But Rendel chose to use this smaller form, his withered carnal body, for addressing his supplicants. They always seemed to appreciate having a face to focus on, and the Arkángel Desgarrar enjoyed making small concessions to his chattel.
They were, after all, the keystone of the Vestigarchy. They were the vital strength that kept the old order vibrant, awake, and fervently gripped upon the reins of power even in this sleeping age. One had to be vigilant with such frightening slaves.
Thanks to the cruelties of nature—cruelties lovingly incubated and nurtured by the ancient breeders—Mosk and his kin were living symbols of pain and hunger. After hatching, the first moments of life for the larval blackspawn were pure violence. Brother devoured brother until only the strongest remained.
This simple hate had then been cleverly woven into something resembling human intelligence. The result was the most fearsome brand of warrior this tired old world had ever seen. The sciences which named and blessed the blackspawn were lost, and their numbers were now relatively few. But the Vestigarchy held tightly to its last remaining tools—tools from the days when men spoke and mountains fled. Of these tools, the blackspawn were the most jagged.
And Mosk was their leader—a name and a title given to Him Without Brother, the Swarmlord, the Hiveking.
Rendel smiled again, hidden servos moving skin and jaw in place of long-faded muscles. Mosk still bowed before him quietly, awaiting command.
“Keep your blood for now. We want you to leave your battle with the half-men and take up the Hunt once more.”
With carefully concealed pleasure, Rendel noticed how even Mosk’s spidery hands stiffened at the news, the misshapen ebony head swinging up to glare at him with tiny yellow eyes. It was rare that his kind showed surprise.
The dry voice hissed, “The . . . Hunt? The last etherwalker died by my hand not a decade ago at Tenocht. The witches reported none left in all of our Lord’s domain. Scans were done . . .”
“You will take two legions of your coldmen to the eastern continent. An inter-stratospheric signal was sent from somewhere near the southern tip of the Horeb Wilds not five days past. The signature is unmistakable.”
“Hmm, hmmm hmm,” was Mosk’s reply, his chewing claws rubbing against each other hungrily. This was how he received news, devouring it like flesh. “This has portent for the Vestigarchy. What does our Lord intend to—?”
“Our Lord intends to finish the Hunt!” boomed Rendel’s voice, enhanced by speakers hidden in the steel pillars of the cathedral.
Tall windows of ornately cut glass shivered at the sound. Rendel shook his head with fatherly concern—a subtlety entirely lost on this son of a bastard race—and lifted his carnal form into the air on a thick spine of cable, antennae, and steel umbilical tubes. Flooding the nave with crimson light, he spoke in a pure basso that shook dust from the ceiling.
“All you need to know is that our ancient enemy still exists. Count yourself lucky that our Lord does not have your limbs pulled from your thorax for failing in the task which you had deigned complete.”
Mosk stood. He unfolded his sub-arms with claws extended.
“Fail our Lord again, Hiveking, and you will pay the price of sour blood!”
Instead of bristling at the insinuation of weakness, Mosk simply lowered his head and extended his pri-arms, palms up, his species’ way of showing subservience.
“I will go and do as my Lord has commanded.”
Rendel nodded and lowered himself to just above his prostrate servant’s head.
“Good,” he whispered. “The draconflies will be waiting for you at nightfall.”
* * * *
A low hum rose, barely audible over the roaring of the wind and waves below. A white claw of moon crept out from among the clouds, silvering a dozen long and monstrous shapes as they sped over the whitecaps.
Moonlight momentarily glinted off of spear points and armor. The monsters carried an army on their backs.
While most of the riders huddled tightly against their winged mounts, one lone figure seemed unconcerned by the long drop to the sea. Perched behind the massive head of his steed, he gripped its antennae tightly with two pairs of armored hands. Wind lashed at the figure, and beads of condensation rolled down his oblong cranium. The swarm turned away from the moon toward the dark eastern sea.
Mosk did not pause to shake the drops from his brow. He was staring intently across the waves, and only the giant beast beneath him could hear the clicking coming from deep within his throat. The beast was not much more intelligent than the primitive insects it had been bred from long ages ago, but even under the roaring of the wind, it understood the meaning of that sound. It was primal, a language as old as life. The language of hunger. The language of blood.
Chapter 3
“One man? I count a Nahuati blademaster, his two swords, and more courage than your entire raza could collect in a week of Tuesdays. You are sorely outnumbered, Captain.”
—last words of the martyr Aven Sant before the storming of the Fortaleza de Hiero
Sheep didn’t care if you’d slept the night before. They still needed to be led out to pasture, to be watched and cared for no matter how slow and clumsy you felt. Enoch herded the last stragglers into the pen and closed the latch. He leaned against the post with a tired sigh. The moon was rising over the Edrei, and he could hear Master Gershom making dinner inside the cottage. After dinner, there would be sword practice—practice that Enoch had been delaying for weeks. His master had been lenient, but he had his limits. Enoch slumped his shoulders.
I don’t want to practice. I don’t want to use the pensa spada.
