The Promise of the Child

by Tom Toner

  The hatches opened. Corphuso had removed his thrombosis suit and stowed it in a small plastic hand-held case that he’d found in his quarters. Water still dripped and ran from the smooth, riveted sides of the Nomad, darkening the wide square of blue lias flagstones on which it had settled.

  He took a deep breath of air as he stepped out, studying his feet as he made his way down the steps. A hot wind snapped the simple travel cape, also from his room, about his shoulders, dragging it off to one side. At the bottom of the steps, once he was sure he was quite prepared, he looked up.

  Ghaldezuel was doing the same, staggering occasionally as he tipped his head back to look all around the ungraspably enormous space within which they found themselves. He had hinged his helmet open, and Corphuso smiled briefly at the look of childlike wonder on his white face, imagining what he might have been like before age and cynicism had worn him down to the miserable creature he was now.

  He returned his attention to the world, letting his eyes follow the twisting course of innumerable seas and mountains until they settled on the sun overhead, braced by a thousand colossal viaducts. The Nomad had landed on an outcrop on the foundations of one of the viaducts, and his gaze followed the structure down until he noticed the three figures standing at the lip of the square, watching them.

  Ghaldezuel had covered his mouth, his face suddenly paler than Corphuso had ever seen it, and was staring at his boots. One of his soldiers tapped him on the shoulder, indicating the people staring at them. The Lacaille turned and glanced over, straightening and walking towards the three waiting figures. Corphuso shrank back behind the steps to the ship.

  The figures at the edge of the square waited for him, standing between a long avenue of fat, fruit-laden palm trees. Behind them, fields of flowers and palms extended to the mountains, their wilderness broken every few miles by stepped castles disappearing into the haze. Corphuso peered from behind the ship’s steps. Two of them, the men standing to either side of the shorter, skinnier Prism, were Amaranthine Perennials. Their exquisite clothes swept and fluttered around them as the wind picked up, jewels the size of Corphuso’s eyes weighing the material down in places. He watched Ghaldezuel perform the Amaranthine handshake with both Perennials, then turn to the Prism between them. Corphuso recognised clearly the dark thing that had found its way into his library at Nilmuth, noticing the livid scar across most of its face where Voss’s flame must have found it. Its genitalia were covered this time, perhaps at the insistence of the Immortals, but its gristly frame was still mostly naked, its long, black fingers toying with something Corphuso couldn’t make out.

  Behind them all, on a set of spoked wheels, a large golden container was being trundled up the small hill to the square, its sides painted with Unified and Lacaille lettering. It was a scientific word, Corphuso assumed, since he did not know it.

  Ghaldezuel stopped to inspect the cargo, talking to the huge and colourful Melius acolyte pushing it. He opened a shutter in the side, standing on tiptoes for a few seconds to take a look, and appeared to find everything in order. Looking to the Amaranthine again, Corphuso caught the demon Prism’s eye for a moment. The thing winked at him. He ducked back behind the steps, heart pounding.

  A roar above their heads made them all look up. Another ancient, gifted Amaranthine vessel had appeared from behind the huge foundations of the viaduct and stationed itself above them, blocking out the sun. Its bloated body must have weighed five times more than the Pifoon ships that had escorted them into the Vaulted Land, its bow dominated by a gurning, demonic face, the toothy mouth yawning open even before it had settled upon the flagstones. Fins and barbs stuck out at angles from its irridescent blue body, many of them snapped or missing, replaced with riveted strips of glossy tin sheeting and patches of carbon black vulcanised rubber. The Pifoon were widely considered—due to the status they were accorded by the Amaranthine—to be the finest ship conservationists in the Investiture. Most of this particular vessel was likely over five thousand years old, forged during an age of magic no Prism history could remember. The great Voidship lowered to the stones, dust coiling around it, the palm trees billowing, and Corphuso understood at a glance that its unusual features had originally been designed for colossal speeds. It settled at last at the far end of the square, partially blocking Corphuso’s view of Ghaldezuel and the people who had come to meet them.

