by D. P. Prior
The skull did rise in curling flame
To fix poor Renna in;
That deathly grin, that leeching pain
That drew her soul to him.”
It was deathly quiet for a moment, until Aristodeus said, “That’s what you will be up against, if you agree to take this to the next level.”
“A flying skull?” Galen said. “After that ruddy giant, shouldn’t take more than a solid stomp of my boot to shatter it into a thousand pieces, wot.”
“It’s invulnerable,” Ludo said. “At least, according to LaRoche it is.”
“No way to kill it, then?” Nameless said. “Sounds like a challenge.”
“It is,” Aristodeus said. “A great challenge. Probably the greatest there is. If you can avoid a direct confrontation, I would advise it.”
“And if not?” Shadrak said. “What then? What can we do against a scut that can’t be killed?”
“I see,” Aristodeus said. “Then I was wrong to bring you all together. Wrong to think there was a way to free Nameless from his helm.”
“But it’s not just about me, laddie, is it now?” Nameless said. “There’s more to this than you’re letting on. True, I want to taste beer again, and true, my teeth are furrier than a rabbit’s arse from where I can’t get to clean them, but if I’m to put these folks in danger, I’d like to know what’s really at stake.”
Aristodeus’s eyes glazed over. Rhiannon had seen that look before. He was in his own head, scrabbling about for an answer; the answer that would best suit his purposes. “It is necessary,” he said when his focus once more shifted outward.
“Try again,” Nameless said. He took a fraction of a step forward, but it was so filled with menace that Aristodeus did a quick rethink, and then he wagged a finger toward the crystal casket.
“When you went after the Pax Nanorum, it was a trap, a deception of the Demiurgos.”
“Tell me something I don’t already know,” Nameless said.
“Until then, until your brother went and uncovered its secret in the Annals, you were set to be something… something…”
“Something what?” Nameless inched forward, but the threat had left him. Now, he seemed almost childlike, bewildered.
“There is a war afoot, Nameless,” Aristodeus said. “Call it spiritual, if you will, but in some instances, it is much more than that. There are times and places the Abyss coincides most forcibly with the worlds beyond its nebulous borders.”
“This is about you, isn’t it?” Rhiannon said. “It’s always been about you.”
Aristodeus shot her a look like a guillotine, then carried on as if she’d not spoken. “You were to be an important player in this war, Nameless, for reasons I cannot go into.”
“Go into them,” Nameless said, some of his ire returning. “I insist.”
“If only it were that easy.” Aristodeus let out a world-weary sigh. “There are forces at play, whole histories, time, space, an elaborate network of causes and effects, that should I let go one strand, should I utter one wrong word to the wrong person at the wrong time…” He shook his head, and perspiration beaded his brow. “Let’s just say, if you thought Sektis Gandaw was bad, what I have to deal with day in, day out, is a darned sight deeper, darker, and infinitely more insidious.”
“Then don’t look in the mirror so much,” Rhiannon said.
“Stay out of it!” Aristodeus thundered. He leapt from his chair and loomed over her. “You’re nothing but chattel in all this, understand? No more than a breeding-cow.”
Rhiannon’s fist crunched into his teeth, snapping his head back, and dumping him into the chair.
“Where’s my shogging daughter?”
The bald bastard was white with shock, the gaps between his teeth stained red. He tried to stand, but she slammed him back down, and tipped the chair over, sending him arse over head.
“I say!” Galen took a step toward her, but Rhiannon turned on him, and gave him her sickliest, coldest grin. The idiot stammered something about Nous-forsaken harlots, and looked to Ludo for what he should do next.
Aristodeus got to his feet, red-faced and fuming. “I will not tolerate this kind of—”
She aimed a kick at his head, but this time he was ready. Swift as lightning, he pivoted, caught her foot and flipped. Rhiannon rolled over her shoulder as she hit the floor and came up facing him. The black sword rasped free of its scabbard with scarcely more than a thought.
“Saphra, you shogger! Where is she?” She touched the tip of the blade to his throat. Black flames flickered about his beard. If they burned, he didn’t show it, and she didn’t care.
