Lyrec

by Frost, Gregory

  “Well, you know I would be the first one to say so if it were true—but I doubt it mattered what you did. At least now you know him as I do.”

  “Yes, but—” He stopped as something clanked behind him. It clanked again and he rose stiffly to see a strip of light appear in the wall opposite as the door swung open with a prolonged squeal.

  The torch light stung his eyes at first and forced him to look away. A figure moved into the dungeon with him. Was it time, already? He stared at the wall where immense shadows cast by the moving torch wheeled past like the sunlight of a full day compressed into seconds. The door groaned, and Lyrec glanced at it. A scowling face peered in before the door swung shut. Another prisoner? He squinted across the room, blocking the torch light with one hand.

  The face that looked back at him was fairly young. Light-colored hair was combed straight back from the forehead. The eyes appeared to be shadowed with weariness, but it might have been due to the harsh delineation of the torch. The person set his torch in a wall bracket. It spat flame into the straw beneath it; the man kicked at the straw to clear an area. Then, keeping his hand on the hilt of his sword, he moved toward Lyrec. “Sit,” he said. Lyrec obeyed. The young man drew his sword. Lyrec thought, This is it, then. I’m to be slain by a young executioner.

  To his surprise, the man knelt warily and sat cross-legged, the sword resting across his lap. For a long while silence reigned while he sought hopefully for some answer in the dark-bearded face across from him. He scratched at his side. “There are vermin in this straw,” he said. “You have no idea who I am, do you?”

  “No. Should I?”

  “I think not,” the young man answered superciliously. “My name will mean nothing to you, but I will tell it to you all the same. It’s Faubus. And I have been chosen to replace the late Lohtje Cheybal as commander of the armies of Secamelan.”

  Lyrec found himself disgusted with the arrogant young man. “If you came here to thank me,” he said, “you’ve wasted your time and used up too much of the precious little I have left. Hold me in contempt if you like, but do not act as if I’ve done you some service, or I’ll make you use that sword and cheat the hangman and the crowd above. And I doubt very much that your mad little king would care for that.” Faubus continued to stare at him. “Get away from me, do you understand? I did nothing to further your career. I did nothing at all.”

  Faubus nodded, then closed his eyes and wiped the oily sweat from his forehead.

  “I thought not. You didn’t kill the commander. The ghost did.”

  “I tried to stop it.”

  “Is that why you first demanded to see him?”

  “More or less. At that point I had no idea he was to be the victim—just that someone was to die by Miradomon’s hand.”

  “Miradomon? The ghost has a name?”

  “He has a name, commander, but he’s no ghost. Would that he were.”

  “Then you have to tell me what he is. There may be no way in which I can aid you—I’m to lead the army out at dawn and you are to die soon after. I need to know what I’m facing, who I’m fighting. I know what it is to command—Cheybal taught me himself—but I’ve no experience with enemies who defy the restrictions of flesh and blood. How do I stop him?”

  Lyrec shook his head slowly. “I don’t believe you can.”

  “But you could?”

  “My most recent attempt certainly declares otherwise, but I know where he dwells, and it’s a place you can’t reach. And I have a weapon … maybe.”

  “Who are you people? Are you … are you gods?”

  “It always comes round to defining us. Why is that so important to you? All right, yes, we’re gods. Not your gods—I fear they’ve already succumbed to Miradomon’s power. We don’t make your thunder or rain or cause your sun to rise. But he could destroy your sun if he had a mind to.”

  Aghast, Faubus said, “Destroy the sun?”

  “He’s done it before. On other worlds, some of which—the nearest ones—were virtually identical to this one.”

  “Other worlds? Like ours?”

  Lyrec remembered that no one on this world knew or even suspected the existence of other living worlds in their own universe, much less parallels connected by invisible doorways and inhabited by intelligent beings whose existences were linked to theirs in a way so beautiful and fundamental that it was impossible to describe. To comprehend even this minuscule amount of reality was asking too much of Faubus.

  “Other worlds,” the new commander repeated. “Gods from other worlds.”

