Beyond

by Mercedes Lackey

  They stepped silently onto the woolen carpet and, at the same pace as a Doll would use, took up positions between the other Dolls in line by the cases.

  A moment later, Kordas’s brave Herald Beltran stepped through the same opening, his forearms aglow with the protective bracers—and in each hand, one dueling Spitter—that had belonged to the Emperor’s father. “Put your hands up!” the Herald yelled, making the Emperor startle.

  Mockingly, the Emperor replied, “Oh, a boy with Spitters! I’m so scared!”

  But despite the mocking tone, the Emperor did raise his hands, and that was enough.

  Outstanding, Beltran.

  Instantly, the Dolls behind the Emperor leapt into action. One worked the combination for the carcanet and yanked it aside, while another snatched the Wolf Crown. It happened incredibly quickly.

  Within a single breath, the Emperor was stripped naked, including everything. Robes, shirt, trews, underwear—

  The wolf statues stirred and came to life, ruby eyes suddenly blazing brightly, and stared at the tableau before them.

  Oh, hells.

  The seven wolves howled, incredibly loudly. All seven, and the horrific sound increased in volume and pitch as they prepared to leap. It was more than just sound, it created a dizzying disorientation that weakened everybody that wasn’t either wolf or Doll.

  Now, with the protective items he’d worn removed from him, that included the Emperor.

  Herald Beltran swayed and fired both Spitters into the Emperor, striking him with two gut-shots before dropping both weapons to cover his ears.

  It happened so fast the Emperor was only just beginning to understand when Kordas and Merrin moved. Merrin drew his Spitter, jammed it into the Emperor’s throat, and fired, sending the bolt into his larynx. Anything the Emperor might have been about to say died in a gurgling, gagging sound.

  Then Kordas drew his Spitter, twisted the handle, reversed it, and smashed the pommel into the Emperor’s forehead.

  The mercy-piston, meant to pierce a horse’s or cow’s thick skull, had no problem with a mere human skull. The bolt drove soundlessly into the Emperor’s brain, enveloped in frost clouds from the six jet-vents of the piston, and rebounded back in Kordas’s grip.

  The Emperor was dead before his knees gave and his body hit the lush golden carpet.

  The wolf statues silenced, and stared, their eyes still bright.

  Merrin grabbed the Wolf Crown and jammed it onto Kordas’s head, as Kordas clasped the Carcanet around his own throat, then bent down and yanked the ring off the Emperor’s forefinger and jammed it onto his own.

  Then the wolf statues closed their eyes and froze in place once more.

  Oh . . . hells. That was too close.

  Kordas turned to the Dolls, who had also frozen in place. Clearly they had not expected him to do that.

  “Who do you serve?” Kordas demanded, barely hearing his own voice over the effects of the howling earlier.

  There was a short pause. “He who wears the Crown, the Carcanet, and the Ring,” they said.

  Kordas leaned hard against the desk, panting. Everything spun a little, and his head pounded. He’d worked out earlier that the set of items were powerful, but the sensation of actually wearing them was enough to do his head in. As soon as Merrin and the Dolls pulled the Emperor’s body away, Kordas fell into the chair, mopping at his forehead with the left sleeve of his thunderstorm-dyed shirt. He closed his eyes.

  There was only one way to be certain the Emperor wouldn’t pursue us. We had to kill the Emperor.

  Kordas fumbled with a pen and the papers in the folders, then gave up to spend another few moments with his eyes closed. Finally he said, awkwardly, “Can you please find me some blank paper? And take that body on the floor and put it in the Emperor’s bed.”

  One of the Dolls extracted paper from somewhere behind him and placed it on the desk in front of him. Others dragged the body away. There was, surprisingly, very little blood. And very little else. The Emperor must have used the jakes before he’d sat down to meet with them.

  Poised with pen above the paper, Kordas’s hand shook. “Beltran. Come—come help me here. Star—you too.” He felt queasy, but it had to be because of the enormity of what they’d just done. He took up the pen again and scrawled out:

  As of now, and forever on, all vrondi are free.

