"He looked down, and saw that it was his brother Filowan's head, the eyes wide and staring, the mouth frozen in a scream of terror. He took a step back, and Thaddeus reached again into his cloak, and flung another head.
"This one was Gilloran's, and most horrible of all, the severed head was still alive! It rolled its eyes up at Hillowan, pleading with him, and tried to speak, but of course it had no lungs to give it breath so that no sound came out. Hillowan screamed, and stepped back again.
"And Thaddeus opened his cloak and drew forth a third object, but this time it was no severed head, but something that hung limply in his hand, like a rag; and he flung it down before Hillowan, who saw that it was skin, that it was human skin—that it was the skin of his third and youngest brother, Sherowan, somehow peeled from his body in a single piece..."
—from the tales of
Atheron the Storyteller
* * * *
The first known immortal human, Gamesmaster explained, was the man who now called himself Shadowdark. That was not his original name, merely the one he had adopted most recently; it had now lasted a few thousand years, longer than any other he had ever used, including the long-forgotten one his parents had given him.
Shadowdark's immortality was not the result of technology, but a freak of nature, something he was born with. For all anyone knew, the same freak might have happened dozens of times before or since, but only Shadowdark and a handful of his descendants survived the myriad diseases and omnipresent dangers to life and limb that presumably killed off all the other people born with the same peculiarity.
Shadowdark's great peculiarity was in the way he grew. Once he reached adolescence he grew very, very slowly, at a steadily decreasing rate—but never completely stopped. At the age of thirty he stood less than a meter and a half in height; at sixty he still looked thirty, but stood just over a hundred and sixty centimeters, as nearly as he could recall.
Since centimeters had not yet been invented at the time, and no records existed except Shadowdark's memory, the exact height might not be right, but the basic concept was. Shadowdark's body never finished growing, never made the transition from growth to maturity—and therefore to decay.
Bredon interrupted, “Like a tree, you mean?"
“Yes, pretty much like a tree,” Gamesmaster agreed.
“But trees eventually die anyway, when they get too big."
“I know that; I'm coming to that."
There were limits to Shadowdark's growth, of course, Gamesmaster continued; eventually, when he was slightly over two thousand years old, his heart gave out and had to be repaired, and later his skeleton collapsed under its own weight, and he had to have most of it replaced. Fortunately, by the time his natural longevity began to fail him, technology had reached the point where it could take over and keep him going indefinitely. Otherwise he would have died long ago. If any immortals had been born much before Shadowdark they would surely be dead by now in any case, since medical technology had not advanced quickly enough to have saved them.
“Are you sure?” Bredon asked.
“No,” Gamesmaster answered. “Who's telling this, you or me?"
“You are."
“Then shut up."
Bredon shut up, and Gamesmaster went on with his story.
In his early years, before he fully realized just how unique he was, Shadowdark had tried to lead a normal life. His peculiarity forced him to relocate every twenty or thirty years, establishing a new identity each time, but in between these moves he did his best to maintain a home and family and business.
Later on, he found the constant loss of wives, friends, and children to be too depressing, and experimented with a variety of lifestyles. By then, however, he had left behind a good many children, and a few of them had inherited his abnormal growth pattern.
Most of these died eventually, by violence or from disease, but a few managed to survive. Daughters did very poorly; bearing children in those primitive times significantly increased their risks.
His son Peter was the oldest survivor. He was born when Shadowdark was less than a century old and still living in his native land.
The second was Thaddeus. He was born in a land that had been conquered and abused by Shadowdark's people; Gamesmaster provided the name and date, but neither meant anything to Bredon. He ignored all the names and dates on Terra as essentially meaningless; the only important fact was that this land was being mistreated by Shadowdark's countrymen.
Shadowdark had fled to this place at the age of a century or so, no longer welcome in his own country, and had taken a local woman as his wife. The marriage had not been happy, and Thaddeus was not a happy child—particularly not after his father abandoned him and his sisters.
Gamesmaster displayed an image of Thaddeus, and Bredon asked, “Why is he called Thaddeus the Black? He isn't much darker than I am."
“I don't know,” Gamesmaster said. “I suppose it has something to do with his temper, or his record."
“Oh.” Bredon shut up, and Gamesmaster continued.
Shadowdark and Thaddeus found each other again decades later, and were, in time, apparently reconciled with one another, their disagreements not so much forgotten as temporarily set aside. They saw one another off and on over the centuries, sometimes travelling together or even living together for a time, but the relationship always had its unpleasant side. The only thing that really held them together, far more important than their blood relationship, was their shared memories. They were the only people still alive who remembered the land of Thaddeus's birth and the people they had known and loved there. Peter, the only other person of approximately the same age, did not visit that land until centuries later, when everything had been altered beyond recognition.
When he was nearing two thousand years of age, Shadowdark went through a bad period. Gamesmaster could provide no details, but apparently the enforced isolation and duplicity of being an immortal in a world of mortals had driven him temporarily insane. When he recovered, he decided that he needed a goal, something worthy of an immortal, something that would distract him and that might somehow put an end to his loneliness.