  “Specifically from a world that was never supposed to have contact with yours. But Miradomon was—is—insane. He found the means to gain power through the destruction of worlds, of life, and he … he eliminated his own race.”

  “Except for you,” corrected Faubus.

  “And me!” yelled a voice from above, through the shaft.

  “Who is that?”

  “Another of my kind.”

  “How many of you are there roaming about Secamelan?”

  Lyrec smiled in spite of himself. “Just the three.”

  “And possibly a fourth,” Borregad added.

  “Wait, please,” begged Faubus. “This is too much all at once. Let me think a moment.” He looked down into a handful of straw.

  They gave him silence in which to assemble what they had told him.

  He asked, “How will this…Miradomon set about harming us?”

  “I’m not certain of all the intermediate steps. At first, as I told you, he was satisfied to simply eliminate worlds by exploding their suns. Either this bored him, or else he discovered that he absorbed more energy if he set about meticulously wiping out individuals. I’m inclined to think it amuses him to do so. The last few worlds he’s conquered have, we believe, slaughtered themselves in genocidal rage, nation after nation. He manipulates you into war even as you sit here.”

  Faubus crushed the reeds of straw in his hand. “But why? Why does he do this?”

  “Because he absorbs death. He thrives on it. He made Trufege go to Ukobachia and lay waste to it—I know someone who saw him there, a huge white-robed figure. He fed on the destruction like maggots feasting on a corpse. And now you will go to battle and feed him again.”

  “And you actually believe he has killed Voed and Mordus?”

  “Killed or subdued them in order to take their place.” He kept to himself the opinion that these deities had never existed at all prior to Miradomon’s impersonation of them.

  Faubus resheathed his sword as he stood. “I’ll do what I can,” he promised, “but my allies are certain to be few. So far as I know, not one person besides myself would give you a second thought. And Tynec has the whole city in pandemonium, so no one has time to think. But I’ll try.” He started away.

  Lyrec stood as well and called to Faubus. “There’s something I should like to know, and that is why you bothered to come.”

  Looking down, Faubus smiled as at some private joke. “The guard outside would tell you it’s because I am too young for command, that Faubus is a fool. But the reasons are two: First, last night, when you asked for Cheybal, the guard couldn’t locate him and so came to me. We were in the hall when you burst in and, although most of the crowd separated us, even I could see the sorry condition of your clothes.

  “And the guard had said you might be one of Cheybal’s secret spies because you’d obviously ridden long and hard to get here—but they brought you down wearing a pristine Ladomantine uniform. You hadn’t ridden here in that. Now, that alone might not be enough to do anything other that confuse me; but, you see, the commander kept a private diary designed for the sole purpose of enlightening his successor about what it was like to be the commander of Secamelan’s armies. There were a good many blank pages left to be filled.” He fell silent for a moment.

  “The diary,” he continued, “came into my hands last night, once I’d been assigned to his post. I found it in his quarters. My quarters. He had se
en this robed figure of Miradomon on the balcony where they found you, not three nights before—just as I had seen it in the forest where we found King Dekür’s body and lost his daughter. Just as I saw it again last night after I’d sent those men up to get you. I was standing below, wondering why it took them so long to climb a short flight of steps and capture one man. When I moved back to see up there, the curtain parted just for an instant and there was that whiteness again. I admit I didn’t see the bolt fired, but that hardly matters, does it? Probably half the people in the room saw what I saw, but Tynec took immediate charge of the situation and proved so insistent in naming you the assassin that everyone now doubts their own eyes. I knew better than to argue, and I was proved right. Cheybal believed our young king is possessed.”

  “And what do you believe, commander?”

  “I? I no longer know anything, except that I’m scared to death. And not of you.” He crossed to the door and hammered on it. The door squealed open and Faubus went out.

  “Well, that was a waste,” declared Borregad.

  Lyrec strode beneath the grille. “How can you say that? He believes us.”

  “How perfectly wonderful. You should have taken him over. We could have used him to guide us out of here.”

