Arcana Universalis: Danse Macabre

by Chris J. Randolph

  Sharp teeth protruded from either side of it like a monstrous mouth turned sideways. Caleb recognized the design; the teeth were cyclonic baffles, used to prevent turbulent energy vortices from accumulating around the portal, but their aesthetic effect wasn’t lost on him. A furious light poured out of the opening, obscuring whatever waited beyond.

  Caleb didn’t wait for Driscoll’s lead. Overcome by his curiosity, he stepped slowly into the chamber and allowed the light and horrible noise to wash over him. There was heat, the smell of ozone, and a wind that arose from everywhere at once. Even without his second sight, he could imagine the swirl of subtle energies in this place, raging like a hurricane completely invisible to the human eye.

  It wasn’t until he reached the last step that he could finally see what stood at the center of it all. Amid the heat and howling wind, he finally came face to face with the damnatus, and realized he’d been wrong — he could still be unsettled.

  The damnatus was a man. His arms were held out to either side by spiraling shackles, and his legs were splayed apart by steel boots, while naked lightning surged at his hands and feet. With his chest heaving upward, his head thrust back, liquid light blasted out of his open mouth and eyes. The terrible sound was his breathless and unending scream of agony.

  His nude body was marked by an ingenious collection of theloglyphs, work so clean and sophisticated it made the slipway appear a child’s fanciful scribbling by comparison.

  As Caleb stood before the device, new truths slotted into place and he could finally assemble the whole picture. A living creature’s ability to store energy was theoretically limitless, so long as that energy could be harmonized with its biorhythms. This was why both an artifex and zoëtrist had been required on the project: one worked out the technical details of the artifact’s action, and the other bent the flesh to its new purpose.

  It was as brilliant as it was depraved.

  It occurred to Caleb that he’d known the word damnatus from Old Imperial all along; it meant condemned. He didn’t know what crime had been committed, but the figure standing before him represented the full weight of the Imperium’s boundless wrath made manifest. He was an enemy of the state so hated that they doomed him to torment total and without rest, his very suffering transformed into the muscle that drove the Emperor’s fist.

  How many ships were in the Armada? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? Caleb didn’t know precisely, and he wasn’t sure anyone did. Most were larger and more power-hungry than the agile dragonslayers, and required two or three damnati a piece. Even the so-called mercy ships derived their power from this device.

  “Holy shit,” he said, and the cacophony was so great that he couldn’t hear himself curse.

  Caleb gave the damnatus one last sympathetic glance, then turned and climbed the stairs back toward the door. Driscoll was there in the tunnel leaning patiently against the wall, and the look on Caleb’s face communicated everything that needed to be said. Driscoll nodded solemnly, then led him back the way they came.

  Once they were back in the service tunnels beneath the damnatus’ chamber, Driscoll walked purposefully while Caleb trailed behind with a horrible knot in the remains of his stomach. The old revenant counted the glowing conduits as he went, ducking his head as he passed each one. At the seventh, he came to a stop and sat down, then motioned for Caleb to follow.

  They sat there in silence for a long time while Caleb worked over what he’d seen. The truth about the gate anchor had been disturbing enough, but the possibility remained that the brain was artificial, perhaps grown expressly for the purpose of serving inside an anchor. The damnatus was different. This was a grown man who’d had a life. Small details came back to Caleb: the calloused hands of a manual labourer, dimples on his ear from jewelery that likely reflected his trade union, and an old scar along the jawline from an injury received in childhood.

  He finally looked up from his hands and asked, “Do you know who he is?”

  Driscoll shook his head. “No idea, but I’ve wondered. You’ve a good heart, Caleb… even if it’s only there to decorate your chest cavity now.” Another of his dry chuckles leapt out of his mouth.

  Caleb glanced down at Bibbs’ hand, and he didn’t feel much like a good man.

  “And now you get it,” Driscoll added.

  “Get what exactly?” Caleb’s voice sounded drained, even for a dead man.

