by O. J. Lowe
I studied Amadeus as he paused for breath. He took a gulp of water. My closest friend had always been a teetotaller and I respected his choice, though even then I enjoyed the firebrandy more than I should.
“Collectively, there have always been twenty-one divines, everyone knows this. We’ve attempted to categorise them as best we can but that would always be an errand of fools. We acknowledge Gilgarus as their undisputed king and Melarius as his wife and his queen. We acknowledge that they had their twin children, Dainal and Pellysria as well as Gilgarus’ bastard daughter with Rochentus Skyrider, Griselle. We accept those five are probably the most powerful, Gilgarus at their peak for he simply must be to keep the rest of them in line. Gilgarus’ power dwarfs the other twenty combined, so go some of the tales. A power he rarely used, as the tales go. He abashed shows of force in favour of negotiation and diplomacy. The tales go that even when he was human, those were the way. Of course, there is nobody alive to tell us differently. We just have writings to go on. Writings and images of a past we can’t imagine.”
At that point, my old friend paused to let it sink in. None of this was something I was unaware of. The stories of the Divines have been long told, we all know them in some form or another, even if we don’t believe. I let him continue, for my curiosity had not yet been sated.
“The Forever Cycle is part of a theory that so much power upon the bodies of those that were once human is a strain and eventually, the time scale is disagreed upon for some say it is every century, others every millennium, but these Divines must cast themselves down from their eternal palace for a time to once again become human and siphon off some of that power.”
“And how did they do that?” I inquired.
Amadeus smiled at me, shrugged his shoulders in calm ruefulness. “How does anyone pass on something? While they are human, it is their natural state to want to breed. They pass on any excess power they might have. They find a suitable mate, they consummate the relationship and a child is born. A child that for all intents, is human. They will not be immortal left to their own devices. They will live a normal life and die, though it has been said that some of them do inherit gifts from their immortal parent. There have been numerous such accounts of these children doing the spectacular, whether you attribute them to the divine or to their own skill is entirely up to you. It remains difficult to prove definitively and quantifiable, that much has always remained true.”
I coughed, couldn’t quite keep the sound down. That sounded utterly fantastical and not in a good way. Of course, I didn’t entirely believe the stories of the Divines were anything more than just that. They might have been relevant once, but we were coming up to a world where their relevance was waning amongst the enlightened and the intellectually proficient. When you have seen the marvellous technologies and the wonders that science has come to perform, it is hard to place faith in that which you cannot see when there is so much that can be seen to be believed. It was a time when those who believed found their faith swayed, the unifications war had reopened a lot of eyes to the horrors of war always brings and with that horror comes a certain shattering of ideologies long thought to be stable.
“So, what does this have to do with my father?” I asked. More than that, I wanted to add, what does it have to do with me? There was one obvious conclusion, yet the idea was absurd. My mother had not been a Divine. I was not special in any way beyond the achievements I pulled through with my own two hands and my willpower. I was too stubborn to cede any fight, no matter how hopeless it might seem. It had saved my life on too many occasions during the war.
Amadeus looked as if he were arriving with the same conclusions, I saw him studying me with a frightful detachment, almost as if he were afraid suddenly of who I was and what I might do.
“There’s a test, you know,” he eventually said, his voice slow and languidly guarded. “One way of knowing for sure.” His words were like daggers in my heart. I knew I couldn’t be what he thought I was. It was ridiculous to even contemplate it. That one of my oldest and closest friends either couldn’t see it or chose to want to believe it, I found it insulting. “I don’t know exactly how, but…”
“Amadeus!” I said, unable to keep the anger out of my voice, it broke through the gap between us like a whip crack and I saw my friend recoil in fear. I wasn’t used to seeing that on him where I was concerned. “Amadeus, this is madness, I beg you to rethink on what you say. My mother was not a Divine. I am certain of that. She was an unremarkable woman who, uh… did some waitressing or something before she met my father. I think they met in, uh…”
“You don’t know, do you?” Amadeus said. “You know nothing about who she was before she met your father, I’d be willing to bet that he didn’t either. That’s always the rub with the Divines when they pull this crap. They appear, they have a hastily put together backstory that doesn’t bear up when it’s really pulled at. The universe folds around them, it doesn’t break for them. It doesn’t give them a free pass to run roughshod over it.”