It had been two weeks since Enoch’s accident, and he had not been sleeping well. He was having nightmares about that terrible . . . about the accident. Waking up in a cottage filled with smoke, hands sticky with blood and black soot. Master Gershom had returned from the pastures that evening, rushing through the door with his swords drawn.
“What happened? Who was here? What was burning?”
Enoch had tried to clean up the mess, tried to air out the cottage. But he knew Master Gershom would be able to tell. He knew that he would be blamed for breaking the Unit. At least he had been able to hide the burns on his wrists.
Things had been uncomfortable for a while. Master Gershom showed a genuine concern for Enoch, aware that he had been traumatized somehow, but the man was obviously heartbroken about the Unit. He had spent days trying to get the machine to run again, pulling it apart and putting it back together a dozen times. But the damage was irreparable. Enoch heard his master cursing and grumbling about “fused wires” and “cracked circuits”—not much that he understood, but he heard the anger, sorrow, and frustration in Master Gershom’s voice.
And it’s my fault.
Enoch wasn’t going to make it worse by telling some half-remembered dream about a face on the screen. A face that talked to him and—
He shivered.
It didn’t happen. The Unit broke and I breathed in some smoke and passed out.
Rockfinches dipped and soared o
verhead, chirping as they fed on the moths that fluttered from the trees as darkness fell. Warm yellow light was glowing from the windows, a thread of smoke drifting patiently from the chimney.
Enoch still didn’t feel like going in just yet. He leaned against the rough wood of the gate, listening to the mewling of the sheep and the light birdsong.
Silhouetted in the moonlight, the remnants of the windmill leaned against the side of the barn. The evening shadows did their best to hide the naked skeleton of bent, blistered metal, but Enoch knew. It pained him to see the once-familiar figure standing so forlornly among the ashes of what had once been the shed at its base. He could see the new iron bolts holding the case together—his master had spent another two days trying to repair that as well.
And it’s all my fault.
The shed had burnt to the ground the day of the accident, and luckily the wind hadn’t carried the flames to the house. Enoch’s eyes traced the length of the corroded metal post, followed its shaft down to the blackened crank. At the base was a tangled vole’s nest of cables and wires, which had been twisted and warped by the heat of the fire.
As his eyes rested on the broken mess, he began to see patterns. It felt surprisingly similar to figuring out the jedrez game—layers of patterns and order webbed behind a chaotic facade. And the patterns in this pile of rubble were surprising.
Suddenly, it was as though Enoch’s brain unfolded within his skull—his mind paused all by itself—and instead of a ruined windmill, Enoch saw a flash of bright connections, lines of energy and motion that pulsed and shone even in the now defunct machinery. It was only a flash, but in that instant, Enoch felt as though he understood the windmill. Not only understood it, but was a part of it.
And then the flash was gone, as it had gone that morning, leaving him breathless and down on one knee. Enoch shook his head—it was aching again.
What is wrong with me?
Gingerly touching his brow, he turned and walked back to the house as the blades of the windmill lazily spun, slightly creaking in the darkness.
I’ll just tell Master Gershom about this. Maybe I should tell him everything—he’ll know what to . . .
He stopped. Slowly crouching to the ground in front of the house, he lifted some dirty straw and let it drop. It fell straight down.
No wind.
The creaking windmill began to slow and then picked up again. A frigid trickle of fear slid down his throat. He turned to look at the windmill, blades spinning noisily in a phantom breeze. The burnt-out remnants of the shed, now shrouded in evening shadows, resembled a crouched animal, low to the ground and ready to pounce.
Stop scaring yourself. Sixteen years old and still frightened by shadows! But, if there isn’t any wind?
Within the darkness, a bright yellow eye winked and then seemed to glare at him.
* * * *
Enoch practically leapt through the doorway and slammed the door shut.
Master Gershom looked up with a start. “What’s the matter?”
Enoch didn’t wait for him to finish. “Master, something is out there! Over by the windmill!”
Levi Gershom froze where he stood. “Enoch, go and get my blades. Move swiftly, silently, and douse the fire on your way back. Go!”
The fierce, whispered command shocked Enoch back into sensibility. He nodded once and then headed toward the back of the room where his master always placed swords beneath his bunk before they retired for the night.
Is this what I wanted? A break from the pattern? Why is my heart pounding?
From the corner of his eye, Enoch noticed that Master Gershom was creeping from window to window, shutting and bolting the heavy storm shutters. Enoch overturned the cauldron of stew that had been simmering over the fire—there was a splash and a hiss—and suddenly the room was black.
Enoch then returned to his master’s side, a scabbard in each hand. Taking the swords, Master Gershom motioned for Enoch to move to the other side of the door. Then they waited, in the dark. Silently. Only the occasional sounds of the sheep came from the fold to punctuate the rhythmic creaking of the windmill.
Enoch had a hard time holding still, peering now and again through the slits and wringing the sling in his hands. Each time he checked, the front of the cottage was clear.
But I saw something. Something was there.
