Pain lurks there, and worse. It is not the womb-like darkness where he dreams, but the dark of silence, death.
The end of being.
Voices whisper, reminding him, causing him to doubt, to wonder at...
But he is good. He who has suffered misery and redemption, containing more light and intelligence and imagination than a thousand of the ordinary.
He would save the world.
God watches his footsteps. He has seen it, how God singles him out.
DEEP IN THE basement of a house in the Bavarian mountains, a man dug through piles of papers, cursing. Papers circled him in a thick, teetering ring. A fire burned in the grate and he fed handfuls in periodically of those documents he’d already deemed useless or that simply annoyed him by their monotonous, bureaucratic prose.
He watched the edges turn black, then curl and crinkle up before bursting into flame. He held them until the fire nearly burnt him.
Like most humans, Galaith marked every moment of his life worth saving, so sorting the dross from the few things of value proved a complex and time-consuming task. Really, Galaith himself should have been a Nazi, given his obsession with narcissistic self-documentation.
As it was, Terian could only wade through, and hope his tedious searching would yield fruit.
This particular Terian body/personality configuration had once been another number in a much longer lineup. However, since Galaith killed most of his bodies, Terian renumbered what remained.
This body was now Terian-3.
Scandinavian in appearance, he stood at about six-foot-four. When pretending to be human, his ident cards described him as being in his late twenties. But he wasn’t human, of course. He was a seer, with a sight ranking well above average, and a body approximately one hundred years old.
Only a handful of his former selves remained in corporeal form. Not the original copy, or even one of the first four. Those earlier prototypes had all been destroyed when his mentor and friend of over eighty years, a being sometimes known as Galaith, sometimes as Daniel Caine or Roderick Beirmann or even as Hraban Novotny, decided to eliminate the body politic that was Terian.
Terian had colleagues working to correct that problem now. Still, even best case scenario dictated that it would take time. A lot of time.
The reality was, without the Pyramid, it may not be possible at all. Unless he found some way to rebuild, he might be forced to live in this fragmented, uncoordinated way until his very last body died of natural...or unnatural...causes.
It had been many years since the different parts of himself were forced to live in so few bodies. Truth be told, he had grown unskilled at negotiating compromises between the more crystalized elements of his own personality. Inhabiting separate bodies, he kept all parts compliant before through the strict hierarchy of the Pyramid.
Now, with two or three living crammed inside a single physical form, they bled into one another, argued, fought for their own wants and needs, even attacked one another outright.
And yet, they’d also never been so separate.
With the Pyramid, Terian had been able to coordinate all of his bodies as a single unit; the Pyramid itself gave them an overarching structure. Now they operated as truly separate entities, forced to coordinate as any individuals would.
This particular Terian, Terian-3, found the intricacies of their power struggles tedious.
How ordinary seers or even humans dealt with the competing wants and voices of their own minds lived completely beyond his ability to comprehend. It amazed him that more didn’t stick a gun in their mouths to silence the cacophony once and for all.
One voice in particular—belonging to what appeared in his mind as a sobbing, despondent boy in constant need of reassurance—made Terian want to gouge out his own eyes whenever it slid to the forefront of his consciousness.
Yet, this new world had its compensations.
Galaith was dead, killed by one of Terian’s own operatives with the help of Xarethe, a deliciously deviant seer as old as Methuselah.
Terian himself could never pretend to trust her, but he couldn’t deny she’d proven a powerful ally. She shared his frustration with Galaith’s unwillingness to deal decisively with the humans, no matter how destructive their goals.
So when Terian presented her with a plan to coup his former boss, he convinced her he could...and more importantly would...do better.
Terian occupied the position of the Head of the Rooks’ network now.
Only he lived as a king without a kingdom, and without the protection that a kingdom afforded. The beings previously swelling Galaith’s ranks had been scattered across the globe like so many bees without a hive and no way to find their way home. All that remained of the historical records of the Rooks lived in these boxes, and those like them scattered all over Europe and Asia.
Unfortunately, Alyson caught onto that fact faster than he would have credited her, especially given that her mate still hadn’t resurfaced.
Terian had hoped more survived the destruction of the Pyramid. After months of searching the wreckage of Barrier structures, however, he was forced to admit it was increasingly unlikely. Reduced to rummaging through garbage cans in the physical, or their equivalent in the endless documentation left behind by Galaith, Terian could only try to obtain the important bits before she and her army of worm-lovers got there first.
He dragged himself to his feet, stretching his back as he fumbled in his shirt pocket for a hiri—a sweet-smelling, faint-high-inducing wrap of dark weed. Hiri had been cultivated by Sarks for millennia before being mass-produced in more generic forms by humans.
Lighting the end, he sucked at it for a few seconds, letting the resin calm him as he stared around at the mess on the floor.
He had been so sure he’d find something here.
This had been the building where they trained Dehgoies, years ago. Galaith’s mountain home served many purposes back then. Training grounds, interrogation center, vacation spot. He’d entertained Third Reich bigwigs with extravagant parties staged to pay off the Gestapo. Mostly, Galaith needed them to look the other way as he exported seers through Asia. It had also been a place of negotiation when the Allies passed through these mountains, and later the site of that final treaty between the Rooks and the antiquated Council of Seven.