I opened my mouth, ready to chastise him for his foolishness further. I didn’t get the chance, heard the clearing of a strange throat. My hand went to my blaster, I didn’t know who’d just made that sound and I wasn’t ready to take chances.
I’d never seen him before. Tall. Gaunt-looking. He looked sick, his hair blond and thinning, patchy in places. You ever hear the stories about the night man, Nicholas? That was what he looked like, dressed all in black from shoes to the cloak he wore about him.
Silence reigned through the room as the three of us stared at each other. I didn’t know how he’d gotten in. Didn’t know how he’d gotten past Amadeus’ family. It was hard to sneak up on me, I’d made that a point of pride in my life. If you’re never caught unawares, it’s harder for someone to slip a knife in your back.
“Who are you?!” Amadeus demanded. “What are you doing in my house?!” He was furious, I couldn’t blame him. I could see the angry terror on his face. He was worried for his family. Maureen and Brendan.
“I’m not here for you.” His voice was like the whispers of the wind on the leaves, cracked but not broken. “I’m here for him. He is required.”
“I’m not available,” I immediately said. I wasn’t going anywhere with this freak. He looked dangerous but more like a danger to himself than anyone else, you see. I could see it in his eyes, the fires of zealotry. Those people can’t be trusted, everything they touch turns to fire.
“Mister Frewster,” the stranger whispered. “I do not wish for violence to be exchanged here, I hope we can do this amicably.”
“Me too,” I said, before I drew my blaster and fired at him. It was perhaps unprovoked but at the same time, felt justifiable. Amadeus would back me up, that there’d been a dangerous intruder and I’d had no choice.
What happened next stayed with me for a long time. You never forget something like that. The blasts never came close to him for I saw something erupt out of his hands, he’d had something in them I’d not noticed before and that something was aflame with orange and blue. He batted my blasts aside with ease, his sword lighting up the room with its malice. I could feel the heat of it from where I stood.”
Frewster paused, looked across the room at Nick. “We all saw weapons like that not long ago.”
“I’ve used one,” Nick said. “They’re called…”
“Kjarnblades, I’m aware. There’s more to the story. And we’ll continue after some dinner perhaps, Helga makes the most delightful…”
His voice tailed away, Nick had already stopped listening and risen to his feet. They could both hear it. The familiar roar of engines in the distance, large engines, powerful long-distance ships for mass transport. Going to the window was stupid, no matter how curious he might be. He could see just fine from here, could see that a pair of aeroships incoming, they were flying low and heavily armed. One of them turned its rotary cannon down towards the speeder Nick had rented, sent a continuous flurry of blasts into it. With
in seconds, it was molten slag, the fuel tank exploding in a radiant orange fireball under the assault.
“They’ve come,” Frewster said. He sounded tired again, drew out his X7 and held it in a shaking hand. He looked like he’d aged years in minutes, the fatigue heavy on his face. “They want me, Nicholas. The cycle stays the same. They want me, they’ll kill you and Helga to get to me.”
He gave Nick a beseeching look. Nick tried to avoid looking at him. Privately he felt like this whole thing had been one giant setup that had now closed around him.
“Save me,” Frewster said simply. He wasn’t begging. It was a statement of fact, plain and simple. He had nothing else to say on the matter. “I’ll explain all, just get me out of here!”
Son of a bitch, Nick thought. He shook his head in disgust, glanced about the room and then back towards the window. This didn’t look good.
Chapter Six. The Glove and the Slipper.
