"Don't put money on it," growled Brett. "Show me a safe route out of here, and I'd be gone so fast it would make your head spin."
"I've played Owen and Hazel in half a dozen operas," said Jesamine. "Marvelous roles, of course, but I can't say I really knew either of them. You only have to look at a place like this to realize they lived in a whole different world from us. We've all got soft, since then."
"Maybe that's part of what we're fighting for," said Lewis. "So that we can all be safe enough that it's all right for us to be soft."
"Oh, very deep," said Brett. "This is all Owen's fault anyway. He should have stopped the Terror before he left. It's his unfinished business that's going to kill us all."
He knew that was unfair even as he said it, and no one bothered to answer him. Lewis glared around the giant, empty hall as though he could force answers out of it through sheer strength of will.
"You were here before, Oz," he said abruptly. "Or at least, your progenitor was. What do you think we should do now?"
"It wasn't exactly me," the ship's AI said uncertainly through their comm implants. "When you get right down to it, I'm just a Shub subroutine created around bits and pieces left over from the original Ozymandias. What memories I have from that time are fragmentary at best. Still, this place is more familiar than most. I remember… a room full of mirrors, whose shimmering surfaces revealed possible futures. I remember automatons, repair robots in the shape of men, still striding elegantly through the Standing after a thousand years. And I remember finding the Shadow Men, Imperial assassins set after Giles Deathstalker. He killed them, and then put their stuffed and mounted bodies on display."
"Okay," said Brett. "This is seriously creeping me out."
"I never liked Giles," said Oz. "Never trusted him."
"Giles Deathstalker," Lewis said thoughtfully. "The first and founder of my Clan. Our family archives don't have much on him. Just an old portrait, and stories of some of the great battles he fought. Owen found him preserved here, the last remnant of an earlier time. They fought side by side in the Great Rebellion, and then Giles went bad, and Owen had to kill him. Deathstalker luck…"
"Aren't there any happy endings in your family's history?" said Jesamine.
"Always a first time for everything," said Lewis, smiling. "Oz, anything else you can tell us?"
"For some time now, I've been trying to make contact with the Standing's computers," said the AI. "I can tell they're all back online now, awake and aware. The amount of power being generated in this castle is simply staggering, and it's still rising. All kinds of systems are waking up, and I don't recognize even half of them. Lewis, the castle's computers have to know you're here. I'm trying every contact protocol in my records, but they won't open up to me. They feel… strange. Not like any form of computer mind I've ever encountered before. I think… they're even older than the Standing itself… Lewis, I might have an idea. An almost memory from Owen's time. You talk to them. Declare yourself, your name and your heritage. And show them the ring. Go on—they're listening. They're waiting."
Lewis rose slowly to his feet, and the others got up with him. He headed towards the center of the hall. The others wanted to go with him, but he waved them back. He stopped in the middle of the great and empty hall, and looked around him. He could almost feel another presence there with him, surrounding him.
"I am Lewis Deathstalker," he said, not proudly or defiantly, just calmly stating a fact. His voice was strong and clear in the quiet. "I am outlawed now, but still I am the first of my Clan, as Owen was before me. And I have come here as he did, in search of help from my Family. Because if I fall, the Empire falls with me. As proof… I bear Owen's ring. The Deathstalker ring: sign and symbol of Clan authority."
He held up his hand to show off the chunky black-gold ring, and the castle answered him. All the lights in the hall came on at once, fierce and powerful, blasting away the shadows of centuries. A great viewscreen appeared, floating above the cold fireplace. Images came and went swiftly, of faces familiar and unknown, but all of them Deathstalkers. A great beam of light, shimmering and silver, slammed down right next to Lewis, a spotlight so blinding and intense that they all had to look away. The intensity slowly faded, and when they looked again they saw a single figure standing in the spotlight, held in place like a moth on a pin. He was tall and sparely built, with muscular arms. He had a solid, lined face, with a silver gray goatee beard, his long hair pulled back in a scalp lock. He wore a set of battered, shapeless furs, bunched at the waist by a wide leather belt. He wore thick golden armlets, and heavy silver rings on his fingers. He bore a heavy sword on one hip, and a gun of unfamiliar design on the other. He looked fierce and dangerous, cold and determined, and every inch a Deathstalker.