  Corphuso checked behind him, thinking that now might be his last and only chance of escape, and skipped around the landing strut, poking his head past it. Three Lacaille soldiers had made their way down the aft hangar steps and were eating lunch, two of them still unable to pull their eyes from the view around them. He waited, hoping the third would become distracted as well, and glanced back again at the ship that had descended into the square. Its enormous engine filaments screamed one last time and fell silent, the warble of strange birds filtering back into the square. Corphuso made his way to the edge of the steps again and saw that all three soldiers were now concentrating on their meal, spreading cheese onto hard bread and pouring out yellowish ale from a metal drum.

  He pressed himself back against the steps, his suitcase held to his chest, seeing that off to one side the meadows ran into a dense forest of flowering trees.

  “I thought I’d lost you then, Architect,” said Ghaldezuel’s familiar voice behind him.

  Corphuso turned reluctantly, seeing the demon Prism trotting merrily past him up the steps of the Nomad with a group of nervous-looking Lacaille in expensive buttoned waistcoats. Ghaldezuel glanced across the square. The large golden case was already being loaded between the gaping jaws of the idling blue ship, followed closely by the chest that held the Shell.

  Corphuso waited until the party had ascended the Nomad’s steps and swung the outer hatch closed above him. “I see you have some questionable friends.”

  Ghaldezuel motioned for Corphuso to follow him out of the schooner’s shadow. They walked across the square together towards the new ship, the hot breeze drumming in the Vulgar’s ears.

  “Come now, Corphuso, I thought you knew me better than that,” the Lacaille said, smiling drily. “I have no friends.”

  “What deal could you possibly strike with one of his kind?”

  “They want different things from most of us.” He looked thoughtfully back at the Nomad, where the beginnings of some red-painted insignia—three vertical marks, splayed slightly like fingers—were already being painted across the silvery hull. “The trick is to show no fear.”

  Corphuso glanced at him as they approached the blue clipper. “He frightens you?”

  Ghaldezuel reached the ornamented tongue ramp beneath the raised nose-plating, a wall of baking air shimmering from the surface of the ship. He motioned for Corphuso to enter first. “He particularly likes young Lacaille. Served raw.”

  The architect looked at him as the ramp closed behind them with a crunch, rubber flanges hissing as they sealed around it. There was a moment of absolute darkness before white light flickered on above them.

  “You’ll find your new quarters on the under-deck,” Ghaldezuel told him, sweeping past. “Don’t get too comfortable, we’ll be there in six days.”

  Corphuso watched the Lacaille knight’s back as he passed through the compartments, stooping where the Pifoon-installed hatchways were too low. “Six days? You still haven’t told me where we’re going!”

  Ghaldezuel turned a corner and was gone without a word. Corphuso glanced at the sealed hatch behind him, which was already vibrating as the motors came to life, then back to the empty passageway, opening his suitcase with a sigh and taking out the stinking thrombosis suit.

  Shadow

  He stands, wrapped and warm, looking out at the flurry. Floating snow settles over his cloak and swirls around him in silent currents. Above him, trees like none he has ever seen droop, heavy with piled snow, their branches disappearing into the whiteness like the latticed veins in a slab of pale marble.

  Sotiris sticks his tongue out
, catching a few snowflakes. He grimaces, spitting. They don’t taste as they ought to.

  In the flurry around him he catches movement. Things as white as the snow are walking past. His eyes try to focus on them in the silent blizzard but are unable to make sense of their forms. Soon they are lost in the fog.

  He hesitates, then follows.

  The hanging branches brush at his face, strange fragrances briefly alive in the quiet air. The snow thickens, and he must shield his eyes as he walks. Soon he has caught up with the last of the walking creatures and follows it at a distance, to watch.

  It is not an animal from his memories, he is sure, and nothing known to Prism or Melius, either. Its shape is hunched, secretive, the face hidden. Tendrils of albino material waft behind the thing, curling at the tips whenever a snowflake settles upon them, and just beneath something like a tail coils and flicks with its unusual step.

  He steps into its small tracks in the deep snow, booted feet crumping them further down, and follows the strange figure along a narrow path through the woods. Above, the clouds join with the snow in a hanging pall of white shot through with darker swirls, the air damping all sound to nothing.

