The Drowned Vault

by N. D. Wilson

  Somehow, while the boat glided out, the Captain vaulted over Cyrus, flinging a waterfall from his coat as he dropped onto a bench. Then he struck out with the two wooden oars for the waiting jet.

  Diana was still in the door with her mouth open and her eyebrows up.

  “Cyrus!” Daniel sat up. “Seriously, where’s Rupe? We can’t leave without him. I think I know where Phoenix is.”

  Cyrus turned back to his brother. “What? How?”

  “And he has Dad!” Dan shouted. “Phoenix has his body in a freezer!”

  Dan continued shouting, but there was nothing else to hear. The jet engines swallowed it all.

  His father … he was supposed to be in the sea. His body was in a freezer? With Phoenix? Why? Why would Phoenix keep a body—

  The tooth. The Reaper’s Blade. The Resurrection Stone …

  Cyrus felt sick. The Captain turned the boat and slid it up beside the plane. Diana reached down. Cyrus grabbed her hand and was pulled into the crowded plane. Everyone was in there. Everyone but Antigone and Rupert.

  Dan followed, but the Captain balked at the door. Finally, with shoulders hunched in worry, Diana and Alan dragged him inside, while Nolan shut and sealed the door. As the plane began to turn, the Captain spread his legs, grabbed at the walls, and began to bellow a prayer. Cyrus barely noticed.

  “Cy!” Diana yelled. “Cy! What’s going on?”

  The plane accelerated, and Cyrus collapsed onto the floor. Exhaustion and horror washed over him. He needed to throw up. He rolled slowly onto his knees and began to crawl over legs and feet toward the rear of the plane. He wanted a corner, someplace dark where he could pass out or die. His arms wobbled, and his chest shook.

  Cyrus Smith dropped onto his face, clawed at the tight carpet, and shut his eyes. Diana sat down beside him. He felt her fingers check his pulse. Dan lowered himself to the floor on the other side. Cyrus heard his brother’s voice and felt his hand on his back, but he couldn’t open his eyes. Not yet. Not for a long time. Deep inside, deeper than anger or fear, inside his gut, inside his bones, his soul was shaking.

  The plane flew. And flew. Cyrus slept and he woke and he slept again. But he didn’t move. Hours passed, and the world around Cyrus slowly became still. And when the sun began to set in the windows and the whole cabin glowed with fire, Cyrus rolled onto his back. The plane was descending. He didn’t care where. He stared at the ceiling and wondered how he could throw a stone at a giant and a monster at the same time, when he didn’t know where they were, and he had no stone.

  Phoenix sat back in a rickety chair and surveyed his preparations by the light of a single lamp on the floor beside him. For months, he and his men had worked only in deep darkness and quiet morning light. But today had been different. Today had been the final day of preparation. Tonight would be the final night. He massaged his stump and pressed the cool silver head of his cane to his lips, listening to his freezers hum.

  His men were exhausted. They had done good work. Five pools had been prepared. Five wombs. By tomorrow night, each pool would have given birth nine times, and he would have forty-five sons … if all survived. Which they wouldn’t. He expected some chaff. And those that survived would be tested more quickly than he had planned.

  By tomorrow night, he himself would be reborn. He ground his itching stump against his chair and sucked on the end of his cane. No more frail legs. No cursed white coat. No missing hand.

  Pythia was sleeping in the corner. Her secrets had not been told easily. She was bound to prophecy, to word the mysteries into oracles—that much was part of her ancient curse. But she would not speak. She scrawled her answers on leaves and pages, burning them, flinging them, scattering them as fast as she wrote. He had punished her, but it did not matter. Kings and priests and devils had punished her before. Tonight, perhaps, he would end her curse forever.

  His mind wandered back over the trails of his quest, the quest of a lifetime. He, Edwin Laughlin, would father a new race. So many years had passed; so many hurdles had been cleared. He had mastered metamorphosis—mortal and bestial. But the sons and daughters he truly wanted could not be made to last. Human souls were more combative. Hearts burst and souls fled, and he could never call them back. Hundreds of perfect creations had been shaped, only to be given to the grave.