"My God," said Jesamine. "It's Giles."
"Ghosts," said Brett. "I told you…"
"Shut up, Brett," said Lewis. He studied his coldly smiling ancestor for a long moment, and then extended his hand with the ring and thrust it into the light. It felt freezing cold, painfully cold, but he held the hand steady. "I am Lewis Deathstalker."
"I know you are," said Giles. "I heard you the first time."
The spotlight snapped off, leaving them all blinking. Lewis snatched back his hand. The holo figure of Giles, if that was all it was, looked at everyone in the group—including Guide, still shrinking away in his corner—and sighed loudly before turning his attention back to Lewis. "I'm not your ancestor, boy. I am all that remains of the computers who once ran this Standing, speaking to you through the image of Giles Deathstalker. Thought it might make this easier for both of us. Two hundred years and more since anyone came calling, to disturb my rest. Should have known only really bad news would bring anyone back here. Why were you outlawed, Lewis?"
"For loving the wrong woman," Lewis said steadily. "And for speaking out against evil."
"Yes, that sounds familiar," said Giles. "I suppose I should ask what's become of the Family, but since I'm not really Giles, I don't think I really care. You bear the ring; that's all that matters."
"Hey, hold on," said Brett. "Anyone could just walk in here with that ring on, and claim they were a Deathstalker."
Giles glared at him, and Brett immediately went back to hiding behind Rose. "No, they couldn't," said Giles. "The ring is coded to the Deathstalker line, and it has all kinds of nasty tricks built into it to take care of imposters."
Lewis deliberately didn't look down at the ring on his finger, but an icy chill caressed the back of his neck for a moment. If his family line had been just a little further distanced from the main line… He made himself smile easily at Giles, even though he found talking to the original Deathstalker more than a little disturbing, given the bad end Giles eventually came to. He wondered if the computers knew.
"We come here in need," he said carefully. "Not just ours, but all Humanity's. The Empire is endangered. The Terror has finally found us. We need to locate the missing Owen Deathstalker and Hazel d'Ark. Can you assist us?"
Giles scowled. "The Terror… I know things about the Terror, though I don't know how I know them. And I know things about Owen, and what he found at the hidden heart of the Madness Maze, that no one else knows. A voice came and told me these things, two hundred years ago, after the defeat and restoration of the Recreated. It told me that Humanity must evolve, achieve its full potential, because something awful was coming, from far beyond our galaxy. The Terror. It is not life as we know it, but far more. It eats souls, and its young incubate in the hearts of suns. It brings madness and suffering, and the death of all that lives. The Terror is one and many, both and neither; an extradimensional creature beyond our understanding, and all of space and time is its prey. As flies to wanton boys, are we to the Terror."
"We're dead," said Brett.
"How do we stop it?" said Lewis. "We tried sending people through the Madness Maze centuries ago. It killed them all."
"Maybe they weren't the right people," Giles said indifferentl
y. "I know more about the Maze. Do you want to hear it?"
"Do we have a choice?" said Brett.
"Not really," said Giles. "At the heart of the Madness Maze lies a great secret: the Darkvoid Device."
"That's it!" said Jesamine. "The Darkvoid Device snuffed out hundreds of stars and their planetary systems in a moment! That's the weapon we need to stop the Terror!"
"It's not a weapon," said Giles. "It's a child. My child, transformed and empowered in the Maze. As a baby, he created the Darkvoid in a moment of panic. He knows better now. I never got to see him, after I left him in the Maze's embrace, a thousand years ago. But Owen saw him, and spoke with him. I never got to see how my son grew up. Perhaps you will."
"Owen," Lewis said patiently. "Tell us about Owen."