What he hit upon was the accumulation of wealth and power. He had pursued both before, but had never bothered to hold onto them for long. Neither greatly interested him in and of itself.
Now, however, what he intended to do was to buy himself into a position where he could reveal his immortality without fearing that jealous mortals would kill or imprison him.
At first he had planned on an island, where he could establish himself as a god-king, but before he could achieve this modest goal humans began to make their first steps toward travelling to other worlds, and the idea of having an entire world to himself appealed to him. He set his sights on ruling his own planet.
When he had his planet, finally, he needed something to do with it, and therefore set out to conquer others, as well. It gave him something to do to pass the time, something that he had not done before.
The end result was the Imperium, which at its peak united twenty-four worlds under Shadowdark's absolute rule. This, Gamesmaster noted, was long after Denner's Wreck had been found and then lost again. In fact, even the first planet, Alpha Imperium, had not been found until after Denner's Wreck had been lost.
“Why didn't he go to another world sooner, then?” Bredon asked. “Why didn't he come here?"
“Because he wanted a world of his own, not just to be a member of a colony."
“But if he'd lived so long, had so much experience, couldn't he have conquered a planet like this one?"
“Well, yeah, he probably could have, but he didn't."
“Why not?"
“How the hell should I know? I'm just a dumb machine; all I know is what's in the records or what people have told me, all right?"
“All right,” Bredon said, somewhat cowed by this outburst.
“May I go on?"
“Please, go on."
“Thank you.”
Gamesmaster paused, in imitation of a human gathering his wits, and then continued its tale.
Like everything else, it explained, even absolute power will eventually bore an immortal. Furthermore, during Shadowdark's reign on Alpha Imperium artificial immortality, using tailored symbiotes and genetic reprogramming, had been developed and become widespread, so that he no longer needed to disguise his agelessness. In time, he lost interest in the Imperium and left.
Before leaving, however, he located his son Peter, and appointed him as the new ruler in his stead. To leave the empire without a monarch would have been unnecessary cruelty; he had set the entire system up so that it revolved around himself, and with his departure the whole structure would have collapsed into anarchy and civil war had he not appointed a replacement.
Peter, however, found he had little taste for power, and furthermore was not very good at wielding it. After less than a century he grew tired of the whole thing and turned it over to Thaddeus.
Thaddeus enjoyed power very much. Unfortunately, he was far worse than his father or half-brother at using it. His brutal abuse of his subjects and utter ineptitude in running the economy and foreign policy resulted in a messy revolution. He was overthrown, driven from his palace, and he seemed to vanish. No one knew what had become of him.
Sure enough, as Shadowdark had feared, the Imperium immediately collapsed, and Alpha Imperium sank into barbarism. Stupid little wars between different factions destroyed almost its entire civilization.
Centuries later Thaddeus reappeared, still on Alpha Imperium, at the heart of the fallen empire. He tried to conquer the planet and to restore the Imperium to its former power and glory.
He failed miserably, and was overthrown once again. He did manage to build a single starship on a planet that had a technology little better than Bredon's people had on Denner's Wreck, which was quite an impressive accomplishment in itself, but he was unable to put together any sort of empire. This time, when he was defeated, he fled from Alpha Imperium to Terra, where he located his father.
What his purpose might have been in rejoining Shadowdark Gamesmaster did not know and did not care to guess. Whatever the reason, he stayed with Shadowdark and his current group of companions—playmates, really—for a couple of years, and accompanied them on their jaunt in search of Denner's Wreck. The other members of the party had optimistically assumed that Thaddeus had returned to his senses and given up his dreams of absolute power. After all, being free to use Terran technology on a primitive planet should be power enough for any sane person.
Now, though, four hundred and sixty-two years later, Geste suspected that Thaddeus might be returning to his vicious and warlike ways, and feared that he planned to conquer Denner's Wreck and use it as a base to build a new empire. Gamesmaster thought Geste was right.
Thaddeus had a good chance, too, because the other immortals on the planet were disorganized and generally harmless.
“Harmless?” Bredon yelped. “The Powers are harmless?"
“To each other, yes,” Gamesmaster replied. “Not to you mortals, no, but to each other."
Of them all, it explained, only Aulden the Technician really understood all the technology they used, only Aulden had the capacity to create entirely new technology, and Aulden had disappeared while visiting Thaddeus. Only Brenner of the Mountains had ever maintained much of an arsenal, and Thaddeus was in the process of wearing that down. Most of the rest would surrender quickly, rather than bother to fight; their lives were very precious to them, and they would assume that they could simply outlive whatever scheme Thaddeus might have in mind.
One of the usual traits of an immortal is the conviction that anything can be lived through, and that nothing is worse than death. When one has infinite time in which to find a way out of an unpleasant situation, one has little need to hurry or do anything rash, and the idea of risking eternity is not at all appealing.
And the mortals of Denner's Wreck simply did not have the technology to oppose Thaddeus. He would probably either ignore them completely, or recruit a few as servants and soldiers.