Master Gershom crept toward him and laid a hand on his shoulder. With a gasp, Enoch jumped.
“Calm down, boy. Find your afilia nubla, cast off your fear.”
Enoch nodded and closed his eyes. He had been avoiding the shift into afilia nubla since the accident because he was afraid of the detachment it brought. Now, at his master’s command, he recognized the need . . . and he yearned for it.
Enoch’s lips moved in silent incantation.
The mind is a world, the consciousness its light. As day turns to night, so shall my mind; afila lumin setting as the nubla rises, and my mindworld revolves.
“Now,” said Master Gershom, “describe to me what you saw.”
“Something’s out there, Master.” The cool rationality of pensa spada enveloped him as his fear slowly began to melt away. “I saw a . . . an animal . . . over by the windmill. It was turning and turning . . . and I saw eyes.”
Master Gershom frowned, then sighed. “You probably just saw an old nerwolf. They’ve been known to seek out human settlements when they feel they are going to die. Now . . . let’s go chase him off before he decides to make a final meal out of our sheep.”
With a grunt, Master Gershom threw open the door and paced angrily out into the moonlight.
Whatever is out there will kill him. He doesn’t know . . .
“Master, wait!”
Enoch hesitated half a second before gritting his teeth and chasing out after him, all vestiges of pensa spada slipping away. Master Gershom had stopped just in front of the windmill and was staring down into the dark patch below it. From over his shoulder, the pale light of the generator winked at Enoch mockingly; apparently, the green glass cover had melted in the fire and exposed the yellow bulb underneath.
“Master?”
He chuckled. “Here’s your ferocious beast, Enoch.”
“Well—I guess the good news is that the motor is still running fine. Sounds like the blade pivot needs some oiling, though. Listen to that squeak.”
Enoch cut him off. “But that’s what I was trying to tell you, Master. There is no wind.”
Master Gershom’s head shot up to look at the moonlit blades spinning in a silver arc. He breathed sharply as his hand went swiftly to the sword at his side and tightened around the hilt.
“Boy, get inside the house.”
Enoch didn’t move; he just stood there, his eyes wide and lips moving soundlessly. “I think . . . I think I did this.”
Master Gerhom looked down at his charge, eyes widening. “Are you sure, Enoch?”
“I think so. Yes,” Enoch said in a distant monotone, his eyes intent on the windmill.
“Ever since the accident, I have been seeing . . . more, Master. Lines. Things that move and . . . and spin and glow. Ever since the accident.” He slowly reached up and rubbed his forehead.
“It’s like with that game, jedrez. I can see patterns like that, but inside of things. I can see how they work. The windmill, the Unit. And I can feel them, too, even though I am standing apart.”
A hint of fear crept into his voice.
“What is wrong with me? Why am I seeing these things?”
Master Gershom closed his eyes, then put a sturdy hand on Enoch’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Enoch. The signs have been there, but I had wished . . . had hoped if we kept you isolated out here . . .”
Enoch felt his fear deepen. What is he trying to say?
“Don’t worry, Enoch. This is something that you carry from your heritage. It is not a flaw, or a weakness. It is . . . or it was once a great blessing.”
Enoch nodded, waiting.
“You
are the son of a noble house, Enoch. Before she died, your mother asked me to bring you here, to this crust of civilization on the edge of nothing. Your people had wealth, had tek, and it allowed their enemies to track them. So I searched for a place with no tek and no ability to signal . . .”
His master froze.
“Enoch, I made sure to remove any antennae or networking mechanisms from the Unit. It was a data storage and processing Unit, nothing more. Did you . . . did you change that? Did you help the Unit to connect—?”
The windmill began to spin again, the only sound in a countryside gone oddly still. The quiet of the melancholy twilight seemed to deepen.
Connect? Didn’t I dream of the wind connecting from . . . but no, that was a dream!
“I don’t know, Master. I thought that I dreamt of—”
“Stop, boy,” came Master Gershom’s whispered command, harsh in the nocturnal silence.
Enoch froze and turned his head in surprise. Master Gershom had his head slightly tilted, his lips moving in a voiceless incantation of the litania eteria—the word-thoughts which would bring on the pensa spada trance.
“What . . .”
And then Enoch noticed as well. The rockfinches had gone silent. Only the faint creaking of the windmill overhead was audible. A lamb called out nervously.
Master Gershom’s face moved toward Enoch’s ear, and in a low whisper he said, “Listen, Enoch. Tell me what you hear.”
Nodding, Enoch cocked his head to the side as well. He sent the powerful command to his afilia nubla.
Hear!
All of his concentration came into focus on the sounds around him. The slight rustling of hay as the sheep stirred in the fold; the deep, rhythmic breathing of Master Gershom at his side; the slowing beat of his own heart; the slight sizzle and pop as the ashes on the hearth cooled inside the cottage; and . . . a distant humming coming from the sky. It was slowly getting louder.
“Something large is coming from the south, Master. It’s coming quickly.”
Etherwalker Page 3