  Driscoll made sure the tunnel was clear, then he leaned in close. “What sort of secrets the Imperium is built on. And this is only the edge of it. People don’t have any clue.”

  “No, I suppose not,” Caleb said wryly. “Do you realize how many there must be like him out there?”

  “I’ve a fair guess. One only lasts maybe a dozen years before they finally burn out. They just give up after a while, and the Ashkalon’s been through four since I’ve been onboard.”

  Caleb felt despair creeping up on him, and he turned to the raw facts for escape. “They’re turning over millions of these every decade then. They must be sourcing men from every planet in the damned Imperium.”

  “Men and women both. Snatched away and never heard from again, and right up until this very instant, you never even suspected it. It was all right under your nose the whole time, and it’s hidden so carefully you never once imagined it happening.”

  “How?”

  Driscoll smiled. “They’re crafty, and I’m not. If you want the particulars, you’ll have to ask someone with a lot more grey matter. I just know what I’ve seen with my own two eyes… or whoever’s these are, anyway.”

  Caleb looked at Driscoll, and the weight of everything the old revenant knew—every terrible thing he’d seen—was suddenly apparent. He kept his secrets and dark memories locked away behind a somehow insurmountable smile, and only the slightest hint of disquiet crept out.

  Caleb asked, “Why do you keep going?”

  “Don’t reckon there’s much choice. Unless someone is kind enough to smash me into little pieces, I’ll keep working as long as the master wants. The only other option is despair, and there are plenty who go that way… you’ll see them around. They withdraw until all that remains of their spirit is a dwindled, pathetic little thing, while their empty body toils on. They’re mindless drones, good for only the dumbest labour. I won’t let that happen to me, and I somehow suspect you won’t either.”

  Caleb wasn’t so sure.

  “And besides,” Driscoll went on, “as long as I keep going, I get to meet kindly young gents like yourself. I can show ‘em the size of things, and maybe pass along a few secrets what were passed on to me once upon a time. I guess I keep going because I’m dumb enough to think I can make a difference.”

  Caleb let out one of Driscoll’s dry chuckles, and Driscoll smiled in return.

  “Not to mention,” the old revenant said, “I rather like my job. Sail the stars, slay a few monsters, and see the universe in a thousand shades of grey. Not all bad, is it?”

  “I guess not. Why were you counting? Earlier… when you were walking down the tunnel.”

  With a glimmer in his dark eye, Driscoll said, “That’s one of those secrets what was passed on to me. Tell anyone else about this and you’re liable to make me cross, understand?”

  “Absolutely,” Caleb said in a conspiratorial whisper.

  “Now, you probably haven’t experienced this yet, but the master can look through your eyes when he wants to. You’ll know when it happens. Feels right weird. Makes it a damn challenge to keep secrets too, but we’re directly under the damnatus right here, and that makes it a blind spot for some reason. Guarantees a sliver of privacy.”

  Caleb understood why, but he chose not to explain for once and simply nodded his head. Driscoll had been mundane in life, and the likelihood of him appreciating a bunch of thelological babble rapidly approached zero.

  “Not to sound like a complete pill,” Caleb said, “but is this all that’s left for me? Either I become a happy, smiling slave, or else let myself die
inside and become a mindless drone?. No offense, but both options sound a bit shit.”

  “Oh, make no mistake,” Driscoll said, “both options are shit, but death doesn’t have to be the end of your life. A great man said something that might apply here: being dead isn’t all sunshine and daisies, but it’s not all bad.”

  Caleb smiled despite himself. “Didn’t you say that about two hours ago?”

  “More or less.”

  “Okay. So how do I make the best of it then?”

  “Can’t really answer that for you, but I can offer you a few options, maybe point you in the right direction. If you’d like to study the damnatus, the impeller, and the rest of the ship, I can put you on artifact maintenance. It’s good work, brainy stuff, and I’m sure you’d do well. Maybe you just wanna look at the stars a bit, I can put you on hull repair. If you’ve got a weird thing for animals, I can find you a job in the stables.”

