Howling Dark (Sun Eater)

by Christopher Ruocchio

  We were being watched.

  “Do we have any idea where we’re going?” Valka asked, stopping beside me at the base of the stair. She had insisted she be allowed on this expedition, who had missed March Station and Rustam before it. Otavia had refused, but I’d supported her. Valka had never been a ground soldier, never a legionnaire, but she carried a plasma pistol all the same. Not an arc burner, but an actual, cartridge-fed repeater. I’d never seen the weapon before.

  “I don’t even know what we’re looking for,” I said. “The Painted Man said the ruler of Vorgossos calls himself the Undying. I’ve no idea if that’s to be taken literally or if it’s warlord pretension.”

  “It could be literal,” Ilex said, “if he’s Exalted. Earth knows how long they live.”

  “People who speak of this place speak in terms of needing something,” Crim said, hooking his thumbs into his shield-belt. “Gene tonics. Abstraction. Cloning. Xenobite genetic augmentation. The sorts of things they won’t do even among the Extras.” Pointing with his chin, he took in the buildings around us. All were laser-cut of the same pale rock, quarried—I did not doubt—from the excavation of that massive dome. “This look like any Extra city you’ve ever seen?”

  He wasn’t wrong. Whatever horror I had felt on our approach and descent was fading behind the voices of the crowd. On the Enigma, on March Station, even on Rustam—where Imperial law was faltering—the streets had been littered with holographs, massive advertisements selling everything from cigarettes and sim games to body modification. They’d even sold religion, or the religions had sold themselves. There was a debasement there, as I have already recorded, but there was a freedom, too. And perhaps it was better to buy debased things if that meant one was free to choose. Perhaps having that very choice—that freedom—is what debases the things we choose. The Cid Arthur teaches that life is suffering and called that a noble truth, and the Christ of old says that nobility comes in bearing that suffering as he did, out of conscious choice. Perhaps that was why the advertisements on March Station had so offended me.

  All that choosing rendered a noble choice impossible.

  But here there were no advertisements. No holographs of women or of smiling cartoons. No vendors hollering from street corners. The City beneath Vorgossos was somber as a sepulcher. What people there were—and there were a great many people—moved quietly about their business and did not look up.

  “It reminds me of home,” I said suddenly, only realizing as I spoke that it was true.

  Switch looked at me, aghast, and even Pallino raised an eyebrow. “What sort of place did you grow up, exactly?”

  Father had forbidden the installation of advertisements—even printed ones. The streets of Meidua had been kept clean, and if a banner or device was shown it was only the sable banner of my house with its capering devil cackling in crimson thread, or the red sun of the Empire. The buildings there had been of white stone, too, and the great thrust of our acropolis whence rose the black tower and citadel of my birth.

  “We kept it clean,” I said.

  “’Tis unnatural,” Valka put in, and there was a species of despair in her voice. “It takes force to keep a place like this.” She was not wrong; by Father’s word vandals caught writing on the walls or putting up posters were given to the Chantry for torment.

  No one accosted us as we moved deeper into the City, or paid us any mind. Those persons we passed averted their eyes or went on as if we were not there. Only the rare dram of attention stuck to us—on Ilex more than on any other member of our company. At any moment I expected some sinister figure to come lurching around a street corner or from the shadow of a door. But neither the likes of Jacopo the gene sculptor or Marko the Exalted spoke to us. None did.

  “’Tis like being in one of your cities,” Valka said to me, unable or unwilling to hide her sneer. “Like everyone’s afraid.” I let this dig at my home and empire pass by, having already admitted that I was reminded of Meidua and Devil’s Rest. When the doctor noticed she’d failed to get a rise from me, she added, “Did you notice the guards?”

  I had. I could see two of them standing in the shadows of a fat concrete stair that corkscrewed up along the outside of a cuboid building, holding shock-sticks tonfa-fashion. Even at a distance, they seemed curiously faceless, their features blurred and indistinct.

  “They’re SOMs,” Ilex interjected.

  Switch swore. “You’re sure?”

