And once Marth’s soldiers had celebrated sufficiently, Ryan’s army would fall upon them and annihilate them. All of them. All of them…
…save for General Crom.
Ryan had special plans for Crom.
Chapter 5
Torn to Pieces
“He won?”
They were the first words that Pearl Hohenberger had spoken since the death of her son. They so startled her husband that Leonard, who had been holding a glass of tea and was sipping from it in a vain attempt to steady his jangled nerves, jumped at the sound. It caused the cup to slip off the saucer in his hand and crash to the floor. The brown-tinted liquid puddled and looked to Hohenberger like very thin blood. That was not surprising to him; lately just about everything he looked at reminded him of blood.
Pearl was sitting in a chair in the family room, her hands placed delicately upon her lap. Her skin had regressed from the creamy white of fine bone china to a nearly translucent, ashy shade that further accented the shadows of her bones gently showing beneath. Leonard hadn’t been able to get her to eat anything more substantial than a slice of dry toast since the accident. She had been staring off into the air, and Leonard would not have been able to swear that she was fully cognizant of her whereabouts. Pearl had virtually retreated into herself, as if the world had simply ceased to exist for her.
Now, though, she was staring directly at Leonard, who was busy using a towel to wipe up the spilled tea. It took him a moment to fathom what she was inquiring about, and then he realized that she was actually asking him about something he had said to her earlier that day. He had been talking to her as one would talk to a coma patient, saying the words and hoping that they would penetrate.
He didn’t make any major issue over the fact that this was the first occasion she had found her voice in what seemed to him an interminable amount of time. Instead, speaking as calmly as he could, he said, “Yes. Ryan won.”
“Wilhelm Ryan. That ugly, disgusting mockery of a Mage? The one who—” her voice trailed off. She seemed unable to articulate the rest of what she wanted to say. Instead her body trembled with barely suppressed rage.
“Pearl,” he said. Dropping the sodden towel on the coffee table, he started to reach over to rest his hand on her shoulder.
She brushed it away brusquely without even looking at him. It was purely reflex, and yet he was taken aback by the ferocity of the move. “The one,” and she found her voice again, “who was responsible for the death of my son.”
“Our son, Pearl. He was our son.”
This time her gaze shifted to him and there was such cold anger in it that he couldn’t meet it. “Our son? You let him go off to be killed. What right have you to lay any claim to him?”
“That’s not fair, Pearl.”
“Not fair?”
“Pearl—“
“Not fair? Not fair?!”
She lunged at him then, and her open palm swung toward him. It happened as if she was moving in slow motion, and he had plenty of time to deflect it or dodge it. He did neither. He didn’t make the slightest attempt to avoid it, and the hand cracked across his face. He thought for sure that she was going to smash it into his face, crush his nose, perhaps use the other hand to gouge out his eyes. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Whatever she said, whatever invective she might hurl at him, she would be right to do so. It would be nothing worse than what he had already been hurling at himself.
“You…it…he…”
Tears began pouring down her face even as she went on like that for a full minute, stammering out random words, so inarticulate with rage that she was incapable of stringing a sentence together. Leonard stood there and waited, bracing himself, knowing that when she finally did manage to assemble coherent thoughts, it would be an assault of verbal abuse designed to strike at his core, to shatter him. To punish him as much as she possibly could in retaliation for the loss that they would be mourning the rest of their lives.
And then, to his surprise, her fist flopped to the side as if it had become too heavy for her to keep raised. She exhaled slowly and her head slumped, her long, unkempt hair falling around her face. She was typically so meticulous in maintaining it; the fact alone that it was so disheveled made it almost seem as if she had been transformed into someone else entirely. Gently, tentatively, he brushed back a strand of her hair. She looked up at him with depthless pools of pain reflected in her eyes.
“What you must be going through…” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Don’t worry about me.”
“Of course I worry about you. You never worry about you. God…when I think of the times you’d have worked yourself to death if I weren’t watching out for you, I…” Her voice trailed off.
“I would never work myself to death, Pearl,” he said softly. “Because that would take me away from you, and I want to be with you for as long as humanly possible.”
The edges of her eyes crinkled and she smiled for the first time in what seemed ages. “Well,” she said with a sigh, “I can’t believe you could feel that way after the way I’ve been acting, Lenny.”
“I’m just telling you the truth. That’s all.” He hesitated. “Pearl…are…are we…?”
“Okay? You’re going to ask if we’re okay?”
“Well…yes.”
She seemed to be staring into herself, her gaze turning inward as if she were searching for the answers in her soul. “No,” she said finally. “No…we’re not okay. I just…there’s so much going on…I just…I mean, at the moment I’m calm. I’m a little scared, how calm I am.” Truthfully, so was he, but he didn’t say that as she continued, “Ten minutes ago I felt ready to put my fist through your head, and now I just feel badly that I wanted to do that, and that’s not to say that ten minutes from now I won’t be back to wanting to hit you. I don’t know where I am or what I’m thinking, and that’s, you know, strange for me…”
“Because you always know—?”
“Shut up.”
His lips pressed tightly together.