  He dated the paper, and turned the Imperial ring face-down on the page and pressed. The seal burned in. Tiredly, but with a hint of a smile, he said to Star, “Is that official enough for you?”

  “The Record Keeper says that all Dolls are free of Imperial compulsion now. Our appreciation is immeasurable, my Lord.”

  Kordas laughed a little. “You don’t have to keep calling me that, Star.”

  “I don’t have to, my Lord. But I want to.”

  Kordas knew there was still much to be done, but he did indulge himself for a moment in the feeling of wearing the Crown and sitting at the desk. It didn’t feel good at all. In fact, it felt repugnant. He heaved as he pushed himself away from the desk, knocking the chair over and stumbling. He felt the hands of Merrin, Beltran, and Star steadying him. This—this was not who he was.

  “We have much to do, yet, and the Plan is still underway. Star, I know that every Doll is free now, but if you all wouldn’t be opposed, I’d still like your help.” Star nodded, so he continued. “Release the vrondi from the Trap, then break the damnable thing for good. Get the prisoners on their way. Release every prisoner held in the dungeons and holding cells, and get them to safety. And—let’s take everything in here that’s magical. Same for the Imperial quarters. We may need their power to fuel the Gates. Get them to Valdemar.”

  He looked at Merrin. “If you approve, Duke.”

  Merrin allowed himself a chuckle. “I’m a feather pulled along in your wake at this point, Kordas. Am I going to oppose the man who killed an Emperor?”

  Kordas glanced to Beltran and replied, “We all got our shots in.”

  Beltran still wore the bracers and had the pair of Spitters tucked in. “Might just keep these, if there’s no objection.”

  Kordas said, “I don’t know. Last time you fired them, you shot an Emperor.”

  “I’ll be more careful next time,” the Herald replied.

  Kordas dropped back into himself now that he’d rested a little. The surge of energy and excitement that came with being under pressure renewed him. “Top speed, full strength for all the Dolls now. Get everybody innocent out first, like grocers, Healers, and shopsmiths. Elderly and children, and if there are any pets left, them too. Clear the mews and stables out, and key all the Gates to voice command. No talismans needed except for the refuge. Anyone who doesn’t have a home to go to, take them to Valdemar to be looked after there.”

  What he was about to unleash—he suddenly realized it would cause what the Foreseers had warned about. The Palace, and the Capital, destroyed in a hell of fire and lava.

  There were a lot of innocent people in the city. And a lot of not-so-innocent people in the Palace, but a lot of innocents, too. Kitchen staff, guards, and maybe there were more nobles like Merrin had been. Maybe more than he would have thought.

  He turned to the nearest Doll. “Is there any way we can announce something to the entire Palace and City?” It seemed wildly unlikely, but . . .

  “Of course,” the Doll said, and produced a golden cone, open at both ends, from a drawer behind him, while other Dolls emptied every hidden cache and display case in the office. They moved so swiftly now that there were actual breezes. The Gate in the room alternated between Dolls leaving with their arms laden and new ones coming through an instant later. “Just speak into the narrow end. Your words will be repeated all over the Palace and City.”

  “I could have told you that,” Merrin said, looking at him with a hint of reproach. “He used to
use it all the time to announce a parade when he was sufficiently bored.”

  Kordas took a deep breath. “I’m going to release the thing in the Chamber of the Beast,” he said, wondering if Merrin knew what he was talking about.

  Merrin went white. “But—”

  He nodded. “I know. It’s going to wreck the entire City, and what it leaves standing, its parents are going to destroy.”

  “But—”

  “It’s a child. And it’s been tortured for decades.” He looked at the nearest Doll again. “About how long after I order it released do you think people will have to get out?”

  The Dolls all froze. Finally the one he was talking to spoke again. “Earth Elementals move slowly. The Child will flee, most likely, and the elder ones will move toward it once they can detect it. Then, we expect, they will move to take revenge on the City. Based on the measurements the mages have made of the elders’ movements, three candlemarks.”