  “She’s right!” Valka agreed. “They’re standing too still.”

  The guards wore a sort of khaki uniform that recalled for me the jumpsuits worn by the Umandh slave douleters on Emesh, more akin to the uniforms of an urban prefecture than the armor of house hoplites or peltasts, with high boots and long gloves done in brown leather. Without being certain, I could sense that Ilex and Valka were right. They might have been graven from stone. Oft I have witnessed such decorum, in my father’s soldiers—in the Emperor’s own Martian Guard—but these creatures seemed not even to breathe.

  “You!” a soft voice said. “You are visitors!” Turning, I found a woman in a dull blue suit near at hand. She had the soiled look of one who lived without the comfort of bed or shower. It was a look I knew all too well, having worn it for years. And like the beggar I had been—once—she reached out a hand, palm up. “What you here for? Ol’ Shara knows the way. Knows all the best magi, she does. Knows where to find them. Is it slaves you come for? Soldiers? Weapons?” She screwed up her face, cringing. It took me a moment to realize that this woman, this brave woman, expected that I would strike her. I wondered at the sorts of people who often came down those lifts. I did not have to guess. She had come to me of any of the six of us. The only palatine.

  I waved Switch back, not needing a bodyguard against an old woman. “Shara,” I said, using her name. “Have you ever seen one of the Cielcin? The Pale?” I raised a hand above my head, indicating the height of the creatures I meant. “Here?”

  “What?” She shuddered, not looking at me. Sparing a glance round I saw others like her, dirty men and women in once-fine clothes. There were many of them, coming toward the main street and the lifts like penitents to an altar. “Not here,” she said, “not here.”

  “I have come a long way to speak with them,” I said, fumbling in my coat. “I am told the master of this place has business with them. That he speaks with them.”

  The woman had twisted herself as far from me as she could without running away, but still she kept that one hand extended, palm up. Sighing, I placed a single coin in the palm of her hand. It was golden. A single Imperial hurasam stamped with the profile of Emperor William XXIII, the living Emperor. Her fingers closed about it, and she looked at it, looked at me, eyes wider than the coin. It was not a small price. For such as she, it was a fortune. In all my time as a beggar in Borosevo, none had given me so much. Not once.

  “The Master?” she breathed. “The Undying?”

  Stooping so that I looked her in the eye, I said, “Where can I find him?”

  “He’s all around us, lord.” She raised a hand. How it trembled! “He sees all around us! He knows why you are here. It is why you are here. It is why we are all here. He leaves Shara to mind the gate . . . poor Shara. Her and the others.” That rocked me back on my heels. This was a performance, of a kind. An Attic chorus dressed in rags. Did they greet all visitors in this way? Perhaps so.

  “What the hell does she mean?” Switch asked, and without turning I knew he had a hand on his plasma burner.

  I raised a hand to stay him, thinking of the ghostly way our ship had been piloted from the Mistral. On Emesh, Valka’s neural lace had allowed her to see through the eyes of the castle’s security system. She had controlled the lights and the power grid and helped me . . . helped me to deliver Uvanari from its suffering. But she had seen. I did not understand much about datasphere communication networks, but I knew enough, for the hai
r-prickling sensation I had felt took on a special sharpness. Turning, I beheld the two officers I had seen standing in the shadow of that spiral stair. Their blurred faces had turned and were looking at me. Was it my imagination? Or was there a light shining through them?

  “I’m not here for slaves or soldiers,” I said. “I need to speak with him.”

  “Hadrian . . .” Pallino cautioned.

  Again I raised my hand, a fist this time, for silence.

  “Lords come to him, wanting to be young again, wanting things no one else can give.”

  I’d heard the stories, had told pieces of them in my quest for this place, but I’d never really believed it. Everyone knew immortality was impossible. If it were not, then surely the Emperors would be immortal. The human mind could only endure so long, could only shoulder the weight of so much memory.

  “He’s really immortal?” I asked, taking a step closer.

  “He does not die,” she said. “He raised these stones. Built them on what was before. Drove the demons out.”