Geste was not willing to surrender, however. He did not care to see Thaddeus at the head of an army again. Too many people were likely to die. Even short-lifers’ lives were precious, after all.
And Geste knew enough of Thaddeus’ history to suspect that even if the other immortals surrendered, Thaddeus might still kill them all, just to be on the safe side.
“Even Shadowdark?” Bredon asked.
“I guess so, kid."
“His own father?"
“We don't think that would stop him."
Bredon mulled that over for a moment.
He had not followed all the details of the story—much of it, such as all the stuff about empires, was simply too alien—but he had caught the gist of it. Thaddeus wanted to bully everybody. He had tried running things twice before, and botched it both times. He was on this world, Bredon's world, because he had gone running to his father after the second disaster, and had tagged along when Shadowdark came here.
Shadowdark puzzled Bredon. How could he be so disinterested?
And why was he so hideous?
“Why does Shadowdark look like that?” he asked.
“Just lazy, I guess. He's got all the technology he needs to keep him alive, but he doesn't bother with anything to keep him looking good. And he's looked a little strange for a long time; after all, he's thousands of years old, and he never stopped growing."
“He still hasn't stopped?"
“He still hasn't stopped. He stands almost three meters tall now, but he needs machines to help him stand at all. Most of his body has broken down and been rebuilt or replaced. He's a mess."
“Is it worth living forever, like that?"
“I wouldn't know, kid, I'm just a glorified household gadget. All I know is silicon life; you're the carbon-based life, you tell me whether it's worth it. Shadowdark seems to think it is."
Bredon shuddered slightly.
He decided that he didn't want to think about Shadowdark or Thaddeus or any of the other Powers for awhile. The reference to itself as a household gadget, although incomprehensible to him in itself—as were the references to carbon and silicon—suggested another, more appealing topic. “Tell me about technology,” he said.
“Good grief, kid, that's a hell of a tall order. Where do you want me to start?"
“I don't know. I want to know all about the magic that Geste and the other Powers use, how they do all those things—floating in the air and turning things invisible and all the rest. And I want to know about the spirits they talk to, like you and that thing on the platform and the one Geste called a housekeeper at that place in the mountains."
“I guess I could teach you how to work the gadgets Geste has around the place. Do you care why they work, or do you just want to know how to use them?"
“I just want to know how to use them—at least for now."
“Good enough. I can do that with imprinting, I won't need to spend hours showing you pictures. Okay, kid, you're on. I'll teach you the whole routine, from tailored microbes to pocket universes, whatever we've got on hand. Step right this way."
The surrounding darkness vanished, and Bredon found himself once more in the vast white-ribbed chamber he had seen upon first arriving. The enchanted grove still stood nearby, and the vines still clung to the walls. He realized that he had never left the room, despite the changes in color and light, that most of the chamber had simply been hidden. All the spirits and miracles that had attended him had been right there—he had been bathed and fed and instructed all in this same spot.
Now everything except the walls, the vines, and the forest had vanished.
The room was totally silent when neither he nor Gamesmaster was speaking. Noticing the grove, Bredon wondered why the leaves on the trees did not rustle, then saw that it was because there was no wind to move them. That the little animals that lived in them made no noise at all was rather more surprising.
That was not particularly important, however. The forest was just a distraction from what Gamesmaster wanted to show him.
An oval door had appeared, two meters tall and a meter wide, in the nearest white wall. The nearby vines pulled aside and it irised open. Strange soft music spilled out.
Bredon was obviously expected to go through it, but he hesitated. Could he trust this familiar spirit?
“Come on, kid, it won't bite you,” Gamesmaster said. “Right this way, and I'll teach you the basics of running a modern household."
Bredon gathered his courage, stood, and strode across the room and through the door.
Chapter Thirteen
"...rowed to the place where he had first seen the lights in the water below, and there he waited, patiently, just as he had before.
"Darkness fell, and he looked down through the water, but as always he saw nothing until the time was right.
"The midwake darkness deepened with the passing of an hour, and then another hour, so that the middledark hour was almost upon him, when he looked down over the side of his boat again, and this time he saw them, tiny lights, red and green and gold, twinkling in the lake, not far below him at all.
"With the lights to guide him, he dove over the side of his boat and plunged down into the lake, as he had before. And, as before, when he was scarcely two meters into the water the top of his head hit something, crack! And as before he fainted, and would have thought he would drown had he not known what to expect.
"Of course, he did not drown; he awoke lying in a fine bed in a richly-appointed chamber, and knew that he was once again in the underwater palace of the Lady of the Lake.
"'Hello,’ he called. ‘Can you hear me?'
"'Yes, of course,’ said a voice, and he turned his head to see the Lady herself approaching. ‘I see it's you again,’ she said. ‘What is it this time?'
"'I need a new boat,’ the fisherman told her. ‘A bigger, finer one. The other fishermen say that a boat like mine is nothing special, nothing worthy of the Lady of the Lake, and that you could not have given it to me, for if you had I would have the biggest, finest boat that ever floated.'
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