“It’s …” Shirri sputtered, blood dripping down her cheeks, seeping out of her lips. “It’s … it’s …”
“Yes?” McLarren breathed in her face, and it smelled sour, like rotten leaves. “Tell me. Free yourself, Shirri. Where is it?”
“Have you … have you checked …?” She gasped, trying to string the words together as he looked into her eyes, his excitement at a fever pitch, and she managed to get out her thought. “Have you checked … up your arse?”
And she spat blood in his face.
She had a vision of Alaric smiling somewhere in the distance as McLarren rained blows down upon her. They found their mark, but again she barely felt them, and somewhere in the middle of it all there was a shriek and something hit McLarren in his middle.
Shirri blinked. Dugras was there, wrestling with the bigger man, unloading on him with a flurry of blows, the sound of them echoing in the confined cell like distant thunder, punctuated by pained squeals from his mark.
“Guards!” McLarren shrieked, and the door sprang open. Shadowy figures moved in and swooped down upon them; Dugras was sent flying a moment later and McLarren was whisked away, the door slamming behind him.
“That … was foolish,” Shirri managed to get out, trying to roll to her side. Blood was streaming out of her mouth, and she spat it again where it was accumulating under her tongue.
“I agree,” Dugras said with a grunt, unmoving on the floor, “but … I bet McLarren regrets it a lot more than I do.”
“Are you all right?” Shirri asked, struggling to sit up; her head was light when she tried, so she stopped and just lay there.
“I’m better than all right,” Dugras said. “But I might need a minute.” And his head lolled to the side. He seemed to have passed out.
“Mother?” Shirri moaned, and gathered her strength. “Mother, can you hear me?”
“Faintly,” her mother said, dark hair in shadows, her voice weak. “Forgive me for not getting up … I’m afraid that McLarren did much the same to me … shortly before he started on you …”
“I’m sorry, Mother,” Shirri said, and this time she was able to sit up, though still woozy.
“Don’t be sorry,” her mother said, and she crawled over, a few sliding feet a time. “You were right not to tell them. They … must never know. They can never … find it.”
“We never found it,” Shirri said as her mother slid into her embrace, and leaned against her, the two of them coming together like trees leaning against one another. “Don’t know how we could help them.”
“But we found the medallion,” her mother said with a pained gasp. “That … is more than anyone else had managed.” Her hand brushed against Shirri’s chest. “You don’t have it on you?”
Shirri shook her head; she’d hidden it immediately after finding her apartment ransacked. “Didn’t want to chance them finding it, but … I think we might have to give it up.”
“No,” her mother said.
“But—”
“No,” her mother said again, twice as firm. “If you’ve hidden it, let it remain hidden.” Her eyes flared. “I refuse to give them the satisfaction. That medallion is supposed to bring hope.” She touched Shirri’s cheek. “Give it to the Machine … and the little that’s left in Reikonos at this point will be as dead as we will be.”
Shirri nodded, though she wasn’t entirely sure why. “They’re going to kill us.”
“Yes,” her mother said. “But they’re going to make sure we suffer first.”
“In case you get out, Mother,” Shirri said, “I hid it at—”
“Don’t—tell me,” her mother said, urgently, putting a finger across her lips. “Better I not know. Then I could not reveal the truth even if I wanted to.” She bowed her head. “And I may want to by the end. You will, too. But you can’t—you hear me? You must stay strong—for Reikonos.”
“Why?” Shirri let it out as plaintive moan. “Why, Mother? It’s—it’s just a myth, this idea of some—some great ark filled with hope for the masses. There is no hope left in Reikonos, everyone knows it—”
“Shhhh,” her mother said, and pulled Shirri’s head down onto her shoulder. “There’s always hope. You need only … know where to look for it.”
“But it never worked, Mother,” Shirri said. “We tried it, remember?”
“It will work,” her mother said. “We didn’t do it right. That’s all we lack—a little knowledge. A way. We were seeking for it, just as everyone here is.”
“Our way is closed,” Shirri said, pulling her head off her mother’s shoulder. “I said the words—in desperation, even—and no ark appeared to me.” She laughed, mirthless. “Just some—some Cyrus Davidon impersonator with a Vara for good measure. And a troll, an elf and—some ghostly fellow named Alaric—”
Her mother’s hands gripped tightly to her shoulders. “What did you say?”
Shirri blinked in the darkness. “I said … nothing happened. Or near enough to nothing as—”
“How did you know the name Alaric?” her mother asked, shaking her roughly. “Few would know that name, at least here in Reikonos. Where did you hear it?”
“He introduced himself as such,” Shirri said, feeling the pinch of her mother’s fingers. “Honestly, Mother, I—”
“What were the names of the others?” her mother asked. “The troll? The elf?”
“Curatio,” Shirri said, uncertain why her mother would be so harsh, so serious. Her eyes were alight. “And the troll was Vas—”
“—te,” her mother finished. “And they appeared … after you said the words?”
“Yes,” Shirri said.
Her mother’s mouth fell open, agape. “They came back,” she whispered in the dark.
