The Last Plutarch

by Tom O'Donnell

  “Let me,” Issenian said.

  Plain black outfits congealed around the two of them. Boots conformed to their feet.

  “You have a lot to learn, although your control was remarkable for a beginner. I’ve never seen anyone adapt to the implant so quickly.”

  “I thought everything here was Fog. Why can’t I feel the walls?” Meric asked.

  “They’re inveterated. A program was executed to freeze the Fog in place and remove public access. It wouldn’t do to have pranksters rearranging things. The same was done to the White Palace, otherwise we could’ve bypassed the guard and opened an exit right in the floor. Speaking of which–follow me.”

  With a last look at Helicus’s body, Meric and Swan followed Issenian deeper into her palace. At a blank crystal wall, the Plutarch paused. She transmitted a brief program. A key of sorts. The wall tingled into existence in Meric’s phantom limb. It opened to admit them. A small chamber lay beyond. As they walked toward it, the floor melted away. Below was a gray abyss.

  “I use this as a private entrance. Here…”

  Meric detected a cylindrical mass coming together below the opening. The cylinder’s edges hazy; from the outside, it looked like a small cloud. The inside was hollow–big enough to hold two people. Meric hesitated. Could it be a trap? He regarded Issenian. He recalled that day in the arena, when he’d so longed to be recognized by the Queen of Beauty.

  “Why are you helping us?” he asked.

  “I promised Lillian I would.”

  “Why?”

  “I … Long ago, I knew your mother.”

  For a moment Meric wondered how Issenian could’ve had any association with the Matron Adams. But she meant his Plutarch mother. The fact that he had another mother was still too alien, too big to contemplate. He looked at the waiting cylinder.

  “What was her name?” he asked.

  “Judith,” Issenian said. Meric took a deep breath.

  “Thank you,” he said and lowered himself into the floating cylinder. Swan followed.

  “I can delay a little while, but that’s all–I’ll have to report your escape soon or it will look suspicious. Get out of the city as fast as you can. Running across the clearing will probably get you killed. Take the river instead. And Meric? Don’t ever come back. They’ll kill you if you do. Good luck.”

  The floor of Issenian’s palace closed above them.

  Swan was trembling, feeling the walls of the cylinder.

  Remembering her prison, thought Meric.

  He wasn’t a fan of the enclosure himself, but he was no longer so limited in his senses. Closing his eyes, he sunk into the Fog. The cylinder became a part of him. He wrapped the air around it, gripped it with a million invisible threads, and began to lower it through the haze. His stomach fluttered. They jerked and tilted, sped up and slowed down. Gradually, he learned to smooth things out.

  “How is this possible?” Swan whispered.

  Meric was too focused on the Fog to answer. He could feel it out to a certain distance. Beyond that, his perception faded. Larger structures gave only general impressions. Plebian homes, shops, even the Arena where he’d fought Hadric–all were vague and bulky masses in the streets below. As the cloud-cylinder dropped, the shapes grew sharper, more distinct. It was strange and astonishing. More than second sight, it was an expansion of his very identity; a vast, overarching shadow-body. It would’ve been utterly thrilling if he hadn’t been running for his life.

  A Plebian home below brought Reed and his mother to mind. How badly he wanted to see them. He wished he was picking blackberries in the fields again, when the world was simple and orderly. Perhaps he could set the cylinder down in front of his house. It might be his last chance to see them…

  Yet a visit would put his family in danger. The Plutarchs would find out. They’d question the pair, punish them, maybe even enslave them. After what he’d seen in the floating palaces, nothing was out of the question. Better that Reed and his mother forget him entirely.

  Goodbye, mom. Goodbye, Reed. Don’t believe their lies.

  With bitter feelings, Meric urged their transport west, toward the river.

  Panchaea’s southern half spanned a small island which split the river in two, giving the impression of twin waterways for about a kilometer. Unlike the flowing walls in Issenian’s palace, the water in the river was real–meaning it was invisible to Meric’s implant. He detected the river only as a pair of vacant, winding channels cutting across the city, absent of Fog. As the cylinder floated over one of the channels, Meric sealed their transport’s only opening. Darkness closed in. Swan screamed.