  Lyrec laughed. “Borregad, really. Do you think he could walk around this castle with us in tow and not be questioned? And, sooner or later, the king would find out, at which point Faubus would simply join me on the scaffold. And the next person would probably believe everything the king says.”

  Disgruntled and refusing to give in, the cat said, “Well, he won’t serve any purpose this way. You heard him say he has no allies. What’s he going to do now—convert the guards to our cause?”

  “I have to agree with you there. It seems you’ll have to go on alone, return to Grohd’s tavern and use the crex yourself.”

  “How? I’m a cat. I can hardly pick it up.”

  “You’re all that’s left, damn you! Am I supposed to tunnel out of here through solid rock?”

  Then a voice nearby said, Yes, I’ve found him. He seems to be arguing with someone, but I cannot make out who it is. Lyrec looked all around the room, seeing nothing at first. The torch revealed all but the deepest corners of the dungeon. No one was close enough to have spoken.

  At first, he thought his eyes must be deceiving him as a vague form appeared, growing more substantial by the moment: a small form, that of a child, a girl with pale hair and a strange design on her forehead that seemed to glow. Hello, she said somewhat timidly.

  “Hello,” he replied. He understood what was happening. “Where are you?”

  In another room in the castle. Her words were inside his head, but her lips moved as if speaking them. He found this effect disconcerting. I won’t be able to do this long. It makes me tired.

  “Of course.” He recalled where he had seen her now—in the arms of the dark-skinned ambassador who’d held Cheybal’s hand as he died. She was the girl the commander warned his friend to listen to.

  You must escape. If you die, there is no one else to stand in his way.

  Borregad, who was also party to her words, said, “What about me?”

  “Pretensions of grandeur,” Lyrec said, “Hush and let her speak.”

  There are two people coming to help you, she said, but they cannot slip past your guards without a struggle. Can you aid them?

  “Possibly. I don’t know.”

  It has to be soon—they left when I made contact.

  “I’ll try.”

  Good, she said, and faded like the sun behind a cloud. Her voice continued briefly: I will pray to the gods for you.

  Lyrec pondered for a moment, then walked over to the door and leaned against it, listening, his eyes closed. Borregad grew quickly impatient without any sounds from below and called out, “I could pray to the gods, too, for all the good it would do.”

  “Shh!”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean, if you want me to have a chance at escape, then keep your vicious little mouth shut.” He lowered his head and began concentrating once more. Above in the yard, the cat stood up and marched off in a blind rage. He scrambled back a moment later, having been nearly run over by the wheel of a wagon. He sat down, huffing, beside the grille and waited with what little patience he could muster.

  Lyrec strained to make contact with the minds beyond his cell. They were distant, hard to find, but soon he could almost touch them. “What’s happening now?’” Borregad called down. The contact shattered, Lyrec slammed his forehead angrily against the door. He marched quickly across the cell, kicking over a water bucket in the center of the dungeon and soaking one leg. He gestured up the shaft, though the cat could not see him. “Listen to me, you black thickwit, when I am taken out of here and up the scaffold steps and they ask me as they tighten the rope if I have any final statement to make, I will take the utmost satisfaction in shouting to the crowd, ‘I wouldn’t be here at all but for my dear friend, whom I rescued years ago just so he could foil my attempts at survival and drive me to commit murder with his unremitting blather!’ Do you understand what I am saying?”

  “Mmm.”

  “If you open your mouth again, I’ll see to it these creatures erect a little toy scaffold right beside mine and hang you with me!”

  Silence came from above. The torch went out.

  Lyrec crossed the room once more, tripping across the empty bucket again, and this time furiously kicking it away.

  *****

  The two guards stood stiffly at attention though no one was near. Both of them knew who was in the cell, and both knew what Tynec would do if they did not fulfill their roles perfectly. But neither man knew what to do with the figure that emerged out of the shadows. The figure walked toward them—backwards. They exchanged a look of utter bewilderment. The one nearer the strange figure said, “Hold there or I’ll be forced to cut you down.” He saw that the figure wore a Ladomantine uniform, and he raised his sword to strike. In that moment, the figure turned around, faced them with eyes shining a blinding silver that expanded and surrounded them. The world became silvery and soft. The two guards slid quietly to the ground and lay side by side.