  A piece of me froze a little, and I said, “You’re not serious.”

  The woman looked at me, affronted, and backed away.

  “You’re talking about Kharn Sagara,” I said, remembering the story. “The King with Ten Thousand Eyes?”

  Shara’s face went white. “Say not his name!” She staggered back.

  “That’s impossible,” I said, following her.

  “Hadrian!” Crim interjected, more sharply than Pallino.

  “He would be ten . . .” I trailed off, trying to remember. “Fifteen thousand years old!”

  “Hadrian!” Valka this time. Her voice—the bright urgency of it—stopped me cold, shook me from my myopia.

  I had been so focused that I did not hear—that I did not see—the guards emerging all around us. Dressed all in dun they were, jackbooted and gauntleted, with peaked helmets and indistinct faces. Shara staggered away, and the other beggars with her, one Attic chorus fleeing the advance of another, leaving us six alone in a ring of faceless men.

  Faceless.

  They had faces. Once. If you have seen a corpse—as all of us do eventually—you have seen the guardians of Vorgossos. The dead do not have faces, not truly. They have objects that used to be faces, but whose cheeks and jowls are animated by no will, and so hang like old meat from hooks in an abbatoir. And a light shone through them, gold and faintly green, so that the dim contours of the skull showed beneath the servile flesh. Ilex was right. SOMs indeed, and far more unsettling than the ones The Painted Man had wielded against us in Arslan.

  “I see them!” I said, reaching beneath my coat to draw my sword.

  The guards made no threatening sign, only tightened their cordon around us.

  There were nearly thirty of them. We were surrounded. I did not activate my sword, but kept my thumb on the trigger as the other hand drifted for my shield-belt. Glancing over my shoulder I saw the others. Switch had drawn his weapon already, and Ilex. Pallino stood on guard, Valka beside him. Crim looked unconcerned. I envied him that. “Steady on!” I said, taking a half-step forward, settling into a proper guard. “No one move!”

  One of the guardians moved forward, head tilted to one side. It stopped five paces from me, watched me with that unholy light glowing its flesh. It had been a man once, pale-skinned and hard-boned, with a subcutaneous growth of beard that colored his jaw blue. Something moved behind those dead, unfocused eyes. The pupils tightened, and a moment later the slack and atrophied muscles of that rubberized face pulled tight, until almost one could believe the thing a man. I imagined unseen strings tugging at the creature, as though it were some ghastly marionette.

  “Put down your weapons, and you will not be harmed.” Its voice was flat and dead. Lifeless, as though it were a statue that spoke. A golem. A machine.

  Taking my hand off my shield catch, I said, “I am Hadrian Anaxander Marlowe of Delos, a cousin of the Emperor. I am come on a diplomatic mission on behalf of His Radiance and of First Strategos Titus Hauptmann.”

  “Put down your weapons, and you will not be harmed,” the SOM said again.

  “’Tis not listening, Hadrian,” Valka said. “There’s no one home.”

  I couldn’t afford to listen. “I bring with me a baetan of the Cielcin Itani Otiolo. I am told the Undying has had dealings with the Aeta of that clan in the past.” The SOMs began to advance. Suppressing a howl of frustration with a mental effort and one of Gibson’s platitudes, I clipped my sword back to my belt and stepped forward. “I must speak with . . . with Kharn Sagara—if that is your master.”

  The SOM’s head twitched, and almost I believed there was something in its hollow eyes.

  Eyes I dare not meet in dreams.

  But it was a dream, and what recognition I’d thought was there vanished a moment after.

  “Put down your weapons, and you will not be harmed.”

  The creature raised its stun baton . . . and struck.

  CHAPTER 30

  THE SUPPLIANTS

  I AWOKE TO THE sound of voices.