“I always find leading requires two things. One hand in their dreams and one hand on their balls. If you can achieve one of those things, you’re halfway there. If you can manage both, they’re yours for as long as you can keep that balance going.”
Claudia Coppinger, speaking at a conference five years ago regarding unconventional management styles.
Claudia found herself restless.
She was these days, there was no denying it. Rather than bring about peace of mind, her journeys had perhaps done the opposite. These days, she was lucky if her head wasn’t nearly split asunder by the furious migraines tearing through her brain, snarling at every nerve-ending, every synapse. Pure, unfiltered agony.
That was the price, she had to tell herself over and over. This is what it means to be no longer entirely human. You wanted to be something more and here you are. Brilliance does not come for free, there is always a cost to achieving what you set out to. This is your price for the moment. Pain. Constant pain. Unrelenting but ultimately endurable.
She would endure. She had no choice. To come this far and give up, it was anathema to her. She couldn’t contemplate it. Giving up was not in her vocabulary. She’d never quit anything worthwhile in life up to this point and starting here would be the end. The humiliation alone might well kill her.
Her wrist ached. Had ever since she’d taken that trip into the first chamber. She could only remember bits of that trip, her mind foggy and useless when she tried to recall the exact details. She’d suspected that was for her own good, what little she could remember had been too fantastical to even try to explain to anyone who’d never experienced it. Human minds would struggle to comprehend it. Her mind was no longer human, it was something new and alien, hence the pain it seemed determined to inflict upon her.
She’d tried medication. She’d tried them all, sometimes mixing them together in an attempt to enhance their effect. Even that hadn’t done a whole lot of good. Hota had examined her thoroughly, she’d insisted on it and he’d come up blank. Insisted in that awful lisping accent of his, that there was no medical reason why she should be suffering so. He’d been shocked when he’d seen her wrist. It always surprised her, no matter how much she should have gotten used to it by now. If the sight didn’t surprise her, the pain did.
What didn’t help was the knowledge that she could end it all if she wanted. All she had to do was yank it away. Of course, it would kill her. It was keeping her alive, she’d heard, and she had no reason to doubt. A second heart, a surrogate heart beating in time with her own. If she stared down at it long enough, she imagined she could see it beating, could see it twitch and pulse, pushing divine power around a body not strong enough to contain it. Part of her knew the name it beat to, the rest of her didn’t want to acknowledge it.
Gil-Garus. Gil-Garus. Gil-Garus. Every beat, she could hear the thump of that name at the deepest core of her being. The Heart was a myth she’d chosen to believe in. More fool her for now it hung in her wrist, a part of her but its deepest mysteries remained unfamiliar. It wasn’t giving them up any time soon.
Divinity. Desired but still denied to her. In the truest aspect of the world, she’d quickly found it wasn’t all that had been expected. As wondrous as the Chamber of Fate, had been, her memories foggy and blurred of it, there had still been an element of smoke and mirrors about it. Like it was just a façade, a trick that would come tumbling down if the illusion was probed too heavily. She didn’t want to pry. Better not to have her dreams shattered. Because the figure had been real. The figure in the cloak, cast in shadows but with a voice that shook her to her core.
She’d never forget that terrible voice for as long as she lived. That was a number of years by no means guaranteed to be a high one. Life had a way of surprising you. This whole situation was testament to that.
Claudia looked around the table, considered the figures that were looking to her for leadership. Not all of them were here in person, some of them all had places to be where they were more valuable. Only the ones she wanted to keep close remained aboard her command ship. Some, like Alaxaphal, were too valued to be left wandering free. Others, like Rocastle, she did not trust at all. She wanted them where she could keep watch on them. Rocastle had proven himself to be useful, it was the sole reason he was still here but there were still elements of his character that she could not rely on. His obsessions, for one. It was the reason she’d taken his leg when the opportunity had arisen, the limb shattered in a fight with Nicholas Roper. He was still acclimatising to the prosthetic, a top-end product but still no substitute for the real one by any means. She wondered if he knew about the transmitter inside. For as long as he wore that leg, she’d be able to locate him anywhere in the kingdoms. Not that he’d left the ship for months.
