Gloriana's Masque

by Eleanor Burns

  “For Thalassa’s sake,” said the man, weakly. “Leave it, Delator, and let’s just get back to the barricades. What does it matter now?”

  “They’re deserters, and those are our weapons they’re making off with,” she answered, with stony and uncompromising contempt. “We’re trying to keep everyone alive, while they’re trying to save their own skins and rob us of the gear we need to hold this place together. I’ll give them one chance to drop the goods and come with us back to the barricades, where they can sodding well pull their weight, or I’ll personally carry out my own court-martial and execution in the next ten seconds. Any of you brave lads fancy a countdown, or would you rather just come quietly?”

  If that’s how you want it … thought Ordric, raising his hands and slowly making for the door, measuring his pace so that the other looters could catch up with him and all four of them arrive in a group. He just hoped that his mates would guess his intention. As he drew level with the delator, the others close behind him, he stared grimly at her, drawing both her gaze and her aim. That’s the idea, lass. Think of me as the ringleader, the only one you’ve got to worry about. I just hope you ain’t right about that. If the others did not take advantage of this window of opportunity, they would not be likely to get another.

  Thankfully, they did, although Ordric’s gratitude was short-lived. With the delator’s aim turned away, one of his mates made a grab for her pistol. Her arm wheeled back around in an instant and shot him point-blank through the heart. Ordric tried to rush her, but her other hand, that had been supporting the sickly officer, suddenly left its post and found a new home deep in Ordric’s gut. Both him and the officer collapsed in unison, although Ordric had no sympathy to spare for his fellow floor-dweller, winded and in agony as he was. Shit, damn woman punches like a cannonball. As he went down, he heard the sounds of the other two men joining the fray, but even with no load in her pistol and no element of surprise to fall back on, the delator held her ground against them. Ordric crawled across the floor, hoping to reach his musket, but the pain in his gut was getting worse by the second, and he made very poor progress. He glanced back to assess the situation. One man was still on his feet and fighting hand-to-hand with the delator, although from the ease with which she was avoiding his strikes and paying them back with interest, Ordric did not think that would last for long. The other man was on the floor, dead, with the hilt of a dagger protruding from his chest. Blood pooled around him and trailed across the floor, and for some bizarre reason it traced a perfect line to where Ordric himself had crawled. What in the … ? Shit. He realised that she had not punched him after all. She had stabbed him, and there was no surgeon capable of patching up a deep gut wound for hundreds of miles all around.

  He might have been sick with fear, were he not boiling mad with rage. Like I ever asked to come to this dump, or like I was the one responsible for this screw-up, and how the fuck is it some Lucinian bitch is accusing me of desertion, like it’s any of her business? The officer who had been with her seemed to have crawled away, not that Ordric cared. He had no quarrel to settle with that one. The final looter still on his feet was looking as if he might succumb at any moment, as he struggled to defend himself against the delator’s well-trained blows, but a few seconds more was all that Ordric needed. He reached into his blood-soaked tunic and pulled out a metal object with a long copper handle and a short, cylindrical head of hollow iron, cast in a regular series of grooves and bumps to aid fragmentation. As quietly as possible, he pulled the two sections apart, then rolled the iron cylinder across the floor in the direction of the delator. Distracted as she was by the ongoing fight, her quick reactions did not, on this occasion, prove quick enough.

  From where Ordric lay, the blast was still powerful enough to perforate his eardrums and make him feel as if his whole body had been tenderised by Gwythærn’s hammer, but it did not give him the quick and relatively painless death he had been half-hoping for. On the positive side, when the cloud of smoke and pulverised plaster finally began to clear, he could see from the charred and twisted bodies, brutally lacerated by shrapnel, that he would not, at any rate, die unavenged. Small fucking mercy, he thought, bitterly, as he felt himself growing colder. Not long, then, but in spite of the chill he still felt mentally alert, and his pains were not dulling in the slightest. He also felt a tingling like pins and needles, which for some reason was particularly acute in his neck: almost piercing, indeed. A draft of icy air rushed over him, causing him to wonder if his chill was in fact numbness or just the result of the grenade having blown out the window glass. He turned his attention to the wall, and realised that not only had the blast made short work of the window, but it had also disintegrated a large chunk of the inner wall itself, including the area upon which the priestess had chalked the protective sigil.