  Not rough voices, not the braying threats or coarse humor of prisoners; nor the cold, businesslike patter of the Inquisition, clinical at its work. Quiet voices. Polite. Fighting stun-fatigue and the leaden numbness that is ever its companion, I struggled to sit up. Young as I was then, already I had grown accustomed to waking up in strange places and to dungeon cells. I had made quite a habit of frequenting such places during the brief period wherein I called myself a mercenary. And yet, as I fell back against the cushions, it was only with the glum certainty that this time Jinan was not coming to save me. Jinan was far away, with Bassander and the Centaurine Legions at Coritani, regrouping in their defense of the Veil.

  Cushions . . .

  My second thought was that no prison should have cushions, nor so fine a couch as the one I reclined upon, upholstered in rich and patterned velvets of red and gold. It had the feel of an antique. The gold leaf upon its woodwork peeled in places, and its fabric faded, marking the splendor of some other age. The ceiling above could not have been more different. Pale concrete it was, cracked in places, and in others exposing naked steelwork gone to rust. The walls were the same, but hung with paintings and with tapestries fine as any lord’s.

  “You’re awake!” said a quiet, measured voice, polished as old wood. “The guards brought you in some hours ago. They stunned you, yes?”

  My new acquaintance was an elderly man, liver-spotted and with thick white hair and a pointed chin-beard. High-cheekboned and with a touch of epicanthic folding about the eyes. Nipponese? He wore a pale suit with a high collar and gold-fringed red toga, and his long fingers were heavy with rings. I knew at once he was palatine, and from that guessed that he was very, very old. There were liver spots on his hands as well, which struck me as a sure sign that he was near the end of his long life. Of all the people I had met, only Gibson seemed older to me.

  “They did,” I said, nodding best I could while lying down. “My companions?”

  The old man shook his head. “You were brought in alone. We all were.” He waved a hand, taking in the room at large. Several dozen others sat or stood or milled about in the hall behind him. Men and women, all haggard-looking but finely dressed, all with the tall, too-symmetrical look of palatines—or of the similarly well-endowed—about them. The man pressed a hand to his chest. His nails were very long. “I am Kim Hae Song, Baron . . . I was Baron . . . of Munshin.” Not Nipponese, then. Mandari, perhaps?

  I mirrored his gesture, astonished to find a planeted nobile tending to me in my unconsciousness. “Hadrian Marlowe. My father is an Archon on Delos.”

  “Delos!” The man’s eyes went wide. “You’re an Orionid lord! What constellation?”

  I saw no reason to lie. “Victoria.”

  The man’s face paled, and he stood quick as his old bones were able
. “You’re one of the Peerage?” He bowed. “Lord, I . . . I did not know.”

  “I am the very least of the Peerage, Baron Song,” I said. “Indeed, I would bow if I could move.”

  “Nonsense, nonsense!” The old man regained his seat on the ottoman. “A cousin of the Star Victoria and His Radiance ought not to bow to me. My great-grandfather was a starship manufacturer.” He pressed a hand to his chest, to the ruby pin securing his frilled ascot. “But you’re so young! So young to be . . . here?” He made an inquiry of that statement, casting eyes about.

  Following his gaze, I saw naught but gray heads around me, and realized with a start that every other person in the chamber was old, though most were yet tall and lordly. “What is this place?” I managed at last, not able to think of a better question. “What sort of prison is this?”

  “Prison?” Lord Song repeated, “Prison? No-no-no, dear boy, no. There are no prisons on Vorgossos. Should one offend the Undying, I hear he offers them a choice: to be turned into one of his soldiers or, ah, exile.”

  “Who chooses the former?” I said seriously.

  “The, ah . . . the ones who don’t want to freeze on the surface.” He flapped his hands, a gesture which only intensified when I began to stand. “You must not! The stun fatigue, Lord Marlowe, you’ll fall.”

  I did stagger, banged my hip against the couch. My oath drew the attention of several of those well-bred personages nearest me, and a thick silence fell about me.

  “Is he all right, Kim?” asked one nobile lady, her face wrinkled as sand-etched teak.

  Lord Song held up an acknowledging hand, but moved to put his shoulder under my arm. I swayed there, steadied by the old man’s weight against me. “Where are the guards?” I asked.