by D. P. Prior
Or maybe it was something else, Nameless thought. Maybe the gauntlets were amplifying the axe’s malice.
He decided to remove them then and there, resign himself to a lifetime in the helm. It was all very well risking himself, but last time the axe had possessed him, too many people had died.
“What is it?” Aristodeus said, finally noticing him as he struggled to remove one of the gauntlets.
“It’s stuck,” Nameless said. “I can’t get it off.”
“Here,” Mephesch said, “let me.”
The homunculus pulled, but to no avail. Then he felt around the cuff of the gauntlet, and stood back, shaking his head.
“It’s fused to the skin. Like the helm.”
Aristodeus paled, but he quickly recovered. “There are bound to be problems. They were made by the Cynocephalus, after all. It changes nothing. Combined, the three artifacts will be too strong for the axe. The lore can’t be much different to that we used to meld the helm with his neck.”
Mephesch shrugged.
“I’m sure we can come up with a way to remove them,” Aristodeus said. “But first things first: we have Verusia to plan for.”
Ludo nodded sagely, and steepled his hands in prayer. “Otto Blightey.”
Galen shook his head, as if he strongly disapproved. “The Lich Lord.”
“If you hadn’t been late,” Aristodeus said to Nameless, “you would have heard me explain to the others that you must travel to Urddynoor next. To the Castle of Wolfmalen in Verusia. The second artifact is a suit of plate armor created by the Cynocephalus to make him invulnerable to physical attack. The problem for him was he hadn’t reckoned on Dr. Otto Blightey, a lich so long-lived, so vile, there is hardly a period in Urddynoor’s history that has not been darkened by his necrotic touch.”
Ludo picked up the story. “Blightey was once considered holy, a counselor to the Templum hierarchy, the conscience of Nousia. His was a name once lauded throughout Urddynoor.”
“Once,” Galen snorted. “But not anymore. The blackguard’s a devil, I tell you. Eminence, we should not get mixed up in this.”
“Galen, Galen,” Ludo said. “Whatever happened to your Nousian charity? A man does not go from being the greatest theologian Urddynoor has ever known—a man so pious, it is said he once levitated on the wings of prayer—to an irredeemable monster.”
“Try telling that to the Gallians who lost their lives on Verusia’s border, when the Lich Lord’s hordes came. Try telling that to our brave lads of the Templum Elect when they stood against an army of cadavers at Trajinot.”
“All I am saying, Galen,” Ludo said with a trace of irritation in his voice, “is that no one is beyond the mercy of Nous. Not even Blightey.”
“Poppycock,” Galen said.
Ludo turned a chastising look on him, and Galen wilted.
“Forgive me, Eminence. I forgot my place. And I’m no theologian.”
“No, Galen. No, you are not. We should speak later, when you are ready to humble yourself before the lord Nous.”
“Eminence,” Galen said, clicking his boot heels together.
“I always thought the Lich Lord was a story to frighten children with,” Albert said. “What was that poem Quintus Quincey wrote about Blightey? My bitch of a mother used to relish reading me that one before bed.”
“The Ballad of Jaspar Paris and Renna Cordelia,” Ludo said.
“That’s the one.” Albert set aside his jerky and leaned forward in his chair. He half-closed his eyes, as if remembering:
“The maiden Jaspar rode until,
Her head fell on the floor;
Cordelia’s blade now slick and still,
A saving grace no more.
The skull did rise in curling flame
To fix poor Renna in
That deathly grin, that leeching pain
That drew her soul to him.”
It was deathly quiet for a moment, until Aristodeus said, “That’s what you will be up against.”
“A flying skull?” Nameless said. “Shouldn’t take more than a solid stomp of my boot to shatter it into a thousand pieces.” Especially backed up by the power of Sartis’s gauntlets.
Shadrak grinned, aimed two fingers, and cocked his thumb. “My way’s even easier.”