  “It’s okay! I’ve got to close it or we’ll drown,” Meric said.

  She quieted. He plunged their transport into the river.

  The impact was felt through the walls and floor. The cylinder rolled sideways, bobbing toward the surface. Meric and Swan were thrown to and fro. Meric tried to set them upright–but his power to maneuver the cylinder had come from its immersion in the Fog. They were at the mercy of the river now.

  The current carried them south.

  “We’re almost to the perimeter-wall. I can feel it,” Meric said.

  Swan made a sound. The cylinder spun again, an unsteady cork.

  The perimeter-wall was “inveterated,” but small sections remained malleable, presumably for the Plutarchs to form doorways to the outside world. Meric felt something else as well, though it wasn’t meant to be an exit…

  “We’re going to have to swim. Once we’re outside the city, stay under until I come up, understand?” Meric asked.

  “Yes, Meric. I trust you.”

  Except for a light tremor in her voice, she was remarkably composed. Her old serenity was emerging beneath the trauma. Meric felt a moment’s admiration for her. He used the Fog to peel off a layer of the cylinder’s inner wall. He formed two hollow tubes, thin as a finger and long as an arm.

  “Take this,” he said, pressing one into Swan’s hand in the dark.

  “What is it?”

  “Breathing tube. Hold your breath–now.”

  The cylinder dematerialized, a billion miniscule claws letting go. The river flooded in with the force of a falling wall; cold, hard, smothering. The Plebians kicked for the surface. Their shirts billowed around them, their boots heavy and awkward in the water. Meric had a moment’s thought to dissolve them, but boots would be valuable in the Wildlands. The perimeter-wall was coming up fast.

  “Down–follow me down!” Meric said. She looked at him wide-eyed. He plunged back under, trying to ignore the cold. From days spent swimming in his youth, Meric knew what to expect ahead: a row of thick, iron-like bars with enough space between for an average-sized fish. The bars ran from the wall above the river down into the bedrock. Sometimes lucky Plebians pulled out fish too big to fit through. Such findings were rare, however, as similar bars blocked the river’s northern entrance. Once, a man had caught a seven-foot bull shark. Presumably it had slipped in as a baby and spent years lurking unseen in the bottom of the river. Not a good thing to remember when you’re swimming in it. But there was one thing Meric knew now that he hadn’t known as a child.

  The bars weren’t real iron–they were Fog.

  As they approached, he dissolved a two-meter section. He and Swan passed through the opening. The perimeter-wall swung by overhead. Beyond, Swan kicked for the surface before remembering Meric’s warning. He shook his head at her underwater. He had the breathing tube, but he didn’t want to use it until absolutely necessary. The turrets above would have line-of-sight on their position, and he didn’t know if they’d spot the inch-wide tips of the tubes breaking the surface. They’d have to stay under for almost a kilometer to bypass the clearing.

  As the river carried them away, all sense of the Fog faded. Meric was struck with unexpected longing. He’d only just gained the power of a Plutarch, only used it in desperation … yet already, in the first instant, he missed it. It was the power to move matter at will, t
o fly on a thought, to create and shape the world as he saw fit. For however brief a time, he’d been a demigod. Now that power, that freedom, was leaving him–possibly forever. A stab of panic and denial accompanied the thought.

  When he couldn’t wait any longer, he pushed one end of the tube above the surface, blew the water out, and sucked in a breath. Swan did the same. The river was growing wider. Its two channels reunited. Water lapped over the tube. Meric inhaled and sputtered. He started to claw for the surface, fought his instincts, and stayed under.

  Only when the trees rose above the nearest bank did he risk surfacing. Swan followed him up. The river had brought them into the forest south of the city. The Fog was a kilometer away, though still in sight. He went under again and swam for the western bank. He came up close to the shore, arms cramping, and dragged himself out of the shallows to collapse into the grass. Panchaea was entirely hidden by trees.

