by Mark Anthony
Of course, Deirdre had heard it whispered often enough among her fellow agents that Hadrian Farr was the next Marius Lucius Albrecht incarnate. So perhaps it was only fitting that he invoked the Ninth Desideratum himself—for the third time in his career. And certainly there was no doubt that Grace Beckett and Travis Wilder were in danger. As was their otherworldly friend, the one they called Beltan. The Philosophers had had no choice but to grant Farr a dispensation.
Deirdre stood and walked over to Farr. “I don’t understand why you’re upset, Hadrian. The Philosophers agreed with you.”
“Yes, they did. Except I’m not entirely certain that they should have.” He leaned toward her, elbows on knees. “These are the Philosophers, Deirdre. The dread, all-powerful, maddeningly inflexible, and mysterious Philosophers. By God, they should have put up something of a fight, don’t you think? Instead they granted my dispensation with barely a moment’s thought. For all their mumbo jumbo about history and the weightiness of duties, they seem perfectly willing to send one Seeker, one journeyman, and a bit of muscle to counter Duratek in what is clearly the most important case of this century.”
“Maybe they have confidence in us,” Deirdre said with a shrug.
“Well, I’m not certain I do.” He rummaged in the seat cushion beside him, retrieved the second liquor bottle, and finally managed to struggle the cap off. He downed half the contents.
Deirdre frowned. “So breaking the Third Desideratum isn’t enough. Now you’re going after Number Six. A Seeker shall not allow his judgment to be compromised.”
“Oh, and you’re a fine one to quote from the Book. And don’t tell me that was crème de menthe I found you drinking in Soho.”
She affected her most pious look, learned in imitation of her devoutly Catholic great-aunt during one of her summers in Ireland. “I was on a break from the Seekers at the time.”
He laughed: a rich, booming sound that completely startled Deirdre. In her experience, Farr had always been unfailingly—sometimes exasperatingly—composed no matter the circumstance. She had never before heard him utter a sound containing the ring of desperation.
“No, Deirdre. Don’t you see? There’s no such thing as a break from the Seekers. It’s not a social club you attend when the whim strikes. It’s a holy marriage with no hope of annulment. Until death do us part.” He raised the bottle and downed the remaining liquid.
Deirdre watched him drink. The fact was, his words did disturb her. Why were the Philosophers willing to invest so much faith in two people when so much was at stake? She didn’t understand. But then, there was much the Philosophers did and said that she failed to understand. They had purpose and knowledge unknown to the rest of the Seekers.
Behind her, the computer let out a soothing electronic tone. She returned to the table. The data had finished streaming, and the summary report filled the screen. Deirdre scrolled through the rows of information. As she did, her sense of unease grew.
“This doesn’t make sense,” she murmured.
A rustling of linen behind her. Farr.
“What have you got there, Deirdre?” His voice was low and measured again; the Hadrian she knew.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I really don’t know.”
She hadn’t told Farr about her encounter with Glinda that last night in London. It was hard enough to understand herself why she had gone looking for the woman, let alone explain it to another. A dozen times Deirdre had replayed the conversation at Surrender Dorothy, but still she could not fathom what it meant. Only Glinda’s sorrow had been achingly clear—as was the cool, green forest Deirdre had glimpsed when they kissed.
The silver ring Glinda had given her at their parting was an intriguing artifact; Deirdre had performed several remote searches in the Seekers’ databases, but so far she had found no match for the symbols engraved on the inside surface of the ring. On a hunch she had even tried a pattern match with runes known to have originated on AU-3—the runes on Grace Beckett’s necklace. There were no similarities. The writing on the ring was spidery and flowing, unlike the angular runes of the world called Eldh. However, the ring had more than just writing with which to tell a story. Deirdre had wrapped it in plastic and had couriered it to the Seeker laboratories. There had been enough skin cells on the ring for them to do DNA sequencing. But the sample must have been contaminated somehow, because the report she was reading could not be correct. She scrolled again to the words at the bottom of the file:
ANALYSIS INTERRRUPTED: ERROR—MITOCHONDRIAL SEQUENCE INCOMPLETE—BAD OR MISSING DATA IN SAMPLE—HUMAN DNA INTERRUPTED BY RANDOM BASE PAIRS.