“It’s invulnerable,” Aristodeus said. “Just like the armor you will need to steal. Blightey has no body of his own, you see. He was burned at the stake by the Templum, but his skull had been infused with Supernal forces.” He looked about to explain but then said, “All you need to know is that the skull survived. It was cast into the Abyss by no less than the Archon himself. But that wasn’t an end to it. Blightey’s skull terrorized the infernal realm. He took a demon’s body for his own, melted away its head, and settled himself atop its neck. And then he went looking for the Cynocephalus. Even the son of the Demiurgos was cowed by Blightey’s malice. The Lich Lord took his invulnerable armor and used it to wade through the black river that runs like an artery through the Abyss.”
“No way to kill it, then?” Nameless said. “Sounds like a challenge.”
“The challenge ain’t to kill it,” Shadrak said. “It’s to get the armor.”
“Exactly,” Aristodeus said. “In and out like a thief in the night.”
“Or a baresark with a goat,” Nameless said.
But no one was laughing.
THE TRUTH OF WHO YOU ARE
Shadrak left the others in the plane ship’s control room in an atmosphere of doom and foreboding. Some of it was down to the horror stories Albert had been weaving about Otto Blightey, the Lich Lord of Verusia, but the rest was down to Nameless. Whatever Aristodeus said to the contrary, it wasn’t looking good. Not after what the dwarf had done to Sartis.
When he reached his cabin, Bird was waiting outside as arranged.
“So, let me guess,” Shadrak said as the door slid open and they went in. “You’re going to tell me we’re the same: a couple of shit-stirring homunculi spawned straight from the arse of the Demiurgos. You ain’t the first.”
Shadrak wasn’t stupid. No matter how much he kicked against the idea, it forced him to look at questions he’d left unanswered all his life: such as why he was so shogging small compared to everyone else; where he got his quick healing; and most of all, where the shog he came from, who his parents were. He’d always known Kadee was his foster mother—they resembled each other as much as fire and ice; but he’d assumed he had a real mother somewhere. And a father. He’d always told himself he didn’t give a shog, that parents who’d abandon a child weren’t worth the effort of finding. Unless they were dead, of course, but Kadee would have told him, if they were. That said, Kadee hadn’t told him a whole lot, except some cock and bull story about the gods of the Dreamers bringing him to her.
Bird seated himself on the edge of the bed. It was a shogging liberty that would have earned him a stab in the face under normal circumstances, but Shadrak needed to hear what he had to say.
“Do you ever wonder about this ship?” Bird’s eyes rolled about the room. “How you came by it? You, and no one else?”
It was a matter of blind chance, nothing more. He’d been fleeing for his life, and scurried down a filthy hole that turned out to be the entrance to the sewers the plane ship had merged with.
“Guess I was just lucky,” Shadrak said. He stood awkwardly for a moment, then settled himself cross-legged on the floor.
Bird shook his head. “You found it when you needed it, Shadrak, because deep down, you remembered it was there.”
“No,” Shadrak said. “Because that makes it sound like I knew about it and forgot; but I never forget.”
“You remember your infancy?”
Shadrak drew a blank.
“Seeing Kadee for the first time?”
“Nope.”
“Memory is a skill,” Bird said. “One you have honed over many years.”
He was right there. Shadrak had treated it as a muscle, like any other; practi
ced all manner of exercises until he could take in everything about a place, a person, a mission, and play it back in his mind when he needed it.
“It’s how you survive in the guilds,” he said. “Have to know what everyone’s doing, where they live, who’s said what to who.”
“Yes, yes,” Bird said, “but before you learned the skill, your recollection was as flawed as anyone else’s, yes?”
It seemed a fair point. Shadrak nodded.
“Children seldom remember much,” Bird said, “and a child of trauma even less.”
“Really?” Shadrak said. “You seem to know a whole lot about me. Stuff I don’t even know about myself.”
Bird looked away. He drew in a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “Kadee was good to you, was she not?”
“No one better.”
Bird faced him again, a sad smile curling his lips. “The Dreamer god Mamba chose her. I doubt many women would have taken in a sickly-looking child with such unnerving eyes. Even your own people, even the homunculi, rejected you.”