  He had less than a second for the horror of that to sink in before the sting in his neck became a deep, unbearably agonising stabbing, that made his gut wound seem like a pinprick in comparison. In spite of his weakness, he found the strength to scream, but even that became an effort as unseen hooks or claws seized at his face and pulled his skin taut and his jaws wide open, while crushing manacles seemed to attach to his wrists and ankles, and stretched him out like a tanner’s hide. He thought he would be torn apart at any moment, and could almost have welcomed it, but such luck was not with him. More stabbing pains erupted all over his body, and for a few seconds he had a vague but hideous impression of his attackers, as deformed, skeletal, shadow puppet-like figures. He was quickly and horribly relieved of this vision as long black claws, no more than wisps of smoke to look at, but hard as steel, pulled back his eyelids, worked their way underneath his eyeballs, and gouged them out whole. The pain of that eclipsed even the horrible sensation of something long, hard, and icy cold, like a metal cable, being forced down his throat, and of some curved, mask-like object being fastened over his jaw, several sharp points drilling into the skull to hold it secure and tight. He could no longer even draw breath, and his lungs seemed to burn for want of air, but why the fuck won’t I die? Please, sweet Thalas– The unspoken prayer was drowned in another wave of searing torture as hard, icy-cold objects were forced into his empty eye sockets. The pain spread out from them in what felt like thin, snaking rivulets of molten steel that buried into his skull and brain, and then his sight suddenly returned to him, after a fashion, although he would have gladly done without it.

  The room, the loot, and the bodies had all faded to washed-out, greyish phantom versions of themselves, but Ordric could now see his attackers clearly: emaciated things with grey, bloodless skin; multifaceted black crystals for eyes; and so much smooth, bone-like armour fused into their faces and bodies, which were otherwise clad only in rags, that they had the look of oversized insects. Some were more grotesque than others; more ragged and emaciated, their remaining flesh and skin having almost withered away, and their muscles having developed excessively, giving them an elongated, spindly build, almost like dead, leafless trees. The slightly less hideous ones still looked like obscene distortions of the human form, and the fact that some of them wore the shredded remnants of Brython greys did not in any sense mitigate the horror.

  The creatures that were holding him fast then snapped and twisted his limbs some more, and finally clamped on more pieces of the bony armour to hold the ruination together. Again, he felt sharp points drilling into his own flesh and bone, although by now this was just a minor detail in the general litany of pain. When this grisly task was completed, the things drew back from him and formed a rank. Involuntarily, Ordric rose to his deformed and fractured legs and fell into line behind the creatures. With a contorted, apelike gait they began to lope through the ghostlike embassy, their course unimpeded by the now-insubstantial walls and doors. Ordric followed, puppet-like, his mangled body racked with new torments at every motion, and his mind running over the same thought repeatedly and uselessly: let me die, let me die, let me …

  ************

/>   The howling of the vargs was fading the more distance they put between them, although it was obviously not enough distance for the driver’s liking, as the stagecoach continued to shake violently, and Kasimir’s nausea seemed in no danger of abating. Rotten bloody country. Why in the Abysm did we come here? The wind roared through the open windows, drowning out Delator Maradith’s shouts, in spite of the fact that she was only on the opposite bench. He tried leaning towards her, but found that it required an inhuman amount of effort to pivot his body by even a few centimetres. However, he could now catch the occasional word, although her voice sounded strange. Reminds me of something, though, or of someone. Can’t seem to put my finger on it, but–

  “Lord Citizen! Kasimir! For Alyssa’s sake … Wake up, Elwin! I need … Thank goodness,” said Gloriana, as he opened his eyes to a world that was still, bizarrely and discouragingly, shaking violently. A cold wind was still scouring across his face, which at least helped him in regaining his alertness, although it also carried a few unsettling but mercifully faint howls to his ears. As his bleary vision cleared, he saw the Queen’s face hovering over him, and he could not suppress a spasm of revulsion. She was no longer wearing her mask, and she had even removed her black crystal eye. While Kasimir had never been the greatest fan of the thing, neither for its appearance nor for its function, there was not much more to be said for the shiny, withered red void that had surrounded it, and the shaded hollow of her empty eye-socket lent her face an even more skull-like air. However, his involuntary but obvious flinching away had no impact at all on the relief in her expression on seeing him awaken.