“Because I pride myself on being rational, and this is irrational. This is…” her voice trailed off and she stared at him. She frowned for a moment and then, apparently realizing something, gestured wanly and said, “Talk. Go ahead.”
He put out his arms to her, silently inviting her. She pressed her body against him and he wrapped his arms around her, holding her tightly. He wanted to cry, but was concerned that it would set her off and he fought back the tears with effort. “Your son died in your arms,” he managed to get out. “Everything you’re feeling…everything you’re going through…I’m feeling it too, Pearl, but I’m trying to go through the motions so our entire lives don’t collapse around us. No one tells you how to deal with something like this or how you’re supposed to act or react or…or how you can pretend like your life will ever go back to something resembling happiness. And I’m just so damn angry too. I’m angry with myself, with those bastard Mages… I’m mad at God for doing nothing to intervene in this mess.”
His face tightened up into a skewed mass of emotion that was somewhere between emotional breakdown and scathing hatred. It softened as he looked down at his wife. “God, Pearl, I love you so much…there’s nothing you could say to me that I wouldn’t understand why you’re saying it…”
“Even if I hate you again in a few minutes?”
“Even if.”
“But Ryan…” she paused and her voice filled with venom. “Him…him, I won’t stop hating him. Not for a minute. Not for a second. Whether you were an idiot because you let Joseph go, or a supportive father trusting his son to take responsibility for his life, I’m going to go back and forth on that for a while. Maybe forever. But Ryan’s culpability…that’s not going to change. He has to be stopped, Leonard.”
“I agree, but…”
“But what?”
He released his hold around her and met her gaze, trying to smother his sense of helplessness and failing ut
terly. “But how?”
“Stopped. Terminally. Permanently. Don’t you see, Leonard? Someone has to kill him.”
It was staggering to hear Pearl speaking in this manner. No one was as loving of life, as respectful of that gift from God, as Pearl. To hear her talking about killing someone so matter-of-factly…it was as if he didn’t know her.
Still, that should not have been surprising. In many ways, the woman that she had been was dead, her soul left behind bleeding on the street with her late son.
“All the Mages tried to do that, Pearl. None of them succeeded. How is anyone else supposed to—?”
“The people need to do it. The government certainly isn’t going to.”
“The government answers to Ryan now,” said Leonard. “He’s taken charge of Apity Prime. Of the sector…the whole damned Fence…since the death of Covent Marth.”
“We don’t know that he’s dead. We know that’s what Ryan’s people are claiming, but he could have escaped.” She was speaking with a sort of desperate urgency. “It’s possible that he could be biding his time, waiting for the right moment to strike back.”
He was reasonably sure that wasn’t the case at all, but he didn’t have the heart to say so. “Yes. Yes, that’s possible, I suppose.”
“So then it’s just a matter of keeping the sentiment of the people of this sector arrayed against Ryan. Make them resist his every move, his every decree. Make people realize what a complete, total and utter bastard he is.”
“They know that already, don’t they?”
She shook her head firmly. “No. Because he spews lies with such confidence, such certainty, and so convincingly, that people accept those lies as truth. The lies are so big no one could conceive that they’re deceptions. People are stupid, Leonard. Massively, staggeringly stupid. They don’t want to look beyond the confines of their living rooms and their personal entertainment and the world as they imagine it to be rather than what it is. They know deep down exactly what Ryan is, but it’s too much work for them to act upon it.”
“And can you blame them?” He saw her look of incredulity, but forged on nonetheless. “Joseph was part of a group of people who tried to act upon their convictions. He was hardly the only one who paid the ultimate price for it. After seeing so many people slaughtered in the crossfire of Ryan’s men battling Marth’s, how enthusiastic do you think people will be about offering protest if Ryan’s men have their guns pointed directly at them?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does to them.”
“Whose side are you on?!”
Hohenberger was suddenly seized with a wave of anger. He knew that everything she was saying was motivated by grief, but where the hell was his right to grieve? He was no less devastated by the fate of their son than she was. Why did he have to scrutinize every word he said while she could lash out at him without regard to anything save her own surging anger? “I’m on the side of not losing my wife along with my son! I’m on the side of keeping what remains of my family alive!”
“We’re not a family anymore! We’re just…us!”
“And that’s not enough?”
“It’s going to take some time. It’s going to take until Ryan is dead and gone.” “And if that day never comes?”
“It has to.” She hesitated and then said with even more fervor, “It has to, if Joseph is ever going to know peace.”
* * *
Wilhelm Ryan was in his glory, but he wasn’t certain he needed to be so showy about it.
Staging a massive victory parade down the streets of Apity Prime had not remotely been his idea. “I’ve accomplished what I set out to do. Why is there a need to openly revel in it?”
“It will serve to consolidate your power,” Deftinwolf had assured him. “And it will provide the people a chance to express their adoration for you…and for you to bask in it.”
“I’ve won the Mage war. There are none who stand in my way. I’ve conquered them. How are they to adore one who conquered the other Mages and took all their power?”
“It is precisely because you have conquered them that the people want to adore you.”