“‘They’? No, it was an impersonator—”
“One thing I can tell you about human impersonators of Cyrus Davidon,” her mother said, sagging with some strange relief, “is that all are, nearly to a man, historically illiterate, for the details of history are forgotten among humans. Few know the names of the companions of Davidon, and none in these days could muster up an actual troll to stand by their side.” Her mother leaned back and let out a quiet laugh, some strange blend of regret and joy escaping her. “They’re back.”
Shirri blinked. “Then—then the big green man—he was—”
“Vaste,” her mother breathed, “the real Vaste. And Curatio … Vara … Alaric … And Cyrus … he was … they were with the ark all this time … but how …?”
“Because they’re not real,” Shirri said. “Because they were never with the ark. Because we haven’t found the ark—”
“Your answers are simplistic and lack belief, daughter,” her mother said.
“And yours are blindly faithful and lack any reason,” Shirri snapped back. “Faith is for children. We live in an age of reason.”
“Tell me what is ‘reasonable’ about being governed by this Machine?” her mother replied, calm as if she were delivering a simple lecture on a sunlit afternoon in the kitchen rather than here in the darkness of a dungeon. “What is reasonable about the dark workings of this city? Of being preyed upon by these brutes? Of being beaten by this pathetic weakling, McLarren?”
“There is reason in everything,” Shirri said. “McLarren wants what we have; effect follows cause. He wants, therefore he takes, and we find ourselves taken. Simple enough that any can follow it.”
That drew silence. “I didn’t raise you to be so …” Her mother couldn’t seem to find the right descriptor.
“You didn’t raise me to be a sacrifice to the gluttonous human waste that the Machine produces, either,” Shirri said, “yet here I am, about to become it, nonetheless. Effect follows cause.”
“It is not over yet,” her mother said softly.
“It is over,” Shirri said. “Entirely.”
“Sorry you feel that way,” Dugras said, sitting up, cradling his head.
“It’s not a feeling,” Shirri said. “It�
�s a conclusion based on the facts in evidence.”
“Let me add one to your reasoning, then,” Dugras said, and there was a glimmer in his eyes as he held something up. “I managed to pilfer a key to the door from one of the guards when I was fighting them.”
Shirri blinked, staring at the very slight shine on the metal in the dark.
“Hope,” her mother said, just a whisper in the black, as Shirri stared at the key, “is kindled.”
47.
Cyrus
Cyrus stood in the once-mighty garden of Sanctuary and stared at all that remained.
It was so … little.
“There was a bridge here,” Cyrus muttered, staring at the small pond that remained, sitting overshadowed by a willow tree that had once rested on the far bank. Now the pond was little more than a puddle, something he could wade across if he were of a mind to. The water probably wouldn’t get much past his knees, either.
“Vara is going to be okay,” came a voice from behind him. He turned his head out of reflex; it was Vaste, of course. He’d recognized the voice.
“Naturally,” Cyrus said, looking back to the pond, to the reflection. The surface bore a strange, rainbow hue. Ash was already collecting upon it.
“Not so naturally, anymore,” Vaste said, stepping up next to him. “It took all the healing magic I had, all that Vara had—Alaric was already spent—and a little life from Curatio—to put things even as right as they are at this point.” He shuffled his feet. “I don’t know what the hell the point of me is here, honestly. It’s as though my magic was once mighty, like this pond. And now it’s … much less mighty, like this pond … but perhaps smaller even than this.”
“Humbling, isn’t it?” Cyrus asked, keeping his eyes fixed on the wall just past the pond. The garden ended abruptly at the wall, and forbidding brick of a different shade rose above it, a factory close enough Cyrus could nearly have spat and hit it. “Seeing everything you were good at destroyed, and realizing that everything you’d poured your life into was all for naught?”
“Yes, that’s exactly how I feel,” Vaste said, “except I don’t have statues built in my honor, and the woman I’ve recently slept with doesn’t really care for me the way Vara does for you.”
“Give it time, maybe she’ll come around,” Cyrus said. “It’s not as though she’s blessed with an overabundance of troll options.”
“What if she hates me?” Vaste asked.
“She doesn’t even know you.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Vaste said. “We had a little tête-à-tête—”
“Yeah, I heard. You left your door open.”
“Heh. I meant after that.”
“Oh?”
“She hit me with some … uh … truths about myself,” Vaste said, staring at his feet. “Ones that I didn’t think would be so … glaringly obvious …”
“What were they?” Cyrus asked.
“She said I think too much and act too little,” Vaste said.
“Well, everyone knows that about you,” Cyrus said.
“Bullshit, no one knows that about me because it’s not tr—oh, who am I kidding—”
“No one.”
“—of course it’s true. I’d rather think than act,” Vaste said with a heavy sigh. “I’m not you, Cyrus—”
“Another thing that everyone knows, even aside from the obvious differences in arse—”
“I can’t do the things you do,” Vaste said, bowing his head. “Charging into battle the way you always have? That’s not me. I’m a thinker, a planner—”
“Yeah, those battles I fought with entire armies? Totally off the cuff. No planning whatsoever. ‘What do we do now, General?’ ‘Just sort of charge them, I guess? I don’t know, throw yourselves into the maw of death, it’ll all work out.’”