  Kordas took a deep breath and tried to steady himself. This was going to be the hardest speech of his life. He was about to tell people that they had just enough time to grab what was essential, what was closest and dearest to them, and abandon their homes. “People of the Empire,” he began, and heard his own voice booming outside the office a moment later. “The City and Palace are in danger. An evacuation is ordered immediately. Take what is vital to you and get through a Gate to anywhere but here. Dolls will assist you at full strength and speed if you wave them down. One candlemark remains. Evacuate the City and Palace. Expect nothing to remain here.”

  Then Merrin grabbed the cone out of his hands and shouted into it. “The Demons are free! Run for your lives! The Demons are free! Run for your lives!” Merrin operated some sliding pins on the cone, and the device repeated what they’d both just warned—and shouted.

  “Why did you say ‘demons’?” Kordas asked.

  “Because everyone knows what a demon is,” Merrin said, with impeccable logic.

  Faintly, sounds of screaming came from outside the office.

  The Palace began to shake. The last glimpse Kordas had of the Imperial office was a rain of plaster and gold leaf heaping onto the carpet. There was no value to gold when the world was disintegrating.

  Kordas and his companions got their footwear and other gear back on in the Records complex; one of the Dolls jammed paper talismans in their pockets for the foot-Gate at the refuge. Star accompanied them, snapping off information and updates as quickly as raindrops came in a downpour.

  The Regatta’s warships came in to dock and took on passengers.

  Dolls used their tremendous strength and speed as polemen to get boats and barges through water-Gates.

  Civilians turned up street- and canal-side, and in more than a few cases, their tools, belongings, and trade-carts were tossed into barges by Dolls.

  Some of this, Kordas got glimpses of; some, he only heard from Star. The false Golds! They’re at the chariot down by the waterfront!

  Kordas bolted out through a Gate to the Imperial Chariot; Merrin followed. “Damned if I’ll let my horses burn,” Kordas growled, while he and Merrin released them from their harness. They weren’t Chargers; the ground shook beneath them, there was fire in the air, and they reared and stamped with growing panic, but Kordas tore off his coat and threw it over the head of his, and it calmed immediately. They knew; they’d been trained. If they had been “blinkered” like this, they were with a human who would care for them and they’d be safe. Merrin fought with his for just a moment, saw what Kordas had done, and did the same, grabbing the halter just under the chin as Kordas had. “Gate!” shouted Kordas, and they made for it, as the ground shook and a hot wind began to blow.

  Behind him, the warships cast off after the first loud crack sounded from somewhere in the Palace compound. “Take them,” Kordas told Merrin, and when the new Duke had hold of both horses and was through the Gate to the refuge, Kordas stepped aside to help people escape. The destruction escalated over the next candlemark, and with Star beside him, Kordas stood and watched the Capital die. Jets of steam and smoke erupted from around the City, accompanied by more booms. One very large jolt sent a powerful enough shockwave to knock Kordas off his feet. Still Kordas stayed, coordinating the last rescues with the Dolls that remained.

  Kordas felt his exposed skin drying in the ambient heat. Ash fell from the orange sky, in flurries like snow, and the earth itself heaved upward from the Palace outward. He wiped at his face. Tears distorted his vision.

  “My Lord,” Star said loudly from beside him, and gripped his upper arm. “This is too dangerous for you to stay!”

  “I have to,” Kordas bellowed back. “I have to see this. It’s my doing. It’s—it’s not something I can turn my back on.”

  A deafening, explosive shock came from the Palace, and a set of bright yellow molten-metal knifeblades—no—claws ten stories high punched upward through the center of the Palace complex, and Kordas fell to his knees. Lightning crackled in jagged bolts through the clouds of ash, which itself was now expanding up and outward, utterly covering the sky. The canals of the City drained toward where the Palace once had been, and Kordas felt his eyes dry out. Where water once was in the canals, pyroclastic flow now raced toward them, and if Kordas was screaming, he couldn’t hear it. The City’s remains heaved, then burst into a flower of fire and molten stone. More searing claws emerged, and a pair of red-hot jaws emerged from the lava, snapping at the air, like a fish snapping at a fly just above the water, and as the torrent of ash and fire began to cook his skin, Kordas was pulled back through the Gate by Star.