“I’m not certain I follow…”
“It is better to live in love than in fear. Fear is bred from uncertainty. Give them reason to love you, and they will flock to you. At which point you can do whatever you want to them, and they will thank you for it. Take the transformation of your ascension to Supreme Tri-Mage as a time of celebration rather than anxiety, and it will transform them into your adoring servants rather than frightened masses.”
As much as Ryan hated to admit it—Deftinwolf’s words made a certain degree of sense.
Deftinwolf had nodded.
Ryan had stroked his leaky, veiny chin thoughtfully and had finally said, “If you truly believe this to be of some importance, however minor,” and he had waved his hand in a laissez-faire manner, “then make the arrangements and I shall cooperate.”
As a result, a day later, down the main street of the main city and into the main square of Apity Prime rode Wilhelm Ryan, winner of the Mage wars and the first Supreme Tri-Mage in millennia. He towered above the throngs, as was appropriate for one of his stature. The vehicle in which he was riding had been carefully designed by Deftinwolf to be both protective of Ryan and yet as unthreatening to others as humanly possible. It was a huge work of art. A tank towering ten stories high, festooned with swirls of red and yellow, and with banners and ribbons trailing from it that fluttered in the breeze. It also packed enough firepower to level five city blocks with just a few shots, but no one would have known that to look at it. The dome atop the tank was constructed entirely of transparent adamant. It was as impenetrable as the rest of the vehicle, and yet Ryan was entirely visible so that the masses could see him and adore him.
Not everyone did.
No one posed a threat to him. In addition to the formidable defenses that the tank provided, there were soldiers marching in quick-step on either side to provide further deterrence to any potential hostiles. Deftinwolf was at the head, cradling a pulser cannon in his arm that normally would have required the strength of two men to support. Bringing up the rear was another squadron of soldiers who had cylinders mounted on their backs and hoses attached to them with nozzles holstered at their sides. It appeared to be firefighting equipment of some sort.
Serving as a stark contrast to the daunting display of sheer military force that was cruising down the middle of the city was music that was blaring over speakers mounted on various buildings. It was jubilant and celebratory, pulsing so loudly that people’s skeletons vibrated along with the beat.
It served to drown out the howls of protest from some demonstrators who were waving placards with messages opposing Ryan. They were far in the minority. Most of the crowds had turned out to join in the rapture over the end of the Mage Wars. They didn’t care that Ryan had started it. All they cared about was that they needn’t concern themselves anymore with stray blasts coming out of nowhere and blowing their damned fool heads off. Ryan’s control over the public airwaves, in both radio and vid, had been instrumental in paving the way for a smooth reception. Ryan Will Guide Us had been the watchwords of Heaven’s Fence, with variations on that message pumped through every broadcast medium for hour after hour until it was practically embedded in the people’s cerebral cortex. It was so prevalent that people had scrawled the words on building walls and alleyways with spray cans of paint.
There had been worries that the Wars were going to produce some sort of doomsday weapon that would be unleashed upon the Fence and devour it whole in a vast inferno. Heaven’s Fence will burn had been the oft-repeated prediction, and the majority of the masses were so relieved that hadn’t happened that they were embracing the opportunity to voice their relief.
But the protestors were, as far as Ryan was concerned, not to be tolerated. A time of celebration was fine as far as it went, but there was no reason to put up with such outright shows of disrespec
t.
A sizable number of them had gathered directly in the tank’s path in a clear attempt to stop the convoy’s progress. Deftinwolf was stepping forward, gesturing with his head that the troops should clear the way so the tank could proceed.
When Ryan spoke, his voice went directly into a communications unit jacked into Deftinwolf’s ear. “General, pull your men back. I will attend to it.” Without waiting for Deftinwolf to respond, knowing that the order would be obeyed, Ryan flipped a switch so that his pronouncements now boomed over a loudspeaker. “Today is intended to be a day of celebration. I expect the residents of Sector 1 to recognize my sovereignty with as much fervor as those of any other sector, and join me in healing the great divides caused by this unfortunate but necessary war. Please step away so that the parade, and the celebrations, can continue.”
They did not do so. Instead they converged on the tank, waving their signs higher and shouting profanities and anti-Ryan slogans. The boos raining down upon them from the vast majority of celebrants didn’t appear to deter them.
Ryan shrugged. “Very well. There’s no reason that everyone else should be inconvenienced due to the actions of a few. On your own heads, then.”
The tank roared forward directly at the protestors. Several of them scattered. Many of them held their path, still waving their placards, screaming obscenities, virtually daring Ryan to run them over.
He obliged them.
The looks of surprise on their faces was borderline comical. A few more of them, staring down their own deaths, broke and ran at the last moment. It did them no good, because they tripped each other up and collapsed in a heap. Ryan didn’t slow his tank or shift his path so much as an inch. Instead he ran right over them. The outcries of the rest of the crowd—cheers, actually, because crowds tended to adore a spectacle and this was certainly an example—drowned out the crunching of bones and the bursting of organs. A massive pool of blood spread from beneath the tank’s treads.
Some of the protestors who had managed to avoid getting crushed shouted fury over the fate of their fellows. Upon seeing that, Ryan’s supporters—in order to show their love for him—shoved the protestors forward so that they fell beneath the tank’s treads as well.
Year of the Black Rainbow Page 8