  The trees thin out until he sees that he must cross a narrow stone bridge caked in snow. It has no handrails or anything to hold on to, and so he treads carefully, one foot in front of the other. The chasm that falls away beneath the bridge is misted, unguessably deep. The creature in front of him steps like a ballet dancer, gracefully negotiating the narrow bridge until it reaches the far side. Sotiris looks up into the blizzard, the day just beginning to turn dark, then back to the where the bridge meets the forest. There are lights ahead, wavering between the silent stands of white trees.

  At the edge of the trees he stops. The creature is looking back at him through the snow and he begins to see its form. Long, slightly potbellied, the face nothing but a pair of dark holes for eyes. It turns away, heading into the trees towards the quivering sparks of light, and Sotiris follows.

  In the trees there are others, creatures that skitter and scamper, but they are nothing more than patches of shadow in the whiteness. He feels no fear, only knowing that he must not lose the trail of whomever he is following. He sees it again as he pushes through the branches, more snow flicking and piling over the thrown-back hood of his cloak. The darkness is settling now upon the forest, making the journey difficult.

  The trees part, and there in front of him he sees the light clearly. It is a doorway in the gloom, tall like an arrow-slit. The building it leads into is lost in the snow: there—but not there. The hunched creature ambles to the doorway, dwarfed by its monolithic height, and glances back once more. Sotiris jogs through the heavy snow after it.

  Inside the light is warm, the air hot and dry. Some snow finds its way inside, turning to water in the entrance. He rubs his hands and glances around. The passage is finished with great tablets of carved, red-painted stone that rise to a high stepped ceiling. Shimmering metallic nodules like instruments of torture hang down into the passageway, equipment of some kind. He could reach out and touch them, they hang so low, but doesn’t want to. Sotiris looks ahead, hearing the tapping of the thing’s footsteps leading away, and follows a single line in the stone floor—perhaps some trackway for a narrow wheel—into a cathedral-like space larger than any he has ever entered, its true size lost in the gloom.

  Only one distant light shines in the space and he walks slowly towards it, his feet disappearing in the greyness. He can see more of the creatures around the single light-source, and judges by their minute scale that the structure emitting the glow is over two storeys high. As he steps closer, the creatures become clear for a moment—one of them barefaced—and then indistinct again, bleached of form by the light emitted from the edifice they crowd around. Sotiris experiences a flash of recognition, knowing that he has seen the creature somewhere before, but then it is lost, extinguished in the gloom. He notices in the light that the walls of the place are like those of the passageway—a deep blood-red, carved with patterns too intricate for his eyes to understand. The form in the gloom, the edifice, is a warped diamond shape bristling with spikes and nodes. The spark of light glowing somewhere within its structure kindles for a moment, and in that light Sotiris notices the unmasked figure raising a large, cruel-looking hammer. It brings the tool down against the side of the edifice, the sound ringing through Sotiris’s head, and the glow flickers.

  He winces at the savage, deep-throated roar of pain and fury that rips into his mind. At the second blow of the hammer, it rises to become a scream.

  *

  “I awoke you from another dream. What was it?”

  Sotiris rubs his eyes. There is coffee set out before him. It is early morning at the port. “What?”

  Aaron continues to stare, taking a sip of his own. “What were you dreaming?”

  “You don’t see my other dreams?”

  He hesitates, putting the cup down. “Not all of them. What did you see?”

  Sotiris blinks and looks around to the still water. “Nothing much, it was just Iro again.”

  Aaron does not appear convinced. “You were distressed.”

  He folds his arms. “You find that unusual?”

  “Mildly.”

  The waiter appears, carrying menus. Sotiris shrinks in his chair. It is a giant Melius of the Old World, patterned with churning colour. It looks down at them, massive head sombre, and slides the menus onto the table with a huge, gnarled hand. He recognises the Melius, but the giant shows no sign that he has noticed either of the men at the table.

  “Lycaste,” Sotiris says, rising slightly from his seat. The giant stares at him gloomily, then walks away.