The thing was, Terian knew that they’d learned things about Dehgoies during his training. In every seer training such insights comprised the prerequisite for all that came after, no matter who the seer, no matter what their eventual role.
Yet, in Dehgoies’ case, Terian couldn’t for the life of him remember what any of those things were...a fairly telling detail, given their relationship in the years following. Since that gap constituted one of the few he could positively identify, he made up his mind to start there.
After all, the first rule of infiltration was to start with what one had.
The training would have begun with an extremely thorough scan. It would have debilitated the trainee for days, if not weeks. Copious records would be kept. Those records might have been destroyed following the advent of electronic storage...if it were anyone other than Galaith. The mere fact that Terian couldn’t remember told him that they’d indeed found something in Dehgoies’ past worth keeping, which meant originals.
Unfortunately, after six days of looking in every nook and cranny and storage box in the place, even ripping up floorboards and doing sonar readings of the basement foundations, he still had nothing.
Well...practically nothing. He found a yellowed receipt that indicated the three of them had, at one point, ordered several cases of single-malt Scotch.
Terian’s eyes drifted to the fireplace.
Pushing aside a stack of papers, he stepped up to the mantle. A funnel-shaped edifice of river stones and blackened elm, the fireplace wore the face of an old-fashioned clock embedded in the chipped mortar. He scanned it with his aleimi, or light body, but felt nothing. Inert matter yielded little in a scan anyw
ay, unless it contained an energetic imprint of some kind, and he didn’t get any kind of ping.
He began feeling over the river stones.
He came upon a loose one, rubbed smooth by countless washings, robin’s egg blue in color. He jiggled it a little, working it out of its indentation in the mortar. Once he could get a real grip, he tugged it the rest of the way out with his fingers.
As he did, the stone next to it came loose as well. Then the next.
Terian stacked them on the mantle...removing stones and mortar until he found himself looking at a hole about seven inches in height and a foot wide that stretched far back into the mortar and stone. He felt around inside with his hand. Seconds later, he pulled out a leather notebook a few inches thick, tied together with a frayed leather thong.
Terian unwound the cord from around the cover. He moved closer to the fire, thumbing the book open carefully. The neat, square lettering filling each page didn’t come from Galaith. Terian knew his old boss’ sprawling, calligraphy-style handwriting on sight.
Yet, the style of these characters, he knew also.
The block letters with their quirks in spelling and punctuation, the odd letter in cursive, unmistakably belonged to Dehgoies Revik.
Terian flipped through more pages and found more of the same even pen strokes. He glimpsed illustrations, what looked like mathematical formulae. Dehgoies had always been spatial in his thinking. Back in the day, he’d draw diagrams on bar napkins to illustrate points, even when drunk. Galaith called him his ‘multi-dimensionist’ due to his fascination for stretching dimensional rules between the Barrier and the physical.
It was a no-brainer, really, to set him to the task of making the network secure to outside infiltration.
Feeling a shiver of excitement, Terian flipped through page after page, turning each with care, until he found it.
Staring down at the meticulously-drawn blueprints for the original Pyramid, Terian felt another shiver go down his spine. He’d always suspected Dehgoies had created it. He’d known, somehow, in some part of his mind, even back then.
Still, to have it here, in his hands...Dehgoies’s first sketches, drawn by his own hand.
From what Terian could tell, studying the meticulous lines, the final hadn’t deviated much from these initial drawings, at least at its base. He traced the details with a finger almost lovingly, marveling again at his old partner’s genius. The Pyramid had been Revi’s creation, after all...not Galaith’s. And it had worked flawlessly.
Until a few months ago, that was.
Forcing back the whiny, irritating part of himself that wanted to make the memory maudlin, Terian read the text on the page before the first drawing. He hoped the book contained at least some clue as to the step-by-step building of the Barrier edifice.
But the words were about something different entirely.
...The boy unnerves me. It is weeks now, and I still cannot reach him.
Honestly, I do not understand why we cannot simply kill him, risk whatever result, but Galaith says that is impossible. It is something to do with the stasis, with what that doctor, the seer female with the face of a reptile, did to him. Despite who and what he is, I find everything about him disquieting. He looks at me as if he would kill me.
I hope Galaith knows what he is doing, letting him live...
Frowning, Terian flipped forward in the book, looking for an earlier passage that might give him a clue as to who or what Dehgoies was referring. Stopping at random, he read aloud, hearing Dehgoies’ cadences even in his own voice.
...They wiped my mind almost entirely, perhaps not long after I came to live in the Pamir. From what Galaith and I have been able to piece together, I was maybe eight or nine solar years when the memories just stop. And yet, there is no way to be sure. These games of the Seven add layer upon layer...no way of knowing where false begins and truth ends.
I remember my parents’ deaths...but as to whatever brought me to that dismal prison in Sikkim, I have no memory whatsoever. I have vague memories of the first world war, but I must have been too young to fight. Everything is blurred through this period, only starting up again when I began training under Vash in my twenties...
Terian flipped forward a few more pages.