A sudden weight filled Shadrak’s skull, and he held his head to stop it from crashing into the floor.
“We are both homunculi, Shadrak, you must see that. Children of the Demiurgos.”
“Lies,” Shadrak said. He tried to stand, but swooned and would have fallen had Bird not sprung up to catch him. “Kadee is my mother, Kadee is my mother,” he said over and over, as if repeating it could make it true.
“Your foster mother, yes,” Bird said, making Shadrak sit on the bed and standing over him. “But you have no real mother. None of us do. We are begotten, not made. We are like scales sloughing from the essence of the Demiurgos.”
“The Father of Lies,” Shadrak said. “What’s that make you?” What does it make me?
“Deception runs thick in our blood,” Bird said. “But some of us have chosen to swim against the tide.”
Shadrak glared at him. “What does that even mean?”
“We are a race to whom trickery and betrayal are second nature. We work our father’s will beyond the confines of the Abyss. It was the homunculi who brought science to Sektis Gandaw, and we have influenced a thousand others besides. This ship is of our design. Without it, Gandaw would have perished on Urddynoor during the first uprising against his technocracy, long before the time you call the Reckoning.”
“You saying that’s why I do what I do?” Shadrak said. “Why I’m a thief and an assassin? Because it’s in my blood?”
“What I’m saying,” Bird said, “is that what we are does not have to determine what we choose to become.”
Shadrak lay back on the bed and shut his eyes against the pounding in his head.
Bird leaned over him. “Even the Demiurgos was created, Shadrak. Freedom to choose is not contingent upon his wishes.”
“So, let me get this right.” Shadrak opened his eyes so he could see Bird’s reaction. “You’re some kind of naughty child who won’t do your daddy’s bidding?”
Bird chuckled. “Not just me. There is a group of us—the Sedition. Perhaps one day, you might—”
“Join you?” Shadrak rolled over and looked the other way. “Yeah, right. Like I ain’t got enough on my plate without pissing off the Demiurgos.”
“You may already be pissing him off,” Bird said, sounding decidedly uncomfortable using Shadrak’s term. “What do you think these quests are all about? And what about your involvement in bringing down Sektis Gandaw?”
“Who’s to say these quests aren’t what he wants?” Shadrak countered.
“Mephesch doesn’t think so.”
“Aristodeus’s pet? What if he’s just hoodwinking you? Nameless said he was there before, working for Sektis Gandaw. You sure you can trust him?”
“It’s one of the reasons I know I can,” Bird said. “Who do you think delayed the start of the Unweaving? Gremlins in the machines? It was Mephesch, also, who inspired me to seek my own path above ground in Qlippoth.”
“The land of nightmares? That had to be fun.”
Bird chewed his lip and cocked his head. “I learned a lot there. Assimilated, you might say. If I had not done so, you would not be here today.”
“What?” Shadrak said.
Bird eyed him for a moment. “Patience, Shadrak. There is much to tell. I had been meaning to approach you since my brother Abednago mentioned an albino of our race leaving Arx Gravis with the Nameless Dwarf. It was never the right time back then. Our eyes and ears were focused on what Nameless might do. When he found the black axe, he became the chief threat to our cause, but encased in the helm, it was difficult to say how he would turn out. Aristodeus felt he could still be used against the Demiurgos, if only the black axe could be destroyed. Your friend, you see, is more than he seems; more than any of his kin in the ravine city.”
“Pity the Archon doesn’t agree,” Shadrak said.
Bird nodded. “But you must stay your hand. Give this a chance. These three artifacts we are after were crafted by the Cynocephalus himself. If anyone has reason to hate our father, it is his bastard child, the progeny of rape. Just think, freed of the axe’s evil, and in possession of the combined might of the gauntlets, the armor, and the shield, Nameless could wade through the waters of the black river and smite the Demiurgos frozen in his tomb of ice.”
“If you’re not mistaken,” Shadrak said. “If you’re not deceived. My way, you need to test every step of a plan, know your enemy inside out, before you overcommit.”