Aristodeus’s blue eyes clouded over like a winter sky. His face was twisted into a grimace that he struggled to control. He tensed, shifted his weight to the balls of his feet. He touched the tip of one finger to the blade at his throat, gingerly pushed it aside, and stepped away from her. His eyes narrowed, and he held out a hand to Shadrak, whose interest now seemed genuine.
“One of your blades, please,” Aristodeus said.
“Go shog yourself,” Shadrak replied. He went up a notch in Rhiannon’s estimation.
“Here, use mine.” Galen handed over his saber.
Aristodeus twirled the blade, made a few practice strokes in the air, and instantly regained his composure.
“You are no natural with a sword, my dear,” he said in his most parental tone, “but under my tutelage, you have become passable. That doesn’t make you a challenge for me, though, even if I were to fight left-handed.” He flipped the saber from one hand to the other.
Rhiannon feigned a stab at his heart, twisted her wrist, and sliced across his belly. Steel met steel, as Aristodeus deftly turned her blade and thrust the saber toward her neck. She rolled aside, hacking at his head. He parried with ease, switched hands, and flicked the saber out, tearing through her coat and stinging the flesh of her thigh.
She chopped down at his wrist, missed, and back-slashed across his chest. Aristodeus danced away, his blade a dazzling blur, darting and deceiving, cutting the air so close to her skin, it almost kissed her.
She lunged at his groin, but the saber was there; tried to rip a seam from his belly to his beard, but it was there again. With a scream of frustration, she battered his blade aside, and swung two-handed for his face. There was a streak of movement, the clash of steel, and a spray of sparks. Her sword shot across the room and should have clattered against the wall, only it sank to the floor like a feather.
Aristodeus pressed the tip of Galen’s saber to her throat, just hard enough to nick the skin.
“Laddie,” Nameless rumbled. Rhiannon felt rather than saw the weight of his presence. “That’s enough.”
Aristodeus’s cheek twitched, and his eyes narrowed to unwavering slits of gray.
For a moment, Rhiannon actually thought he was going to do it, but then the blue of his irises came back into a hard, chill focus, as if a cloud had passed from in front of them. He reversed the blade and handed the saber back to Galen.
“Nice weapon. Exquisite balance. Cavalry man?”
“Dragoon. Ipsissimus’s own regiment.”
Aristodeus took in Galen’s red jacket, as if he’d only just noticed it. “Of course. The elect of the Elect, eh?”
Galen shrugged and sheathed his saber.
Rhiannon took a fistful of the philosopher’s toga, but he swatted her hand away.
“Do not try my patience, woman. I would have thought one beating was lesson enough, even for you.”
Rhiannon threw a punch with her other hand, but this time metal fingers caught her wrist and held her like a vise.
Nameless gave a bob of his great-helm, which might have been reassurance, and then released her.
“I had my chances,” Rhiannon muttered. “You’re not as good as you think.”
Aristodeus smiled. “But I am good enough. Whatever you might believe, I am not only a better fighter, but I am also a better thinker, and, as if I need to point it ou
t, a better parent.”
“Try telling that to Saphra. Why do you think she stays with me?”
“Because I allow it.” Aristodeus pulled out his pipe. “Or rather, because I used to allow it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He started to pop his pipe stem in his mouth, but she lunged at him.
This time, Nameless stepped aside, but Aristodeus stopped her with a glare. The threat in his eyes was palpable, and somewhere inside, she knew it was true: he was better than her. Not only faster and stronger, more skilled with a blade, but better.
“You knew it was coming.” The pipe reached his mouth at last, but before he could go through his ritual of patting down his toga for a light, a homunculus stepped out of the wall, lit it for him, and bowed obsequiously as it backed away again. “You only have yourself to blame.”
Rhiannon wanted to tell him to go shog himself; wanted to rip his eyes from their sockets, but she couldn’t move. It was nothing he was doing to her; it was the fact he was right. She had no answer for him.
“Do you honestly think I’d entrust the upbringing and education of my daughter to you? She is far too precious for that.” He might just as well have said, “far too important.”