  He had needed the Reaper’s Blade, the cold Resurrection Stone. But even with it in hand, he had struggled for a year. Now the oracle had scrawled her riddles, but he had solved them. His final hurdle approached.

  Phoenix smiled and kissed his cane. The world would never again be mundane.

  In the end, the secret of resurrection had been a simple one. He could not conjure up a soul, but he could make fair trade, and now he knew how. A soul for a soul, a life for a life. But it must also be a life in kind. Innocent for innocent. Child for child. Killer for killer.

  This would be no failed crop. Let his children’s hearts explode. He could raise the dead.

  Phoenix flipped open the head of his cane and ran a cold finger along the edge of the colder tooth. It would be time for his own great change.…

  A new body and more. He would absorb the life of a transmortal. As for his children, they would be the first fathers of a new race. But at some point, years from now, perhaps, he would still need many to die. There would be even greater crops to replace them.

  Three dark and dusty rooms had been filled with unconscious convicts in jumpsuits and shackles—and soon a statewide manhunt would end happily when they were all found dead and floating in the river. Phoenix scanned his humming freezers. The convicts would work for his own men, but he wondered how the trade would fare with his frozen trophies. How many of Brendan’s children carried bloodguilt or had been thieves? He yawned. Soon he would know.

  Phoenix leaned farther back in his chair and closed his eyes. When the sun was down and the darkness was thick, he would rise and till his flesh garden. His great labor would begin.

  In the corner, Pythia opened her eyes and watched the man made of ash while he slept. She could see his future, his past, and his end.

  She drew two leaves from a threadbare sleeve. On one, she traced a fiery number with her finger: 70. She watched the leaf shrivel and burn, and then she blew the ash toward the pools.

  On the other, she wrote a name.

  sixteen

  THE THRONE ROOM OF RADU BEY

  ANTIGONE’S RIBS HURT when she breathed, and the hard floor wasn’t helping. Her face was stuck to it. For a moment, she couldn’t remember anything. And then, in a flash, she could feel herself floating in the air, and she could see Gil’s arrow, and her ribs suddenly began to hurt much worse.

  Antigone slowly peeled her cheek off the floor and looked around. She was in a huge room that was open to the sky on two sides—two blackened stone walls butted together in one corner, but the other two walls were missing. No windows. No posts. Nothing but blue sky and the barely rising sun. The ceiling was dark, beamed with charred and splitting timbers.

  Antigone saw no doors and no stairs. The floor was slab stone, dusty gray around the edges. In the center of the room, thirty feet in front of her, the stone was polished and worn down into a shallow bowl. In the very center, where the floor was most worn, there was a small reed bed mat, a pillow, and a single tightly rolled blanket. The air above the mat shimmered a little, like it was hot, but she was tired and she was hurting. Something was probably wrong with her eyes.

  Antigone slid onto her knees.

  Just behind her, Rupert Greeves was sprawled facedown on the floor.

  Antigone yelped and scrambled to her feet. “Rupe!”

  She grabbed his shoulder and shook him. He was limp. As she struggled to roll him over, he groaned and opened his eyes.

  “Sit up, Rupert,” she said. “Talk to me.”

  Rupert shut his eyes again, but worked his way slowly upright and put a hand on his head.

  “Bonum diem.” The voice trickled smoothly across the floor behind Antigone.r />
  She spun around. A man was sitting cross-legged on the mat in the center of the room, where a moment before there had been only a shimmer. He had short curly black hair and a strong hairless face. He was wearing a loose white robe, open wide enough that she could see a band of red scales on his chest.

  On the floor in front of him were a small pitcher and a dark brown loaf of bread. The man tore off a piece of the bread with long fingers, dipped it in the pitcher, and ate it. His jaw moved, but his face was still. Poised to strike. His cheeks were gaunt and his eyes were black, but not by color—black because no light escaped them, because they consumed reflection.

  When Antigone looked into those eyes, she thought of gun barrels.

  “Bonum diem,” he said again, and Antigone’s mind turned to Latin. Morning greeting.

  “Salve,” she said.

  “Brevi te devorabo,” he said, chewing.