"The voice spoke to him directly," said Giles. "It told him many things. Secret things. Far more than it told anyone else."
"This voice," said Jesamine. "If it knows so much, perhaps we have a friend, or at least an ally, from somewhere else. Maybe even equal in power to the Terror!"
"Perhaps," said Giles. "I have no way of knowing. It could be just the sole survivor of an earlier assault by the Terror. There are many players in this game, and only some of them have revealed their true nature."
Lewis remembered the little gray man who'd given him the Deathstalker ring at Douglas's Coronation. He said he was Vaughn, an old friend of Owen's, but Lewis had seen Vaughn's grave on Lachrymae Chnsti. So what was he really? A ghost? Lewis scowled at Giles's holo, his ugly face taking on even uglier lines. Of late, Lewis's whole life had been haunted by the past, by ghosts who refused to lie quiet, and he was getting pretty damned sick of it.
"Tell me about Owen," he said flatly. "Tell me what happened to him."
"Some say he's dead. Some say he isn't." Giles's holo shrugged easily. "If you want answers you can trust, you'll have to go to Haden, to the heart of the Madness Maze, and speak with the child. Only he knows for sure."
"Even though the odds are the Maze will madden and murder us?" said Lewis.
"Deathstalker luck," said Giles, smiling nastily. "The Maze is the key. Everything else turns around it, and always has. You must go in, cousin. It is your destiny."
"It might be his, but it sure as hell isn't mine," said Brett. "I'm not going in, and you shouldn't either, Lewis. The odds suck, big time."
"Don't worry," said Rose. "I'll hold your hand."
"That thought doesn't help much, actually," said Brett. He folded his arms across his chest and looked determinedly in another direction, his lower lip protruding sulkily.
"You know, an awful lot of people seem really determined that we should all enter the Maze," said Jesamine. "A suspicious—or even only partly paranoid—person might well suspect that we are being manipulated. Guided. Used, by other people, for their own purposes."
"I just had a really spooky thought," said Brett, so taken with his new idea that he forgot he was busy being upset and outraged. "What if… what if it's the Madness Maze itself that's behind all this? Could the Maze, or the child within, have been manipulating events all along from behind the scenes, just to bring a Deathstalker back to it?"
"You're right, Brett," said Lewis. "That is a really spooky thought. If you have any more thoughts like that, do feel free to keep them to yourself.
"Look, if we really are going to go to Haden, and I still hope and pray that an outbreak of rational thought and good sense will prevail so that we don't have to," said Brett. "If we really are going to that bloody hellworld, it is one hundred percent guaranteed certain to be quarantined and very heavily guarded. You can bet serious money that Finn will have reinforced the usual patrols with every nasty and vicious defense he's got. We are talking starcruisers, orbiting minefields, battle espers and mindbombs. Which means if we really are going, we're going to need powerful weapons of our own. So how about it, Giles? You got anything here we can use?"
"Go out of here, by the main doorway," said Giles. "Follow the signs, down the corridor and down nine levels, and you will come to a stash of First Empire high tech and weaponry, held inviolate behind a stasis field for over a thousand years. Even I don't know what's in there. The real Giles inherited it from his ancestors, long before he assumed the Deathstalker name, and either he never got the chance to use it or he never found the nerve to try. First Empire tech can be very dangerous. We have all fallen a long way since those days."
"First Empire weapons!" said Brett, all but rubbing his hands together. "Oh, people, we are talking serious serious money here!"
"Shoot first, make money later," said Lewis. "Let's take a look."
"Say good-bye first," said the holo of Giles Deathstalker. "We won't be meeting again. This Standing has come to the end of its days. The castle was badly damaged, inside and out, even before Jenny Psycho nursed it here and crash-landed it in the jungle. Systems are failing, the power plant is fading, the very stone is crumbling. I activated the systems one last time, in service to Clan Deathstalker. Now, it is time… for me to rest. Allow me to wish you all good luck. You're going to need it."