...For now, Galaith wants the other one in the dark about this. He didn’t seem too happy about being sent away. He’s an odd one, Terian. I don’t know if he’s simply crazy, or the smartest seer I have ever met. Galaith tells me it is a mixture of the two...
Terian reread the last line, frowning.
He flipped forward then back in the crinkled pages. The dates spanned those weeks of Galaith and Terian’s first sessions with Dehgoies to entries written in the 1950s, long after he’d been a fully functioning member of the Rooks’ network of seers.
So who brought the journal back here?
Throwing a few more split logs on the fire, Terian sat cross-legged in front of the blaze.
Turning the crinkled pages all the way back to the front of the book, he settled himself in to read.
3
LEADER
“BRIDGE! HEY, BRIDGE!” He waved excitedly to his friend. “Over there! She’s over there...do you see her? She’s right there!”
The man’s voice rose over the babble of words in the poolroom, pulling me out of my head long enough to stare stupidly at the door.
We sat in one of the out-of-the-way bars in Seertown, on an edge of hillside overlooking a section of valley with a human monastery and a school. The bottom floor was an internet cafe and a store that sold everything from toilet paper to chocolate-covered biscuits and t-shirts with sayings written in Prexci for the tourists, as well as Vash’s—and now, regrettably, my—face on them.
The upper floor was pretty sparse, which meant mostly locals and ex-pats came here, not tourists so much. I’d taken to coming here with Jon and Cass when we just wanted to sit around and drink a beer. There was no alcohol in Vash’s compound, and most of the other bars were usually crowded enough that I’d be mobbed the second I walked in the door.
Someone had long ago painted the walls of the upstairs bar lemon yellow. Mercifully, the color had since faded, and now had water damage down part of the back wall, to the right of an old bar. The bar itself looked vaguely European, and may once have been expensive; made of pine, above its long mantle hung an elaborately etched mirror worn through to metal on all the edges. Dips in the floor made the pool tables a little squirrel-y to play on, and posters of the Dalai Lama and a painting of the sun and sword covered the two main walls.
A picture of me stood on the bar itself, but it was small enough that it didn’t bother me.
Tin lamps swung in lazy circles overhead every time someone slammed the door to the espresso bar below.
“Bridge! Hey, Miss Bridge...Esteemed Holy One!”
Before I could stop myself, I faced the man by the door.
My looking in his direction only made him beam wider...and anyway, it was already too late. Every seer and human in the place was staring at me. Those who hadn’t noticed me in my hoodie and jeans did a double-take, then looked surprised as well. Glancing at Jon and Cass, who sat with me at the bar, I sighed inwardly, even as Jon laughed.
“He’s subtle,” Cass said, sipping her beer. “Like a ninja, really.”
Jon grinned, leaning towards me. “Do you think he wants your autograph, Al? Or maybe just to touch you? Get some of that Bridge mojo?”
“Yeah,” Cass said. “I hear ‘end of the world’ is very in this year.”
“Maybe you could just sneeze on him?” Jon suggested.
“Or fart,” Cass added. “Of course, given all the momo you ate this morning, that might knock him out cold...”
I laughed, in spite of myself. “You’re a friggin’ riot, both of you.” I took a drink of the beer I’d been nursing for over an hour. Glancing once more at the beaming seer heading rapidly in our direction, I moved my glass around in a slow circle, then made up my mind and slid
off the stool. I was about to stand up when the Seven’s security detail headed the guy off, escorting him back out the door firmly, one hand on his shoulder. The seer looked confused but compliant.
At least Maygar wasn’t there. He would have thrown the guy into a wall by now.
“Well,” I said. “I guess that’s my cue.”
“No, stay.” Cass put a hand on my arm. “You never just hang anymore. You have time to be the Great Leader later...”
I glanced at Jon, and he nodded.
Chandre stood up, on Cass’ other side. She steadied herself by placing a hand on Cass’ shoulder.
“Yes!” she said, and I nearly laughed again, realizing she was actually tipsy. “Stay, Bridge! It is a holiday today...”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, fighting not to roll my eyes. “I know.”
It was the day before they celebrated Syrimne’s birthday. I had to get used to the fact that the guy who I’d grown up believing was the greatest mass murderer of all time was, in the world of the seers, kind of a folk hero.
“So...” Cass gave me a not-so-subtle smile, raising an eyebrow along with her fruity-looking drink. With her red lipstick and the low-cut t-shirt, she almost looked like herself, how I remembered her in San Francisco. She was still a little on the thin side, though.
“Revik’s coming back soon, right?” she said.
“He’s been delayed again,” I said.
I didn’t want to talk about that, either.
“What’s with all the delays?” Jon muttered.
“Beats me,” I said. But I’d wondered, too, of course.
“Maybe he’s worried about hurting his new bride,” Chan said, grinning, hanging over Cass’ shoulder. “You being human-raised and all...”
I gave her a hard look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” she shrugged. Her voice grew mock-serious. “It’s just he’s probably learning meditative techniques to keep himself calm. You know...so he doesn’t permanently damage you when he finally gets your clothes off...”
Allie's War Season One Page 50