  Antigone blinked. She, uh, well …

  “English,” Rupert said loudly. He used one hand to shield his eyes against the sunrise pouring in where there should have been a wall and glared at the man in the middle of the room. “What do you want with us?”

  “Non loquor—”

  “No Latin,” Rupert said.

  The man tore off another bite, dipped it in the pitcher, and slid it into his mouth. He chewed slowly. When he had swallowed, he set down the loaf and uncrossed his legs. His limbs were as thick as Gil’s but without the hair, and without the strange giantish proportions.

  “Do you know who I am?” he asked. His accent was slight, but Antigone heard it—like music in another room, or the smell of a spice she’d never tasted. It made her think of the vanished countries and swallowed-up kingdoms described in the muddy middle of her old history books.

  Rupert smiled. “I know some of what you have done.”

  The man’s chest inflated slowly. Sharp, cold air rushed in through the open walls. His robe snapped, and his voice rode the gust. It spun and swirled around the room and was everywhere at once. “I am Radu Bey, son of the moon and the sea. When I sing, the tides change their course. When I speak, the moon kneels. I have swallowed kings and drunk the blood of harems. Where I step, stone shivers; where I stride, mountains flee. I have devoured children and felled forests and sucked the marrow of nations. I am Radu Bey. Gods fear me.”

  The wind died, and Antigone shivered. Rupert groaned, closed one eye, and knuckle-massaged his temple.

  “I believe you,” he said. “And I’d wager it all began at your father’s knee. Did he teach you to be cruel to kittens?”

  Antigone looked at her Keeper in surprise, and then back at the polished man. Radu’s gaunt cheeks had tightened. “You would like to die now?” he asked. “You desire your destruction?”

  Rupert rose to his feet. Antigone watched her Keeper walk slowly toward the man on the mat.

  “Spit out my skull when you’re done, Dracul.” Rupert dropped to the floor ten feet from Radu Bey, and then stretched out his long legs. “Or tell me why we’re here.”

  “Your Order is dead,” Radu said.

  “Ill, yes,” said Rupert. “Rotten, surely. But the O of B isn’t yet in the grave.”

  Antigone looked around the room. Where had the big man come from? How had they come in? She stood up and moved cautiously toward the closest missing wall. Radu’s eyes followed her, but his words were for Rupert.

  “Your new Brendan is a puppet.”

  “A puppet on your finger, I suspect,” said Rupert. “Bellamy might have been a good man once, if briefly, but no more.”

  “Not my finger,” Radu said. “Bellamy Cook is well sworn to the man called Phoenix and has been for years, even before William Skelton turned his dark heart back to the Order.”

  Antigone was nearing the edge of the floor and she still couldn’t see anything but sky.

  “You put Bellamy in that office,” Rupert said. “Not Phoenix. With your riots and your violence and your threats. The treatied transmortals put him there. Why?”

  Radu smiled and his front teeth were slightly gapped. “Why?” he asked playfully. “Why would I support a man who would free my people when they are being hunted, who would shatter the chains that have bound their strengths and anchored them to mortal masters for centuries? Blood Avenger, you tell me why. Even now my people are retesting their potency.”

  “They have always had their strengths,” Rupert said. “We did not strip them.”

  “You bound them.” Radu’s lip curled. “Arachne could weave, but never the Angel Skin that little Smith now wears, nor another Odyssean Cloak. Gilgamesh could not lose his physical strength, but his ancient charms were powerless. Koschei, Hannibal, Semiramis—what choice did they have? The treatied immortals were marked, and then tracked like toothless wolves whenever they struggled against their bonds. Some were Buried, and some destroyed; only a few were strong enough to remain free.”

  “Meaning you?” Rupert said. “Free? For centuries we’ve believed that John Smith ended you—that you were dead or Buried or both. If you were free, why are you only whispering now?”

  “Whispering! I whisper like a storm whispers, like the quaking earth whispers. I have heard my people groaning, and now they are free. The tide is rising, mortal. Your old walls cannot hold.”

  “And can you hold?” Rupert asked. “Against the Order and against Phoenix?”