CONCLUSION: UNABLE TO COMPLETE PHYLOGENETIC ANALYSIS—SAMPLE RELATED TO NO KNOWN HUMAN POPULATIONS.
Farr leaned against the table and bent closer to the computer screen. “What is this, Deirdre?”
“It’s a DNA sequence.”
“I can see that. I mean where did you get it?”
Deirdre shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. The sample is contaminated. The analysis is worthless.”
“No, I don’t think that’s true. May I?”
She glanced up at him, puzzled by the soft intensity of his words, but before she could answer he took the computer and slid it toward him.
“You’re connected to the main system in London, right?”
Farr opened a new session window and typed in his authorization. A menu Deirdre had never seen before appeared, its cryptic options beyond her understanding. Farr selected one, and a list of files appeared. He clicked, and columns of short, alternating bars filled the screen. Another DNA sequence.
“There,” Farr said. “Look.”
He pointed to a portion of the sequence. Deirdre took the computer back. She resized the windows and positioned them side by side. One by one she compared rows. The pattern was identical.
“I don’t understand.” Her breath fogged against the screen. “Where did you get this sample?”
“I didn’t get it. It’s from a relic contained in the vaults beneath the London Charterhouse. In 1817, the Seekers acquired a crystal phial purported to contain the blood of St. Joan.”
“St. Joan?”
“Yes, Joan of Arc—the girl who led the French to battle and who was burned at the stake as a heretic. According to the elderly Franciscan monk from whom the relic was obtained, the blood was collected by a faithful friar, taken from one of St. Joan’s wounds while she was imprisoned, and preserved in the phial of crystal. It was several years ago that I obtained permission from the Philosophers to open the phial and have a sample of the blood sequenced. I was performing a study on genetic anomalies in individuals with extra-Earthly experiences.”
“You’re saying Joan of Arc had otherworldly connections?”
He shrugged. “She spoke to God, didn’t she?”
Deirdre didn’t know how to answer that. But if Farr was correct, then whatever St. Joan had possessed that set her apart from other humans Glinda possessed as well. As did, perhaps, her unborn child. Deirdre closed her eyes, picturing Glinda’s lovely, fragile face.
No one knows how, but they’ve gotten themselves a pureblood. They don’t need any of us now.…
But what did it mean? Who had Glinda been talking about? She opened her eyes and started to reach again for the computer, then froze, her eyes locked on the front page of the battered London Times Farr had thrown on the desk when he entered. A buzzing filled her ears.
“Where did you get this sample, Deirdre?” Farr said, his voice low, excited. “I had thought my analysis at an end years ago, but once again you’ve opened a door for me. We should dispatch a Seeker to keep watch on this Glinda subject immediately. Where can we find her?”
Deirdre licked her lips. “You won’t find her.”
“What do you mean?”
Deirdre hardly heard him. It was amazing how one could mourn the loss of something one had never really had. Once again she read the headline:
BRIXTON FIRE REMAINS A MYSTERY
She touched the paper, running her hand over a photo showing the burned-out shells of several storefronts. The destruction had been nearly complete. Newsprint smeared under her fingers like a haze of smoke.
A soft oath behind her. “I’m so sorry, Deirdre. It looks as though someone got there first.”
Yes, someone. But who? Images flashed in Deirdre’s mind: purple pills, a white lightning bolt, an empty bottle. With the discipline of spirit taught to her by her shaman grandfather, Deirdre acknowledged her sorrow, then set it aside to be lived fully later, when the time was appropriate. Now she kindled a fire from anger. It was time to take action.
She shut the lid of the computer and stood, then turned to see Farr watching her with an expression that was both curious and—despite his drinking—utterly sober.