  The figure disappeared.

  Inside the cell, Lyrec crumpled over in a dead faint.

  *****

  Faubus and his comrade found Lyrec like that when they arrived minutes later. At first they thought he was dead, that perhaps the white-robed fiend had swept through the dungeon. But he moaned and his eyelids fluttered open. He looked up into a dark face with a heavy mustache and even heavier eyelids. The man seemed half-asleep.

  “Who are you?” Lyrec asked.

  “That is your question. Mine is ‘What in the name of Voed am I doing here?’” said Bozadon Reket. “Are you able to get up on your own?”

  “The strain of overcoming the guards …”

  Reket eased him down and dusted off his hands as he stood. “Yes, especially from within the next room,” he said with a hint of sarcasm. He caught Faubus’s fretful gaze. “But it has been nothing but Kobach children and demons in white robes and spells and skullduggery since the moment Cheybal was killed. I am supposed to be packing and on my way home to tranquillity and good mulcet.” He glared down at Lyrec. “Instead, because of this lunacy, I’m likely to stick my head in a noose next to yours.” He sensed Faubus about to say something and swung around to face him. “If you hadn’t shown me what Cheybal wrote…and if he…and I am guarding a little girl, ostensibly from a little boy! Mordus take my soul, I am not responsible for my actions, I refuse. I mean, who are you?”

  “My name is Lyrec.” He stood dusting himself off. “I’m sorry you’ve been inconvenienced.”

  Anticipating another outburst from Reket, Faubus interjected, “You’ll need a uniform so you can ride out with the army. No one will know the difference if we’re careful—you’ll be one soldier amidst hundreds. Even I won’t be able to single you out, which is to say
I am—we are—trusting you that far.”

  Lyrec nodded but made no reply.

  Chapter 21.

  “What do you mean, ‘gone’?! Gone where—for a stroll? For a meal?” Tynec gripped the arms of the throne and leaned like a ship’s prow-figure into the face of the guard. His purpled, apoplectic, spitting visage made the guard hunch his shoulders up to protect his neck as if expecting Tynec to cut off his head there and then. “Where?” the king repeated.

  The guard searched the other faces nearby for a sign that someone might come to his aid, but those around him refused to look at him, afraid that his plight could be communicable. Even his partner, who was too busy praying the king would not execute them, offered him no hope. All hope of salvation extinguished, the guard replied, “I have no idea, my king. He has vanished into the air, fair Tynec. When we opened the door to lead him out for execution, he was missing, generous king.”

  “He will not be the only thing missing if you cannot account for his disappearance, idiot guard.” As he drew his breath, the guard imagined a dozen potentially fatal fates. Tynec snapped, “Oh, get away—both of you!” Then, to the crowd: “All of you, out! Scatter and let me be.”

  The cluster of attendants dispersed upon his word, and were careful not to go in the same direction as the guards.

  Tynec sat back alone in the great hall. “They won’t find him. He is not one of them—they can’t recognize that, but I should have. His appearance last night defies everything. Perhaps he is a divinity of a sort. Maybe this world could spawn his like—someone less mortal and less afraid, stronger and cleverer and willing at least to entertain me with his bravery before I kill him. Could he be from one of those other worlds I destroyed, some lingering—but no, I left nothing undone. No one survived my passing. Then, who?

  “That child, that little witch would know. She alone made the contact. He could be a Kobach creation. There are some of them left free and alive. If they’ve fashioned him, though, then I greatly underestimated their powers—if he can transform his flesh and essence. I must speak to her… but not as Tynec. That may have been a mistake, driving her away, and I’ve no time to regain her trust that way. They’re all so ripe for dying now. And my pets await their new transformation and voyage.” He chuckled quietly. “I shall just have to rouse my avenger one more time. It’s a good thing I didn’t dispense with him.