  Antigone had reached the edge. She looked down into a wall of cold air rushing straight up past her face. Beneath her, she could see clouds and a distant airplane, like a minnow swimming through the bottom of the sky. Farther down, through the clouds, she could see an island city, bristling with towers. She looked up. Above her, the sky’s blue was deeper and darker, and in its very center it was black. And in that circle of blackness, there were more stars than she had ever seen at night.

  “Rupe …,” she said. The voice of Radu Bey drowned her out.

  “Phoenix is this century’s fool. He wants a war. And now he shall have one. You are here so that my eyes can lock with yours when I, the last Dracul, extend my hand to the Children of Brendan. Give over the maps to the Burials. Release your prisoners and your relics. Renounce the charter of Ashtown. If you do this, your Order shall continue on as it does now, as a society of wealthy travelers. Keep your aeroplanes and your sailing ships, but give over the Keepers’ keys. Brendan, too, must follow in the shadow of the dragon.”

  “Rupe!” Antigone said. She tore her eyes off the sky and backed away from the edge.

  “Refuse,” Radu said, “and the life of every member shall be extinguished. We will throw down the stones of Ashtown and every other Estate, and we will give your bodies to the flames.”

  Rupert waited a moment, and then he sighed. “That’s it? That’s your offer? Total extinction, or total subservience?” He sighed and looked at Antigone. “What is it?”

  Antigone looked into Radu’s gun-barrel eyes, and then back at Rupert. “I think we’re in a Burial. Right now. Or something like one. But totally opposite. A sky Burial. Do they have those?”

  Rupert turned back to Radu Bey. For a moment, they were motionless. Then Rupert looked around at the worn floor. He smiled.

  “Are you chained?” he asked.

  Radu Bey sprung forward. His fist connected with Rupert’s face and sent him spinning across the floor. Cold wind roared through the empty walls and swept Antigone off her feet.

  Rupert scrambled onto his hands and knees. He spat blood out on the floor and smiled.

  “Do they know?” he yelled, laughing. “The dragons follow a man still bound?” He stood slowly.

  Radu Bey was on his feet. Four chains, invisible before, ran from his wrists and ankles through a hole in the floor beside his mat. His face flushed. “The liar Smith gave me these chains. Then he minted his own treaty with me, beyond the boundaries of his Brendan. He swore that if I taught him how to take my brother’s head, I would walk the earth as unbound as he. We bonded the oath with talismans, and I gave him what h
e sought. He took two heads more, and then the deceiver Buried himself!” Radu tore his robe from his shoulders and let it dangle at his waist. His chest and ribs were knotted with muscle beneath a red circular dragon. He reeled his chains up through the floor. Three came through with shattered links, but the fourth grew taut and held.

  Radu Bey let the taut chain fall back through; the other three dangled in his hands. Roaring, he ran at Rupert. The first chain lashed out and Rupert ducked, snatching it out of the air and letting the links wrap around his arm. He tried to pull Radu off balance but was too late. The big man had already swung his double whip, and the combined chains wound around Rupert and slammed him to the ground.

  Antigone slid away. There had been a way into this place; there had to be a way out. Balancing against the wind, she raced along the edge while Rupert yelled in pain behind her. She found no ropes, no ladders. Nothing up or down. She reached the corner and the beginning of the first solid wall. She pressed herself up against it and tried to grope around outside the stone, but the wall was too thick.

  The floor shook beneath her, and she turned. Behind her, Rupert spun through the air, slammed onto the floor, and tumbled toward the edge. There was no time to think. Antigone took two strides and dove. She hit Rupert in the side as he slid. His head and shoulders stuck out into the wind. She grabbed on to his collar and heaved her whole weight onto the back of his legs.

  Rupert grabbed at the edge and pushed himself—and her—back into the room.

  Together, gasping, they turned.

  Radu Bey held his one unbroken chain between his hands and spread his thick legs to brace himself. He wound his wrists up in the links, inflated his lungs, and then pulled. Sweat poured off his face and down his huge shoulders. His body shook and every muscle shivered beneath glistening skin. The dragon on his chest flushed with blood and inflated, pulsing, swelling slowly into limbs and scales and wings. And then, as Antigone watched, the red dragon began to writhe.