  Swan joined him on the shore. Whereas Meric felt a momentary relief, however, Swan gazed around in abject terror, hands up and trembling even as she tried to catch her breath.

  “What? What is it?” Meric asked.

  From the look on her face, he might as well have asked while falling off a cliff. His own life had turned upside-down in under twenty-four hours, so the question did seem a little ludicrous, but Swan’s terror spoke of new and immediate horrors. Then he realized: it was the world that terrified her. Meric had had months to adjust to the Wildlands. He’d lost his fear of it. In Swan’s mind, demons, savages, wild beasts and the sun itself were now fates competing to destroy her. She hid her face in her hands. Meric tried to calm her, to tell her how things really were, but she was too absorbed in crying and hyperventilating. He would’ve gladly let her rest for a few hours, but they couldn’t afford to wait.

  “We can’t stay here, Swan. They may send people after us.”

  Numbly, Swan allowed herself to be pulled to her feet. The trees were her only counterpoint to the danger. All her life, she’d loved them–without ever seeing one up close. She was too much in shock to fully appreciate the experience, but she did reach a trembling hand to the nearest trunk. It calmed her some.

  They spent a few minutes wringing out their clothes. The Fog-fabric dried easily when squeezed, though the damp and cold couldn’t be eliminated completely. Meric was anxious to move on. How long before someone came? Would someone come? Probably.

  The Obelisk stood across the river, white tip towering over the forest, a kilometer away. The crumbling remains of a colonnaded building stood much nearer to the river. What had such things signified to the ancients? Meric turned away, took Swan’s hand, and pulled her into the forest. He cursed himself for not forming a blade on their way out of the Fog. They would need food eventually. Slowly, the enormity of events began to weigh on him.

  Exile. We’ve been exiled.

  The truth was inescapable. Meric trudged through the forest like a dead-man. Swan followed, amazed and overwhelmed by everything around them. She whimpered at animals scuttling past. Her footfalls were loud and awkward on the unfamiliar terrain. They’d walked only a handful of kilometers when the first white stone appeared. It was a stout thing with rounded edges and ancient writing engraved on one side. Another stone stood meters away … and another … and another. Thousands of identical white markers had been planted across the countryside. Many had been shifted or uprooted by trees, but it was clear they’d once lain in perfectly straight rows.

  “What are they?” Swan whispered.

  “Graves,” Meric said.

  The ancients buried their dead in the Earth.

  Gnost had told him that. They’d passed gravestones on the journey north, but this was different; vast and uniform, stretching from horizon to horizon. The ruins of a great amphitheater peeked through the trees. Its white columns were wrapped in vines. A place of wild spirits, no doubt. Swan clenched Meric’s hand as they walked among the gravestones.

  The sky darkened. Sorrow settled in, followed by bone-deep exhaustion. Meric had moved beyond weeping. His life’s foundation had collapsed beneath him. It had been weakening ever since Jarl’s Ravine, but he’d told himself the bedrock was strong. Now there was no denying it. He’d captured Trajan. He’d earned a Triumph. He’d done everything right … and everything wrong.

  Walking kept him busy, but not busy enough. They walked for hours, or days, or years. Stars peaked through the treetops. Meric stumbled on a log and went to one knee. He meant to rise again. He meant to keep going, if only for the sake of motion. But his chin was drawn inexorably downward. His arms were as heavy as trees. The energy to rise was unobtainable, the threshold of movement as distant as the stars. His other knee came down. A deep mourning wracked his body. He wept from his core, as though a close friend had died.

  Bold Meric weeping in the dirt, sneered a silent voice.

  Swan’s arms came around him. She laid her head against his back. The grief burned down to coals. He became still.

  I have burned the first fire of grief.

  Yet no more of his friends had died. For whom did he grieve? As he and Swan lay together in a patch of soft grass beneath a sprawling oak, the answer came–himself. He wept for who he’d been.

  That person had died with his faith in the Plutarchs.

  *

  The savages found them on the third new day.

  On the first day, they didn’t eat. Their appetites went toward digesting change–which was good, because there was no actual food. Hours were spent in a miserable, largely silent malaise. Mosquitoes harassed them through a tall-grass marsh. Wolf-tracks spoke of danger in the surrounding hills.