Since his humiliation and his mutilation, he’d been subdued. Content just to focus on his duties of training the young men and women he’d started to dub ‘his Angels of Death’. She hated that name. It was far too melodramatically over the top. Just like Rocastle himself. Some of the worst aspects of his personality had been sanded away in the last months but she still didn’t doubt him exceptionally vicious when the mood took him.
Domis was here as well, the one man she could trust beyond all doubt. A man whom she loved like a son, kept smiling inwardly as she studied him. He didn’t sit, just stood behind her. Her bodyguard. Anyone wanted to get her, he’d rip their limbs off. He was capable of it, a physical miracle that nobody had ever been able to explain to her. His strength was beyond match, his metabolic ability off the charts. No wound could keep him down for long. She’d seen the footage of his fight with Nwakili, the crafty old bastard had nearly put him down, but nearly hadn’t been enough. Quite crucially, Nwakili was no longer with them.
She cleared her throat, tried to avoid thinking of the hooded figure. That voice still echoed around her head, recalled with very little effort. It had all the subtlety of an air-siren and was just as loud.
CLAUDIA COPPINGER, it had said. She hadn’t been sure of the gender. Maybe deep feminine or very high male. It wasn’t dissimilar to the way Rocastle spoke sometimes with that creepy lilt to his voice. A mysterious all-powerful version of Rocastle. That didn’t bear thinking about.
It didn’t do to dwell too much on it now. The time would come when she had to face the figure again. This time, she would do it on a much more even footing. She would not be content with trinkets like the one that burned at her wrist.
“We have gathered here today,” she said. “To discuss our progress. Because that is our aim, is it not? Progress. We have a set of kingdoms that have stagnated, atrophied even if you like, into something so much less than they could be. Once they were great. Now, what has the Senate done for them in recent years? Bickered and squabbled at the expense of the greater good. That was what I set out to do. Tear all that away. For years I worked in secret to ensure that when the moment came, I was ready.
She studied the faces again. Rocastle. Alaxaphal. Domis. Hota. Jake Costa, Alana Fuller and Dale Sinkins. Those present she couldn’t a
fford to lose. The ship was currently on a course, none of them whom would be accompanying her. Except Domis, of course. He would walk wherever she walked. The only problem she had was that there was only one of him. All efforts to examine his genes and see what made him what he was had come to naught. The closest effort had been the Apex project, an approximate success but not entirely a desired result. They had an almost indestructible warrior, albeit one that could only be controlled partially. That was the name of progress, they were further along than they were yesterday and tomorrow they’d be further than they were today.
Maybe Sinkins as well. He was no Jeremiah Blut, but he was competent enough and she might need an opinion that only he on the ship was qualified to provide to her.
Present in holographic form were a reluctant-looking Wim Carson, her own personal Vedo and currently chasing something ill-defined in Serran, the new Premier of Vazara, Phillipe Mazoud with a suitably deferential look on his face and Subtractor. That was the name he’d given himself recently and he was a new presence at these meetings, her own personal mole high in the command of Unisco. He’d belonged to her for a long time, ever since she’d started this venture and he’d been willing to partner with her for a cut of the profits. She’d not done it for the credits, there was little financial gain in being a deity, but others were less motivated by doing good and rather by lining their pockets with credits. She respected it, in a way. At least he wasn’t simply paying blind lip-service to what she was preaching. He was willing to call her out on what she said when he didn’t agree with it, never in public for he wouldn’t undermine her precious authority in that way, but his private opinion was something she valued. He was secure in doing that. He was the hardest one to replace, not impossible but difficult enough for her not to want to unless it was necessary.