  Aaron watches the huge man as he leaves, his eyes narrowed. “You feel guilt.”

  Sotiris shakes his head and touches the coffee to his lips, sitting back down. “I don’t want to talk about it.” As he drinks, he looks over to the postcard shop. They are having a sale of inflatable dinosaur lilos.

  Aaron sighs, leaning back in his chair. “Very well. You’ve had enough time now to consider my offer, Sotiris.”

  “What offer? That you can somehow bring her back?” He looks at the apparition bitterly. “You insult me, Aaron the Long-Life.”

  “You shall have your sister returned to you.”

  “In exchange for my loyalty, is that it?”

  He pauses. “In exchange for taking up your rightful position as Firmamental Emperor, yes.”

  Sotiris coughs, setting his cup down. “Excuse me?”

  Aaron looks at him contemptuously through half-lidded eyes. “I don’t see it myself, but others do. The Amaranthine Firmament would support you, and only you, in any endeavour you care to suggest. I have rarely seen a more persuasive personality among men, and yet you are wasteful with your gifts.” He shrugs, the early light momentarily glowing on the crescent of his vague iris. “I know you now, I see you for what you are, but still they idolise you.”

  “You want me …” Sotiris points at himself, aware of how ridiculous he must look. “You never wanted it—for yourself? The throne was never your goal?”

  Aaron smiles. “I had hoped Hugo Maneker would prove equal to the task, but I was disappointed.” He inspects his coffee cup, a hint of care creasing his kindly eyes. “If I’d known how disappointing the Amaranthine as a society would turn out to be, perhaps I’d have pursued other avenues. Never mind.”

  “I don’t think I understand,” continues Sotiris. “You would come this far, do all this—Virginis, everything, just to … give it all away?”

  “I would give it all to you, Sotiris, to rule in my stead.”

  “And where will you go, once everything is mine?” Sotiris asks.

  Aaron shakes his head with apparent wistfulness. “Somewhere that does not concern you, and never shall.” He leans forwards. “But you will be happy, Sotiris, happy once more. You may reshape the Firmament to your design, do anything you wish—become a tyrant, the greatest hu
mankind has ever seen, or seed the Firmament with the equality it craves. Banish the Prism primates, or nurture them. All choice will be yours.” He shrugs again. “And, most importantly, you shall have her back.” He steeples his long white fingers beneath his chin. “I ask for nothing but your ascent to the throne of Gliese. Is that so terrible a prospect?”

  “You want more than that.” Sotiris grimaces, looking away. “Of course you do. This cannot be all there is to it.”

  “What I want,” interjects Aaron swiftly, his expression suddenly taking on a new intensity, “will never in your life affect you. You shall die contented and ancient, and I’ll be far, far away.” He drums his fingers, their shadows unable to correspond with their motions. “But you need not decide now. I have given you the choice, and your choice it shall remain.”

  “I cannot believe you, Aaron.”

  “Think on it. I will see you soon.”

  Mediary

  Light burned a brilliant weave through the mesh of the nest walls just as the Intermediary arrived and opened the shutters. His visitor glanced in, wrinkling his nose.

  “Good morning,” the Intermediary said in a clear, officious tone. Low Second, Lycaste guessed, rubbing his itchy eyes in the golden sunlight. He didn’t bother replying.

  “My name is Rubus Hochstetterorum, Gentleson of Molotaran.” The Mediary stepped away from the shutters. “Could you climb out of there now? I’d like to take a look at you.”

  The Glorious Bird landed on Rubus’s shoulder, its blank eyes meeting Lycaste’s.

  Lycaste stretched and pushed one leg free, almost kicking the Intermediary, disappointed that he hadn’t. His feet touched the grass unsteadily, cramped and stiff after so long in one position.

  “Good,” remarked Rubus encouragingly. He took another step back to observe Lycaste. “I suppose he is average-sized, a fair appraisal.”

  “My appraisal was accurate,” murmured the bird.

  Rubus took in Lycaste’s face. “Extraordinarily handsome features, wouldn’t you say? Stylised, quite the work of art. Drogoradz will be abuzz when we turn up.”