  Caleb waited a beat. “All I really want,” he said carefully, “is to send a letter home to my fiancée. Let her know I’m alive and well.”

  “Shit idea,” Driscoll said. “The two things you’re absolutely not are alive and well, friend. You’re dead as the proverbial doornail… if the proverbial doornail could walk, talk and write ill-advised letters. Just trust me when I say you’ll be saving her a lot of heart-ache if you let her be.”

  Caleb didn’t feel quite as convinced as he could, but he dropped the subject. He once again found his eyes drifting down to his hands, one the familiar instrument that’d been with him since birth, and the other a stranger inherited from the only good friend he ever had.

  “What if,” Caleb began with a stutter, “What if I wanted to fight?”

  He surprised himself with that. This clearly wasn’t a sensible choice, but once the words were out, it felt oddly right. It’s what Bibbs would have done, at least. And maybe, just maybe, it would get him a step or two closer to Aldebaran.

  “You want to be a green hood?” Driscoll asked incredulously. “I mean, I can put you on the right track if you’re serious, but it won’t be an easy ride. You’ll have to prove yourself, work your way up, and you’ll take thrashings day and night. Are you really serious?”

  “Serious as a funeral,” Caleb replied, and he found himself growing more sure of it every second.

  Unable to hide his grin, Driscoll said, “Right. Let’s get to work, then.”

  Book II:

  Fourth Fragment

  “At ready,” Driscoll barked.

  Caleb squared up just as they’d taught him in fencing class all those years before. His legs were slightly bent, springy, spread a bit wider than his shoulders. He wasn’t sure what to do with his arms. A sword would’ve helped.

  Driscoll shook his head. “That’s crap. No, worse… that’s shit.”

  Caleb shrugged. He glanced at the pair of revenants trading blows on the other end of the pit and did his best to imitate their stance. He spread his legs further apart and raised both hands like a boxer. He felt awkward and unwieldy, but none of that was new.

  Driscoll shrugged. “Not as shit, I guess. Ready?”

  “Ummm… yeah.”

  Driscoll didn’t say another word. He advanced on light feet, led with his hips and put his fist through Caleb’s face.

  The blow landed with a deafening crack, and Caleb’s world became streaking light and pain. He tumbled backward and heard another crack, then found silence.

  Darkness.

  Dense clouds shift and contort around him like sheets of silk sliding over a glass dome. He reaches out and claws at the fog, watches it tear away like cobwebs. So many cobwebs. Behind them he finds black and twisted trees, a strange mimic of Autumn on a world of eternal Spring. It’s the Garden of Fall, an exhibit in the Academy’s arboretum where he goes sometimes to be alone.

  This and the library are his only escape from the other boys. They don’t pretend to accept him, and it was like that even before they knew the truth. They sense it. Smell it. He isn’t one of them, and so he lives his life in their shadow, shrouded behind his own silent defiance.

  They can’t reject him because he’s a perfect void. There’s nothing there to reject.

  But boys exist to defy the impossible, and their judgment won’t be so easily disarmed.

  So he’s here, crying by the light of twin moons in the Garden of Fall, where the same leaves have littered the floor since many ages long past. He kicks a rock and watches its tumbling journey through the scattered leaves, and he wonders if they ever belonged to the trees here or if it’s all just illusion. All make believe.

  “You can’t hide, coward,” says a voice from one direction.

  “Over here,” says another.

  And in that instant, he’s never felt more alone.

  He freezes in his tracks. The cold night breeze stops. The moons remain bright but distant, and the only sound is the crunch of phony leaves in every direction.

  The boys are there. They approach, closing their circle like a noose, and he just wants to disappear. If he remains perfectly still, maybe he’ll look like just another tree. Just another burnt replica in a garden dedicated to the memory of dying plants.

  But he doesn’t disappear. They can see him clear as day in the pale light of those bitch moons.

  As the noose draws tight around him, he refuses to move. He’s a statue, a non-entity. With a little luck, he could crawl out beneath their contempt.