“We must not fall into the trap of trying to see all things clearly,” Bird said. “That is a strategy the Demiurgos frequently employs, and people like Sektis Gandaw, and even Aristodeus, have often fallen for it.”
“So, what do we do, then? Stumble around blindly and just hope for the best?”
“For now,” Bird said, “we keep Nameless alive.” The homunculus whispered the last, as if afraid of being overheard. “Be warned, Shadrak, your friend Albert has been contacted.”
“By the Archon?” He knew it. Knew something was up. He’d had nothing tangible to go on, just feelings, intuitions. “Does he want Albert to take over from me, get the job done quicker?”
Bird shrugged. “I only know that they have been speaking. I see things.” He put one thumb over the other and flapped his hands. “But they are discreet. What I must ask you is, would Albert do it? Or would he come to you first?”
The Albert Shadrak knew would kill his own mother if there was profit in it. Word is, he’d done just that, although he’d also heard profit wasn’t the motive.
“He’ll do it, right enough, and he’ll probably come after me, too.”
“So,” Bird said, “you’re going to kill him?”
“Not just yet. Not unless I have to.” But it never hurt to be prepared.
“Shadrak.” Bird lowered his eyes and hunkered down inside his cloak. “I wish… Will you allow me to show you what is missing? From here.” He reached out and touched two fingers to Shadrak’s forehead. “I learned many things in Qlippoth, and I would use my abilities to help you understand who you are, where you came from.”
“What makes you think I give a shog?”
When Bird looked up, a single tear tracked its way down his cheek. “Indulge me. Please.”
Shadrak knew he was grimacing, knew he was biting his lip. Every muscle in his body felt twisted, taut, ready to snap under the strain. It was as though the black hole that had swallowed up his infancy was rising from the depths of his mind, threatening to spill its contents.
“I don’t know,” he said. “What if I don’t want to see it?”
“You should,” Bird said. “In order to be whole. I would not show you anything you could not handle. For me. Please. For my sake.”
Shadrak started to say no, that he didn’t care about being whole, didn’t give a damn about Bird’s sake, but he already knew he’d come too far; and somehow, in some forgotten place within, he did give a shog. He cared. He cared a great deal.
Bird’s fi
ngers slid down Shadrak’s face to his cheek, and he leaned in closer, doleful eyes becoming swirling tunnels. Bile rose in Shadrak’s throat. He tried not to blink, but slowly, like with the coming of sleep, he gave in.
Rain came down in sheets, splattered from leaves as big as shovels, and splashed in dirty puddles. Angry shouts pursued them, and streaks of silvery flame zipped past or sent up sprays of steaming mud. He held the bundle close beneath his cloak of feathers. He felt its warmth against his chest. Not his chest, he realized as the world lurched. He was the one being carried. Being carried, doing the carrying, and watching, all at the same time.
His guts rebelled against the unnaturalness of it all, threatened to spew their contents all over… all over…
Then the sensation was gone, and he knew he was the baby cradled within the cloak of feathers.
He was placed beneath a bush. Rain cascaded from the leafy ceiling. The sounds of pursuit: hoarse cries, angry. Leaves rustled. Insects—lots of insects, their collective buzzing rising to a deafening drone. Dark flecks swarmed into one undulating shape. Someone screamed; then someone else. The cloud of insects swooped and dived, climbed and roiled in pursuit of dozens of shrieking voices.
Leaves rustled again. Hands grabbed him, held him tight against sodden clothing. The cloak of feathers settled over him once more, then he was jostled violently as the one carrying him slipped and slid through the mud, dodged in and out of mangroves.
Rain continued to pelt them with the attrition of a thousand arrows. Thunder rolled across the darkening sky.
They entered a blanket of mist. He could smell stagnant water and rotting vegetation. The sharp stabs of insects harried his skin.
The one who bore him waded out into the swamp, oblivious to the things that rolled and gyred through its waters. There was a rasp and a hiss, then a gleaming silver door appeared in midair. It slid open, and they entered.