“Yes?” he said simply.
“How about we see what our good friends at Duratek Corporation are up to?”
He arched a single eyebrow. “Do you mean to tell me you know where they are holding the subject from AU-3?”
She grabbed her black-leather jacket from a chair and pulled it on. “Let’s say I have a pretty good hunch. This morning I managed to follow one of their vehicles for a while. And unless they’re opening their new corporate headquarters in an industrial building next door to the dog-food factory, I think we just might be on to something.”
“And why didn’t you tell me about this earlier?”
She zipped her jacket up and grinned: a feral, humorless expression. “You were on a plane, Farr. Remember?”
29.
Beltan of Calavan, bastard son of King Beldreas, knight errant, captain in the Order of Malachor, and onetime Knight Protector to Lady Melindora Nightsilver, was running.
He ran through an empty dominion, over flat, gray plains beneath a flat, gray sky. It was impossible to tell if it was night or day; the very air was gray, like everything else in this place, and there were no shadows. Nor was there sound, save for that of his own breath. Even his feet made no noise as they trod upon soft, colorless grass. He was naked.
Beltan did not know where he had run from, or where in this shadowless dominion he was running to. He only knew that he could not remain still; that if he ceased to move there would be nothing to prevent him from fading into the grayness all around until he was gone altogether.
Sometimes as he ran he recalled stories told to him as a child, spoken by grizzled warriors who sat in the warmth of the fire in Calavere’s great hall, their fighting days long done—waiting now for the one final battle which they could only lose. Some were missing eyes, others fingers, arms, legs. They laughed and said that a lost limb went on ahead of a warrior and that it would be waiting for him when he got to Vathranan, the great hall of the god Vathris Bullslayer that lay beyond the marches of the world, so that the dead might fight beside the living in the Final Battle. But sometimes, in hoarse voices, they also spoke of Sindanan, the Gray Land where cowards and traitors went after death, and the hands of the old men shook as they said these things, so that they spilled their beer on the hot stones of the hearth where it hissed into steam and vanished.
Perhaps this was the Gray Land the warriors had spoken of. Perhaps Sindanan was also the place where bastards who murdered their own fathers went when they died.
With his left hand, Beltan gripped his side as he ran. It seemed an instinctive motion. Hadn’t there used to be pain? He looked down, but there was no wound in his flesh. Instead, the skin was smooth and pale, without blemish. Yet there had been a gash there before, he was sure of it, its ragged edges yawning open and closed as he ran like a laughing mouth. How long ago had he last seen it? He didn’t know. Time had faded like everything in this place.
When Beltan glimpsed the shadow some distance ahead and to one side, he could not comprehend what it was. He almost turned his face away and ran on. There were no shadows in this land; there was nothing. Only the love men held in their hearts for cowards, traitors, and bastards: a cold, empty cup.
The shadow moved, raising long, gangling arms above the small blot of its head.
For the first time he could remember, Beltan slowed his pace, then came to a halt. Gray grass whispered around him, stroking his bare shins, and a great drowsiness fell over him. Lie down, the grass seemed to whisper. Let us grow over you, and in you, and we shall be you, and you us. Come, lie down.
His knees grew weak; he could feel them buckle.
The shadow gestured again; the motion seemed more urgent now. Then a queer thought struck Beltan, and his legs went rigid. Perhaps it was his shadow beckoning him. After all, he had yet to glimpse it in this land. But that didn’t seem right. The shadow was hunched and crooked, its arms too long for its body, its head too small. Beltan looked down; his own body was lean, tall, and straight. He looked up again.
The shadow was gone.
A muted sensation of dread filled him. Since he had been in this place, Beltan had run in only one direction. Now, with great effort, he turned from his path and ran in the direction of the shadow.
It was impossible to tell if he was going the right way. Everything looked the same. Was he too far to the left? He considered turning, then thought better of it. Right—it was to the right he needed to go.