  He’s never stumbled across even a little luck when he really needed it.

  Their leader steps into the circle while the cronies holler and jeer. They call him crybaby, tattle-tale, bedwetter.

  He digs around inside himself searching for a clever response, but finds no defense against the truth. It’s a dagger he can’t turn aside, so he accepts it, feels it sliding between his ribs. It buries itself near his heart where it finds an already darkened home.

  He looks across the group and sees an ocean of small details that hint at bigger truths. He instantly knows things about these boys—things they may not even know about themselves—but he can’t forge weapons of these truths. A crooked nose and scarred lip tell tale of beatings. On another face, dark circles around the eyes speak of chronic sleep loss. Why don’t you sleep at night? Whose rough hands inhabit your nightmares? Another one guards his misshapen hand, a product of inbreeding perhaps, and another walks with a masked limp, a reminder of some infant sickness already long forgot.

  Every truth, a dull blade. Every insight, useless in the face of what’s about to happen.

  Maybe he could fight, he thinks briefly, but he doesn’t know how. That’s one thing no library book ever managed to teach him.

  Instead, he stands as still as a dead tree and watches the fist approach. In the silence of that moment, he’s content with the knowledge that his parents loved him more than these well-bred bastard shits could ever understand.

  Impact.

  Darkness.

  Caleb’s eyes flashed open and he was underwater. It was in his mouth, his nose, his lungs. Overcome by panic, he thrashed wildly. He touched air above him and struggled up toward it, hands and feet striking the glass walls of his prison with melodic tinks until his head finally lurched up and out. He forced the fluid out of his lungs, then gasped and gasped again.

  He came to his senses a few seconds later just as soon as he could see clearly. He was in one of the mausoleum’s regeneration tanks where he’d been recovering from a particularly nasty conk on the head. He clearly wasn’t drowning as he no longer needed to breathe, and he’d most definitely been dreaming despite any well-meaning assurance to the contrary.

  Not that Caleb was crazy about these dreams. The way things were going inside his head, he’d much prefer to just shut down and enjoy the silence for a bit rather than dredge up more tired memories of his troubled youth.

  He climbed out of his watery bed and dried in the cool draft. Driscoll was nowhere to be found, and Caleb had no idea how long he’d been out. It didn’t
seem to matter much, though; he doubted he was on any kind of schedule just yet.

  He made his way to the stairwell and climbed back up into the revenants’ roost. As Driscoll had predicted, there were a dozen revs practicing forms on the cement floor, while another small group sparred in the pit below. More filled out the shelves and alcoves along the high walls, but the entire crowd was thinner than when Caleb left. He guessed the rest were off performing their shipboard duties, and that the bulk of the Ashkalon’s living crew were fast asleep.

  Caleb wandered out into the group and watched the others with keen interest. He didn’t see copper cheeks anywhere, but every last one was still his superior in combat, and there was something valuable to learn from each.

  Without any pressing matter to occupy his time, he plopped himself down on the stone floor and watched, all the while combining live observations with scraps of academic theory gleaned long ago from library books. The forms they practiced were like a dance, an interconnected series of poses and techniques designed to train muscle-memory, which could later be called up at will and performed without thought. He’d had some experience with the method if not this particular flavour, and it didn’t take much effort to recognize the utility of each position. Or so he assumed, at least.

  He watched the way he always had, absorbing, cataloguing, dissecting and analyzing. How far did they step? At what angle did they place the forward foot? How much did they turn their wrist during that upward block? Each component was examined and filed away, memorized for lack of parchment and quill.

  The group worked through their practice again and again, each time finishing in precisely the spot where they began, while Caleb looked on in silence. With his arms wrapped around his legs and head resting on his knees, perfectly motionless in the absence of breath, he simply watched, allowing his new eyes to snatch up every last detail.

  When the first group finished, Caleb sat there alone and thought back over what he’d seen until the next group came to replace them. It wasn’t long. These newcomers practiced a slightly different dance, its shapes familiar, its accents identical, but the individual steps entirely new.