  * * *

  —

  Kordas couldn’t register anything from his senses quite right. He was drowning, he was gasping, he was burning. There was yelling, and he was being prodded at and lifted. He fell. Shapes moved around him but none were distinct. There might have been voices, but mostly, there was incessant ringing in his ears, and crackling when he moved his jaw. His tongue was dry, and he tasted nothing. He was jostled and carried, and his nostrils were caked in blood and ash. Time passed, but he didn’t know how. He sensed Mindspeech and then stinging sensations, and feelings like being . . . peeled. He did not like that at all, and was nearly sure he coughed up blood and ash. He caught himself blinking and took it to be a good sign. If he could blink, he was alive. If he hurt, he was alive.

  He thought he heard cursing, and then things snapped into a clearer version. Someone removed the Carcanet from him, and then the soothing warmth of magical Healing flooded into his core. He felt water poured over him repeatedly, and much fuss around him. It could have lasted days. He had periods of coughing, periods of drunkenness. He felt himself being bathed. Outside of that, there was continuous commotion. Several times he lost all sense of balance. He knew he’d tried to stand up and had been laid back down again.

  Maybe this was for the best, he thought. If I’m being looked after by somebody, I’m alive, and the Plan must have worked, and everyone must have the situation in hand. I should stay this way a while. I can be done without, for a while.

  I killed the Emperor. I killed the City. I—may have killed the Empire.

  Maybe I’ve earned some rest.

  But he couldn’t quite bring himself to feel happy about it. He’d witnessed the annihilation of a City that was centuries old. It was horrible. What if there had been people trapped there? What if not everyone made it out? What if the Elementals from Below didn’t stop there?

  Was he screaming again?

  Then he was warming up inside again. It was so hard to tell what had become of him.

  What have I become?

  Epilogue

  “ . . . So then we set the Gates in the Imperial City to accept everyone and everything living that came through them, even if they had no talisman,” said three Dolls nearest him, as he carefully sipped wine, propped up on cushions on the roof of the living barge h
e and Isla would share. With their boys, their three boys, a family at last. “For those that had no talisman, the destination was random—to whatever Gate outside the City that did not have something or someone in it. You told us you wanted as many saved as you could. I think that most, if not all, escaped.”

  And thus the word that the Imperial Capital had fallen to monsters was spread directly to every corner of the Empire. Well . . . that was efficient.

  “It was efficient,” said the third Doll, Rose, echoing his thoughts. It was easier to tell them apart now; Star was covered in scorch marks, imperfectly covered by the clothing someone had given it.

  The Dolls were staying. They were counting on him and his collection of mages to figure out how to free them, yes. But, Star told him, they were also staying because they liked him and his people. “Even when we are freed, this one thinks that you will not be seeing the last of us.”

  Mostly, he’d been told, the only people coming here had been those he’d intended to come. The hostages, the people of Valdemar, and the people of Valdemar who’d slipped talismans to friends or relations outside of Valdemar. The dissidents had ended up here too, though, which could be a future problem—one he was too tired to address right now.

  The sun setting over the lake, the smell of cookfires and campfires, and all the boats, some of them painted up gaudily for the Regatta they never reached, made things look and feel deceptively peaceful.

  Deceptively, because people were troubled. When Dolls and horses and people had come pouring through the foot-Gate, smelling of smoke and ash and screaming their heads off about demons, the Circle had done some sort of massive scrying spell, and pretty much everyone around the lake had gotten a bird’s-eye scrying view of the destruction.

  Isla told him most people had cheered and openly rejoiced. But then, most people had just seen their most feared enemy getting pulverized. They hadn’t been there. They hadn’t seen innocent people, people a lot like them, running for their lives through a burning hell. They didn’t have it on their conscience.