Had he altered in his course three steps sooner, he would never have found the door. Instead, as he turned, his left hand grazed against something hard and solid. He halted, then reached a hand out, searching through gray air, until at last his fingers found it: smooth, dense.
The door was the exact color of the air. Even right upon the thing, it was difficult to see against the grayness all around. He only knew it was a door by touch: frame, hinges, latch. It stood alone on the empty plain.
Beltan gripped the latch, then paused. What lay beyond the door? What if it was only the same colorless landscape on the other side? But the shadow was there no longer. It had to have passed through the door.
Still he hesitated. Was this not the place he belonged? He did not remember how he knew, only that he did. He had murdered his own father through deceit, stabbing him when his back was turned. What could there possibly be beyond the door for one such as he?
But there was something. He couldn’t remember what it was, although it seemed there was a face, a voice, a name. A man. Yes, there was a man beyond the door, his eyes as gray as this land, but not empty, and not cold. The man was searching—searching for him.
Beltan let out a wordless cry. The sound rose as it issued forth from him, a great, bullish bellow, until it was like a wind that roared across the Gray Land. The grass bent down; the air trembled. He tore open the door, then flung himself through.
30.
At first Beltan thought he was still in the Gray Land. For a while he drifted; perhaps he had fallen down in the grass and was even then fading away. But the light around him was tinged scarlet, not gray, and there was sound: a rhythmic whir, as of the beating of great wings. Then shadows appeared against the light, and he knew he was no longer in Sindanan, but somewhere else.
Only after a time did he realize that the echoing sound he heard was a voice. One of the shadows was speaking.
“… at this, Doctor. There’s a three hundred percent increase in both the Alpha and Theta ranges compared to yesterday. And he’s demonstrating significant rapid eye movement. He’s entered a dream state.”
The man’s voice was oddly harsh, and the words it spoke were strange and guttural. Beltan felt he shouldn’t have been able to understand the words, except somehow he did.
The shadows shifted, and another voice answered, a woman’s, speaking the same hard, unlovely words as the first. “I’m not entirely surprised. Our tests have shown the effects of the alternate blood serum on the neurological system as well as the gross tissue level. And human physiology is not so very different than that of chimpanzees. He had entered a lighter coma stage as it was. I expected he would begin to wake up once the treatment was administered.�
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“Then do you think we should speak in front of him, Doctor? What if he can hear us?”
Laughter. A pretty sound, unlike the language. “Oh, he can hear us all right. He’s close now, very close. But he won’t be able to understand a word we’re speaking. Which is unfortunate, as we so very much wish to talk with him.”
“But the linguists will work with him. I’ve heard they already have a vocabulary of over three hundred words.”
“Well, soon it will be much more than that.”
The voices ceased then, and the shadows drifted away, leaving only the ruddy light. Beltan began to drift again, then jerked himself back.
No, you can’t go back to the Gray Land. By Vathris, don’t be such a piteous weakling, Beltan of Calavan. She said you’re close. Close to what? To waking? But you are awake. So open your bloody eyes already.…
The effort the act required was staggering, more agonizing than any battle he had ever fought. With a moist, parting sound, his eyelids rolled open. Crimson light bled to white.
At first he could see nothing, and he wondered if he was blind. Then he realized he was staring upward into some kind of lamp. It was terribly bright, its light far more intense than any torch or oil lamp he had ever seen before. It was more like the magical lights he had sometimes witnessed Melia conjure, although this light was stabbing and harsh, with none of the shimmering beauty of enchantment.
He turned his head slightly—this act again a brutal war only barely won—and the light dimmed, receding to the corner of his vision. Gradually, his smarting eyes adjusted, and he found he could see.
Beltan lay in a white room. Walls, floor, ceiling: Everything was white. It was difficult to look at. Every surface was strange to him: sharp, smooth, and too bright for his eyes. He was forced to squint, and a feeling of nausea came over him. Everything was too square, too regular. It made him feel trapped.