“You don’t care about Saphra,” Rhiannon said. Her voice came out as little more than a whisper. “What is it you want her for?”
“And you do?” Aristodeus leaned in and jabbed the smoking bowl of his pipe in her face. “You care? Mind showing us how you care?”
She shook with the restraint it took not to leap at him and tear his shogging face off. The trembling hit her chin, her cheeks, her lips. She felt the sting of tears building but refusing to fall. She couldn’t let them. Wouldn’t.
Ludo laid a hand on her shoulder. She slapped it off without thinking. She’d not even heard him approach.
“Sorry,” he said, flinching, as if he’d touched a naked flame. “Forgive my presumption. May I?” He nodded toward Aristodeus.
Rhiannon stared at him blankly, but the priest rounded on the philosopher and pushed his glasses down to the tip of his nose.
“This talk of good versus evil, the Liche Lord and all that, is all very well, but what about the moment we are in? What about practical morality? I, for one, would be in much better conscience if you would deign to answer the young lady’s question.” Ludo turned a look on Galen, who was nodding as if he agreed, then suddenly came to attention with a red flush to his cheeks. The shogger had gone along with Aristodeus’s humiliation of her, but now it was clear Ludo didn’t approve, he did his best to look impartial.
Aristodeus glowered at Rhiannon, rubbed his beard thoughtfully, and nodded. “You wish to see her?”
She felt the tears coming, forced her wide grin and showed her teeth. “Demand is the word you’re looking for.”
He sneered at that. “My wish is your demand, eh? I’ve no issue with you seeing—”
“You’re nothing like him, you know that,” Rhiannon said. “Nothing like Shader. You might have trained him, tried to mold him, but he’s everything you’re not.” Even now? Even with a bottle tucked inside his boot? That wasn’t her point, though. She was just saying it to rile Aristodeus.
He knew it, too, and dismissed her with a roll of his eyes.
But Ludo wasn’t finished. “I’ve a question of my own, if you don’t mind.”
“Well, I do,” Aristodeus said.
“Me, too,” Shadrak said. He was picking under his fingernails with the tip of a razor star. He cocked his head to fix Aristodeus with a look that said he wasn’t shogging around.
“What?” Aristodeus said through his teeth. “What is this, ask Aristodeus? If it’s knowledge you want, go to New Jerusalem, enroll in the Academy, if they’ll take you.”
Shadrak’s gaze didn’t falter as he slid the razor star back in his baldric.
After a tense moment, Aristodeus looked away.
“What this is,” Shadrak said, whipping out a pistol, “is a promise. Tell me what I want to know, or I blow your shogging brains out.”
Aristodeus started to roll his eyes again but stopped when Shadrak cocked the trigger.
“Excuse me for grabbing your attention,” Shadrak said. “Now, what I don’t get, is how the fire giant’s gauntlets, a suit of armor belonging to Otto shogging Blightey, and the other thing—”
“Shield, laddie,” Nameless said. “In Gehenna, isn’t that what you said?”
Aristodeus pinched the bridge of his nose, took a long breath in. “It’s more on the cusp of the Abyss, but yes, close enough.”
“Whatever,” Shadrak said, waving the barrel of his pistol. “But how do you know they’ll work? I mean, so far, all I’ve seen is old dwarfy here with the strength of ten men, but even with that, he can’t get the bucket off his head.”
“Twenty,” Nameless said. “Or half a dozen fire giants, I’d say.” He flexed his bicep, as if that were evidence.
Shadrak’s eyes flicked to Nameless then back to Aristodeus. “My point is, why should any of us put ourselves at risk—I mean, the scutting Liche Lord, for shog’s sake—if there’s no gain?”
“There is for me, laddie,” Nameless said.
Shadrak shook his head. “How do you know? How do any of us know this is worth it? Tell me,” he said to Aristodeus. “Convince me as to why I should go to Verusia.”
Aristodeus eyed him coolly now, as if he’d seen a way to turn the tables. “Oh, you have your reasons, Shadrak. Don’t you?”
Whatever was communicated between them elicited a scowl from Shadrak, but he holstered his pistol and muttered under his breath.