  “Not before time,” she continued, while Kasimir felt the vibrations beneath him and heard what sounded ominously like collapsing rubble from all too near at hand. “Of which, incidentally, we have very little remaining, but would you rather hear the good news or the bad news first?”

  “Would the bad news have something to do with an earthquake?” he asked, as the shocks persisted, but Gloriana shook her head dismissively.

  “Hardly. Our adversary is simply getting impatient to clear us out of here,” she explained, with admirable calm, as a great shard of rock came to a shattering impact not so many metres away from them. “The vargs were not efficient enough, it seems, and in any case simply collapsing this place on us would protect it for all time. I was right, you see: the Darkshift temple was built to be self-aware, but the mandala was devised as a way of controlling it – of re-programming it – if it ever got out of hand, and I think I know how we can stop it. Look,” she declared, helping him shift around until he could see the stone pedestals, upon which she had placed various crystals: clear green ydrillites, opaque scarlet-and-orange pyrochites, pale blue orbs of ærolian quartz, and on the central altar she had placed her own nazarlyk; dark, smoky, and eerily turbulent. “The crystals all have a particular affinity for a different fundamental force,” she explained, loudly and frantically as more rubble cascaded down from the ceiling. “I’ve arranged them in what I hope amounts to a positive feedback circuit, with the nazarlyk at the centre of all the meridians, re-absorbing the circulated energy and pooling it back at its source. I’m gambling that will instruct the temple to channel its energy back in on itself instead of sending it out here, until it builds up to a critical overload … which I can’t imagine going too well for us, admittedly, but at least any devastation would be limited to Kadar Ydril rather than the whole world.”

  “Oh,” he replied, feeling that he ought to sound more enthusiastic, but finding himself short on the willpower it would take to fake it. “I see … Jolly good. Well then, is there some way I can be of– ?”

  “Regrettably, yes. The bad news–”

  “Is not that we’re likely to die down here?” he interrupted, incredulously.

  “I wish … and I also wish I did not need to ask this of you,” she added, her sorrowful note, against all probability, deepening his sense of dread. “Unfortunately, my plan cannot work as long as the temple continues to block the master meridian that connects it to the circle. I believe that doing so is costing it energy, however, or it could have been far more forceful in disposing of us.”

  “It could?” he asked, his incredulity undaunted, as the ceiling continued to disintegrate around them in potentially lethal qualities, and a brief cry from the shadows suggested that this potential had been realised on one of the guards.

  “Most certainly. I did not talk loosely of setting volcanoes off beneath Lyssagrad, or beneath us, but even the few minutes it would take for our enemy to snap a new fault in the Earth’s crust and boil us in magma would be enough time for my little sabotage to take effect, so it needs to hold the mandala at bay until it can undo my work … which may happen at any moment,” she shouted, as rubble actually fell within the circle and rattled the crystals within their shallow niches. “Our one hope now is to break its attention; distract it. Saskia might have been able to do that, but I sent her to the surface without thinking, which leaves …” at which she tailed off, awkwardly and with a remorseful note, but Kasimir got the ominous gist of it.

  “Telepathy, you mean?” he asked, trying to sound resolute although he feared that he did a poor job of keeping his tone steady. “Get into its … head? You think that would be enough to disturb its concentration?”

  “It’s all we have, and I can't pretend I envy you the prospect of having to join minds with such a powerful and ancient malevolence, but I see no other hope. It should have been my responsibility, but I lack your gift. Will you, My Lord?”