  “Where did they all live?” Swan asked.

  Meric looked at her in confusion.

  “The people in those graves. The ancients. Where are their farms? Their houses? Shouldn’t some still be here?”

  “The old cities were replaced by Fog–except for monuments and historic buildings. The Fog was destroyed by the RFI,” Meric said.

  I never thought I’d be repeating Trajan’s stories.

  For Swan, the answer only opened new branches of inquiry. Meric had to explain everything: Trajan, the landslide, Ozymand. It was hard to say what stunned Swan more: the existence of a subterranean Fog-city, Meric’s Triumph, or the revelations of his half-sister Lillian. The Fog’s secret nature was too big for her to even contemplate.

  In turn, Swan told Meric how Gallatius had abducted her. She’d been one of several Plebian slaves in his palace. She was mum on exactly how she’d ended up in the isotube. Meric wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  Despite her initial fear, Swan adjusted much faster to the Wildlands than Meric had, perhaps because returning to Panchaea was not an option, or perhaps because she’d been ready for a change, no matter how drastic. Learning about life outside the city also forced her to focus on the present, leaving her less distracted than Meric, whose mind smoldered in the wreckage of his past.

  At night the air grew cold. Meric built a small fire in a dip between two hills. His depression made it an enormous undertaking. Clouds blotted out the stars, helping conceal the smoke. He and Swan sat staring into the flames.

  “Where do we go from here?” Swan asked.

  Meric lowered his head. There was nowhere to go. Swan leaned into him and talked of old times instead. Swimming races in the public pools. Reed’s tendency to involve them in spontaneous games. The time Dominus had tried to convince a pretty girl he was a Plutarch. Swan drew joy from the memories, but they only cemented Meric’s melancholy.

  On the second day, Swan’s appetite returned. Meric was beyond caring. He mumbled answers to her questions about berries and roots. They drank from a stream. They found a recently dead squirrel, but Meric had neither the means nor the willpower to skin and cook it. It made him think of Nog’s pet, Mobius. Toward night, it began to rain. They found a niche in a rocky bluff for cover. Swan was both amazed and frightened by the downpour.

  “Is it safe?” she asked.


  “It’s cold,” Meric said.

  The whole world is cold, he thought, though it was still summer. Swan gazed into the rain. She stepped out of her boots. She took off her clothes.

  “What are you doing?” Meric asked.

  “Feeling something new.”

  She walked naked into the rain, face and arms raised. She stood there relishing it, letting the dirt wash away. When she returned, she was smiling for the first time since they’d left Panchaea. Shivering, she mounted Meric where he huddled in the alcove.

  “What are you–”

  “Feeling something new,” she said again.

  “Swan, I–”

  “Shh.”

  Meric’s mind was a million miles away. He felt numb. He doubted he even had the mental energy to become aroused. Swan’s ministrations proved otherwise. His body reacted … yet it wasn’t Swan he found himself thinking of.

  She undressed him almost forcefully, pinned his arms, positioned him. She needed to be in control, perhaps because all trace of it had been removed by Gallatius. It was a far shot from their secret trysts in the strawberry field. Swan was fierce, almost angry. She moved with furious purpose. Afterwards, she lay with one leg over him and arranged their clothes into the best blanket she could manage.

  When Meric woke, Meliai was standing over them.

  CHAPTER 16

  Abraxas stood before the empty isotube, his shock mirrored in Gregorio’s eyes. Wasn’t this the right one? He checked the second cylinder–empty as well.

  “Godsblood…” Gregorio muttered.

  Abraxas opened a window into the third. A gaunt young woman with short brown hair shielded her eyes from the light. Abraxas closed the cylinder, turned and stalked from the room.

  The guard was at his post in the lobby.

  “Send me the names of everyone who entered the White Palace in the last six hours,” Abraxas said. The guard was a younger Plutarch. His face was familiar. With only a few hundred Plutarchs in all of Panchaea, everyone was familiar by adulthood.