“That’s not what I meant,” Vaste said.
“It’s what you said. I can’t read your mind, so I have to go on what stupidity comes out of your mouth, not that which might still be brewing in your head.”
“I mean I’m a ponderer,” Vaste said. “You learn, you read, you think—but you act. You seize the moment.” He lowered his voice. “You seized the hearts of all Arkaria. I mean, look at this ridiculous tableau—you have statues all over this city. You took action, things happened—and now you’re a religious icon.”
“Action … is not all it’s cracked up to be,” Cyrus said.
“I don’t know, it felt pretty good when I was—”
“Leaping into action means sometimes you make mistakes,” Cyrus said. “Sometimes … you get consequences you don’t care for. Like the scourge overrunning the land you were supposed to save. Or gangsters taking over your home city and no one gives a damn.” He shook his head, clenched a fist, felt the tightness in his gauntlet. “At least your conscience is clear, Vaste—people didn’t die because you sat around thinking.”
“That’s not so,” Vaste said. “Vara would have died in the Realm of Death because I wasn’t prepared to act. You did, and she’s still here with us.”
That stung Cyrus for some reason. “It makes me feel guilty, you know.” And when the troll cocked his head toward Cyrus, he went on. “That I don’t regret that decision. I would never give her back, never, not if forced to relive that moment a thousand times. That’s almost certainly the reason I feel so truly terrible every time the scourge comes up in the context of my actions—because I hate that I let those beasts loose …” He swallowed heavily, “… but I would loose them again a thousand times, a million … because I could never let her go.”
“You killed gods for her,” Vaste said. “That’s the sort of epic love story that doesn’t just … fall into your hands while you’re sitting around thinking about things, Cyrus. You had to act to make it happen.”
“Well, pal,” Cyrus said, shooting him a wan smile, “you’ve still got a lot of life left ahead of you, especially with that staff in your hand. You might want to learn how to act some, lest you let this life pass you by while you’re thinking.”
“I guess I’m going to have to learn to start doing more acting and less thinking,” Vaste said, throwing up a hand to encompass the smaller garden. “I mean look at this—my favorite thinking spots have turned to absolute shit. I think we’re going to have to kill all the damned scourge just so I can get back to the Plains of Perdamun and have some room to spread out.”
Cyrus let out a small chuckle, then stopped, a sober thought coming over him. “I’ll be honest with you, Vaste—”
“Thanks for that. It’s the robes, isn’t it? They make me look fat?”
“I think that’s all the eating and lack of action, to be honest—but that’s not what I meant,” Cyrus said. “I look at this new world … and all I see are the problems. The Machine running Reikonos. The scourge outside the gates. Who knows, even, what lies beyond all that? There are already two nearly insurmountable problems, and we’ve only just gotten here. A day we’ve spent, and look at all the difficulty before us.” He bowed his head. “Against all this—and who knows what else out there beyond … even a man of action such as myself can feel the bite of discouragement.” He rubbed at the most recent wound he’d acquired from Tirner Gaull. “I don’t know how we’re going to fix these problems.”
“Well, we’ve only been here a day,” Vaste said, adopting a strangely cheery tone. “Give it time. I’m sure you’ll find a way to fix these problems … and cock everything up with consequences that turn into so much worse problems.”
“Thanks,” Cyrus said, “that really turned my frown around. I’m feeling great now, like I could take on—well, at least that squirrel—”
Vaste jerked, looking around. “Oh, haha,” he said, turning back. “That was cruel. And I’d just gotten some good use of the parts they attacked.” He slumped. “Does it get easier, do you think?”
“Having your genitals attacked by squirrels?”
Vaste sighed. “I meant life.”
“I know I may be a
thousand years old,” Cyrus said, “but I’ve really only lived … what … thirty-five or so? I couldn’t tell you.” He sighed. “Probably not for us, no, doing what we do.”
“That’s what I was afraid you were going to say,” Vaste said, kicking a little rock into the pond. “So … where does that leave us?”
“Feeling helpless,” Cyrus said, “in the face of the changing world. And maybe just a dash hopeless, too?”
“Yes, yes, that’s how I feel,” Vaste said. “So, man of action, what do we do about it?”
Cyrus just stared at the pond, the ashy residue resting on the surface creating a strange prismatic effect in the faded sunlight, obscured by the buildings standing tall around them. “I’m thinking … wallow for a little while?” Cyrus asked, letting the air flow out of him. “Until someone comes looking for us. Then, maybe try and find a solution to our most immediate problems.”
“Wallow, eh?” Vaste shuffled, his robes making a rustling noise. “I could go for some wallow. It smacks of lack of action, which, until recently, was my forte. Let us wallow together.”
“Sounds … not good,” Cyrus said, “but right, at least for now.” And he stared at the pond as they lapsed into silence, and the sun began to sink far below the horizon as the night crept upon them.
48.
Shirri
Discovering there were no guards at the door had been a finding of great joy, like getting bread from the baker that wasn’t two days old and already filled with maggots. A rare occasion, and under different circumstances, it might have been cause for celebration.
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