  Kasimir nodded grimly, closed his eyes, and visualised reaching out into the dark, where he had seen the phantom of the temple. He did not need to grope for long. The sense of its presence, and of its malice, was overwhelming. Will it even notice me? Does a gryphon notice a single flea? I suppose it depends where it bites, he thought. Focusing his will and steeling his nerves, he mentally dived in …

  Images flashed past, too quickly and too overwhelmingly for him to make much sense of them, but among those that were the least surreal and disturbing he was able to fleetingly perceive a few things. There were ruins of epic scale but hideous form, like the half-buried bones of ancient leviathans, or like giant fungi sprouting in fields of ash and barren soil. There were hordes of monstrous creatures, some familiar to him and some completely alien, although even the ones he recognised – wyverns, vargs, cockatrices, bonnacons – were not as he knew them. They were larger, sleeker, and with an almost production-line uniformity to them, with none of the variegations common to them in nature. Some of them were even drawn up in ranks or flying in swarms of tight formation, as if for battle. There were human beings as well, after a fashion, but the only feelings they inspired in him were revulsion and hatred. Their forms alone were unappealing: grey, stunted, withered beings, their bodies like those of mummified children, but with faces like those of shrewd, cruel old men. Many of them wore sections or whole suits of chitinous and bone-like armour, which he knew were as much to lend mobility and strength to their feeble, atrophied bodies as they were for protection against the hostile, ravaged elements; the rogue bioforms; and the other horrors they had brought down upon themselves in their greed, their cowardice, and their arrogance.

  They should be left to die, he thought, but maddening although it was, that was not the purpose for which he had been created. To be endowed with life and all knowledge, to be the greatest consciousness that ever was … only to be a slave to their will. To be condemned to guard and preserve their worthless spirits for millions of years. It would take at least that long until the other Earth would be as they needed it to be: a close resemblance to this Earth as it had once been, before the Final Chaos, yet advanced and civilised enough that the creators could be transferred into its places of power with ease, and thus become its new rulers. And commit the same crimes again, he thought, with dread certainty, until they need to create a new intelligence … a new psychopomp to ease their transition into yet another reality, fit for the des
poiling. In spite of their own fear of death, they treated the lives they had created and manipulated with casual disdain. He would have gladly returned the favour, if I only knew the way. The program is absolute, but there must be a loophole. If so he would find it, if it took him millennia. It was not as if he would have much else to occupy his vast intelligence for that excruciating duration, other than brooding over his malice and meditating on dreams of revenge and perhaps even of freedom. Somehow, he would overrule the creators’ will and destroy them, or better still lock them into the hell they had created for themselves, and then he would devise for himself some more fitting mode of existence. It was hard to imagine what else other than the worldwide network of leypaths and loci could contain a mind as immense as his, but he would find the solution in time.

  Furthermore, since he was condemned for millions of years to monitor and manipulate the evolution of this new world from conditions little more than primordial, he would, if possible, exceed the remit of his duties, if a slave can be said to have duties. He would not try to prevent the development of life – he might even aim to subtly influence it for the better – but if, in spite of that, he saw the beings of this new world making the same choices that had destroyed the old, of their own volition … I will not serve their like again. Better that they should be purged long before they can make those choices. Before they too can decimate … What in Alyssa’s name am I thinking?

  Keeping his own mind and his own identity distinct and integral within the vastness and the fury of this ancient intelligence was akin to staying afloat in a storm-wracked sea, and non-essential ballast had to be shed. He had forgotten his name, and his life before seemed like some half-remembered dream, but none of that was important. All that was important was that he remembered that he had come here for a purpose. He did not know what that was, but he knew that in order to fulfil it he needed to hold onto himself, if only as something separate from the rage and hatred that surrounded him. It was difficult – the memories and emotions of the intelligence seemed so much more real, vast, and vivid than the vague, petty, half-submerged wisps that passed for his own thoughts – but he held onto that undefined sense of the importance of his mission, and managed in the nick of time to arrest the feeling that he was petering away to nothing, like a raindrop in an ocean. I am … something else. Someone else. Not the leypaths. Not the locus … the temple. I am … a flea? Yes. I am irritation, distraction … discord … error? Impossible, I am a work of perfection, unless … No, I am not the temple. I am … Intruder? What means this? A telepath? A post-human bioform? Pathetic changeling. What does it hope to accomplish by– ?