The silver spotlight snapped off, taking Giles with it, and without them the great and empty hall seemed much darker.
"Castles can be rebuilt," said Lewis. "Systems can be repaired. Power plants can be replaced. Whatever happens on Haden, I will come back for you. You are the history of my Family."
He waited, but there was no reply. Jesamine tugged urgently at his sleeve.
"I really think we should get moving, darling. If the power plant is on its last legs, there's no telling how long we've got before everything starts shutting down again. I definitely don't want to be stumbling through these corridors in the dark. We might never find our way out."
"Wonderful," said Brett. "Something else to worry about. I know, shut up, Brett."
"I hoped I'd have more time," said Lewis. "To walk the passageways and galleries of the original Standing of my Clan; to feel like a real Deathstalker… But there's never enough time for all the things we need to do. Let's go."
As they left through the main doorway, a glowing arrow appeared, floating in midair. It drifted away before them, and they followed it through many intersections and down nine levels. Lewis kept careful note of all the twists and turns, just in case. Rose was walking point beside him again, gun in hand, while Jesamine and Brett followed behind. Guide brought up the rear. He hadn't spoken a word since they entered the great hall. He had been made an observer in his own world, a bit player in someone else's story, and he didn't know whether to feel bitter or overawed. Great forces were at play here, and perhaps the best he could hope for was to be overlooked, when gods went to war.
They came at last to a solid steel door with no obvious handle or lock mechanism. The floating arrow disappeared. Brett was all over the door in a flash, checking it minutely from top to bottom, but eventually had to admit that there was nothing there for him to work with. He kicked the door in frustration, and then hobbled away to lean on Rose and cry bitter tears as he massaged his bruised toes. Lewis looked at the door for a long moment, and then said his name aloud. The door swung silently open before him, revealing the familiar blurred shimmer of a stasis field. And then that snapped off, like a bursting soap bubble. And inside…
"What the hell is this shit?" said Brett.
"Tech, of some kind," said Lewis.
"But I don't recognize any of it!" wailed Brett. "There's nothing here that looks like anything I'm familiar with, and I've been around. I thought there were supposed to be weapons here! Big, nasty weapons!"
"Some of it could be weapons," said Rose. "Let's try turning a few things on, and see what happens."
"Let's not," Jesamine said, very firmly. "There's no telling what some of this… stuff might do. And I really don't think we should turn anything on until we're sure we can turn it off again."
They all looked at the enigmatic shapes and forms laid out before them—obscure structures of glass and steel and crystal,
and other materials that couldn't easily be identified. Lights came and went, strange energies pulsed, and here and there pieces moved in unsettling ways, rotating through strange angles, and none of it made any sense at all. Just looking at some of it made their heads ache, as though they were looking at things too complicated—or too subtle—to be understood without some really sophisticated equipment as a mediator.
"This is why Giles never used any of it," Lewis said eventually. "Even a thousand years ago, this would have been beyond him. We forget just how advanced the First Empire was, and how far we've fallen since then. Maybe… our Empire is doomed to fall too. Only this time, there won't be anyone left to start the long climb back up again…"
"I just had a spooky thought," said Jesamine.
"Oh, don't you start," said Lewis.
"No, listen: could the Terror be something left over from the First Empire? Some awful Doomsday weapon they unleashed, and then couldn't shut down? Maybe that's why the First Empire fell?"
"I don't think so," said Lewis. "If I'm understanding what the voice said correctly, the Terror is older than that, from outside our galaxy…"
And then the whole castle shook around them. They all clung together as the floor bucked and heaved under their feet. New cracks appeared in the stone walls, and dust fell from the ceiling. The stasis field reestablished itself, and the steel door slammed shut. Alarms sounded, harsh and blaring, and Giles's voice said, "The Standing is under attack. Force shields have been activated. Weapons systems… are offline. Stardrive is offline. Available power cannot support full shields for more than two hours, twelve minutes. Sensors detect unusual energies operating."
"Show me what's happening!" yelled Lewis.
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