Rhiannon caught Albert with a half-smile on his face, but he quickly lost it when he saw her looking. Instead, he clapped his hands and drew everyone’s attention.
“Well, I for one am not averse to a trip to the Schwarzwald. I’ve been meaning to go to Verusia since my Gallic days. They have this black bread, you see—”
Aristodeus cut across him the second he realized Albert had nothing of value to add. “It’s not the helm that’s at issue here.” He gestured across the chamber at the crystal casket. “It’s the axe. I could remove the helm right now, if I wanted to. But if I did, I suspect we’d all be dead in an instant, wouldn’t you say, Nameless?”
Nameless turned away, and his shoulders slumped.
Aristodeus sighed. “I had hoped to avoid this. It’s a hard enough burden without him being constantly reminded of it. You want answers,”—he scanned everyone in the room, lingering a little longer on the homunculus in the feathered cloak, who was now listening attentively—“then fine. The helm insulates Nameless from the power of the axe. Without it, he is defenseless. He’ll become a monster again, a butcher.”
“If he does…” Shadrak said, then closed his mouth. He tapped both pistols holstered at his sides so he wouldn’t have to say it where Nameless could hear.
Aristodeus shook his head and waved his hand. “No, no, that wouldn’t work. You’d have as much chance as…” His eyes flicked to the dwarf and back. “It just wouldn’t work.”
“Destroy the axe, then,” Galen said, looking round to see who thought he’d just had a brilliant idea.
“Can’t be done,” Aristodeus said. “At least, not by any mundane means. It’s of Supernal construction. The axe is the stuff of deception, like the homunculi themselves, begotten by the Demiurgos. These three artifacts are similar: the stuff of the Cynocephalus, the son of the Demiurgos. They are, in essence, Supernal beings, living things with their own personalities, and their own powers. Together, Mephesch believes they can destroy the axe, and then I can remove the helm.”
“So, they’re alive, then,” Rhiannon said.
“That is what I said, yes.” Aristodeus didn’t even look in her direction. He merely sighed, as if she were the class idiot.
“And you plan to use them, like you use everyone else?” Like he used her, and her daughter.
Ludo caught her eye, and he half-smil
ed with what she took to be sympathy. She opened her mouth to say something, to tell him where he could stick his sympathy, but he spoke first, and it wasn’t to her.
“Three artifacts, you say, and the black axe makes four. Is that all there are?”
“No one knows,” Aristodeus said.
“Maldark had a hammer,” Nameless said. “At least, according to the legends.”
“He did,” Rhiannon said. She’d seen what it could do. “It was like an earthquake when he struck the ground with it.” It made her wonder about her sword—Callixus’s sword; how had that been forged? And by whom?
“And then there’s the Pax Nanorum—the real Axe of the Dwarf Lords,” Nameless said. “Not that evil copy.”
“That is a myth, Nameless,” Aristodeus said with a show of sorrow. “I suspect it was inserted into the Annals as part of a long-term trap to get you or someone else to go into Gehenna to retrieve the black axe. It’s no more real than the Lords of Arnoch, or any of the fairy stories Earth-folk tell themselves to make them feel special, important, higher than the beasts.”
“So, it’s true, then,” Nameless said. “My people are nothing but the discards of Sektis Gandaw. All the stories, all the glory…”
“Bags of chemicals like the rest of us,” Albert said. “Welcome to the real world.”
“Shut it, tubby,” Rhiannon said.
The look Albert gave her told her he had her marked. She swallowed the lump in her throat, dismissed him with a murderous glare of her own. Apparently, he saw right through that and inclined his head, giving her a tight-lipped grin.
“All cultures have their legends,” Aristodeus said, “their foundation myths. Gives a sense of unity, or purpose.”
Ludo yawned loudly and covered his mouth. “Sorry. Must be the heat in here.”
“Heat?” Aristodeus said. “But the air conditioning is…” He stopped short as he caught sight of the priest’s smile.
“You know, science has its legends,” Ludo said. “Philosophy, too. We all have our frames for making sense of the world around us, but identifying them says nothing about what is true and what is not.”
“Are you wanting to debate me?” Aristodeus said.