The Memory

by Gerrard Cowan

  ‘Canning,’ she said. ‘Why is he there?’

  The one-time Tactician for Expansion was sitting on a chair. No: a throne, formed of some kind of metal, and carved into a wall. This was not one of her memories. She had never seen that throne; it was not in Memory Hall, or the Fortress of Expansion, or anywhere else in the Overland. Canning himself seemed different. He was trimmer, harder-edged. There was a glimmer in his eye. This is not the man I knew.

  ‘This is a creation of yours,’ Brightling said. ‘That throne isn’t Canning’s. And that isn’t Canning.’

  It is real.

  She stepped towards the image. ‘Where is he?’

  Far away from home, in a wrecked and dying land. But he is respected there. They call him great. Ruin laughed. He is powerful – much more powerful than you.

  Brightling shook her head. ‘He was in the Circus, at the end – when Mother came. He should be dead, now, or rotting in the Bowels.’

  He used his powers to escape.

  ‘What powers?’

  This man is greater than you will ever be.

  Brightling nodded. ‘I know that. I always saw it in him.’

  That is why you wanted to destroy him. I want you to know how much I admire you. Not because you are ruthless – because you are perceptive. You saw Canning’s greatness, all along, even when no-one else did.

  Ruin sighed.

  Yet still you come to me. Still you want to face me with your little mask. Don’t you see, with that great mind of yours, what is going to happen to you?

  The mask burned. It hungered to face Ruin.

  ‘You are going to die,’ she said. ‘You will beg me, in the end, to release you.’

  Ruin fell silent.

  Down she went, further into darkness.

  The doors opened regularly on either side, exposing her to rooms filled with memories. Some of these she recognised from her own past. Some were nothing more than the tiniest moments: a glass of water on a hot day, a cut finger, a coin on the ground. Others were more than one memory, a strange melange of moments. In one, she was a young girl, perhaps no older than seven or eight, yet she wore the half-moon crown of a Tactician, and sat in Cabinet with Canning and the rest of them. This was the stuff of dreams. Perhaps not. Memories are funny things: we toy with them, we put them together, we mix up different ones like paints. What is the difference between dreams and memories? Perhaps there is none …

  Others, though, were truly alien to her. One showed a night-time scene: a dark pond, surrounded by black plants with glossy leaves and pink flowers. Beside the pond sat a man in a white cloak. His hair had been shaved to an outcrop of stubble, but he still seemed young. Despite his youth, a great sense of exhaustion arose from him; he held his head in his hands.

  ‘It’s you,’ Brightling said. She did not know what made her so certain.

  Yes. Long ago.

  ‘You are … sad.’ A small word, for such a creature. But the right one.

  This was in the early days. The Queen had been battling the Absence, alone, for a long time. The Old Place created me, to fight at her side. It called me Ruin. I was its most terrible creation. In the end, I fulfilled my purpose. I brought the ruin of the Great Absence.

  The mask burned hot on Brightling’s skin.

  Here you see me, after a victory.

  ‘You don’t seem victorious.’

  What kind of victory was it? There was only the Dust Queen and I. The mortals were just sparks of flame, dying in the storm. And the Queen … she was the same as me, but so different, so very different. What kind of companion could she ever be? One cannot befriend the sun, or laugh with the moon.

  Brightling realised, now, what this creature was describing: this ancient being, the child of a god, was talking about loneliness.

  But the Old Place is wise. The Old Place saw the trouble in my heart. It would not allow its greatest weapon to drown in a pit of despair. So it created something else: something for me.

  The water of the memory pond began to stir. A female figure rose from within, naked and glimmering, shining with such brightness that the Watcher had to turn away.

  ‘Mother,’ Brightling said.

  When she was first born of the Old Place, I knew her as something else. She was the One. The One to break the darkness. The One to keep me company. The One to stand at my side.

  ‘Ruin will come with the One.’

  You all thought the One was a human, foreseen in prophecy. But the One is not a human. The One is the One. There is only her – she is the only One, and for ten millennia, she has been coming.

  The scene changed, and Brightling was confronted with the chaos of battle. Before her was Jandell, bloodied and torn. He held a woman in the air, pushed up upon his hands, and his face was consumed with hatred.

  Jandell broke the One.

  The scene faded to blackness.

  He thought he had destroyed her, before he cast me into this prison. But she survived. She has returned in all her glory, and she will hold my hand in the end.

  There was a pause.

  It is too late for you now, Brightling. You have come too far.

  Brightling turned away from the room, and saw that the stairs had come to a sudden end. There was a doorway before her, lying slightly ajar.

  Welcome to the Machinery.

  CHAPTER 11

  ‘Did the Absence make the stars?’

  Drayn smiled to herself. She had always asked questions like this. Cranwyl used to laugh at them.

  The thought of Cranwyl made her wince.

  Jandell did not laugh. He sat next to Drayn, in the garden of Jaco’s home, at the side of a fire. He looked at the stars and whistled a low tune. He ignored her question.

  ‘That place you took us was one of Jaco’s memories,’ he said. ‘You know this already, of course.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jandell nodded. ‘That was when the One was brought to the Overland. She had found a host, in this baby.’ He pointed to his chest. ‘We need hosts, to bring us to our true strength. We must become one with a mortal: the right mortal. Sometimes we have to mould them and shape them. That’s what the One was doing, all these years, inside Katrina Paprissi.’

  ‘I gave her the opportunity,’ said a man’s voice.

  Drayn and Jandell looked up to find Jaco and Allos walking towards them from the back door of the old man’s house, a modest, clean, wooden building. The newcomers took a seat by the fire.

  ‘Like a fool, I took her, and I allowed her to flourish,’ Jaco said. ‘I should have seen it.’

  Jandell shook his head. He turned his focus to Drayn once more.

  ‘You took us to that memory,’ he said. ‘Do you remember how you did it?’

  Drayn shrugged. ‘I think so. I just … do it.’

  Jandell nodded. ‘You are special. There have been other mortals like you, in the past.’

  The fire seemed to flicker, and Drayn thought she glimpsed a man’s face there. She did not know who he was.

  ‘I would like to know more,’ Drayn said. She pointed at Jaco. ‘I would like to know what happened next.’

  ‘I came back,’ Jaco said.

  ‘He saved us,’ Allos said, gesturing at Jaco. ‘After the lady went away, he helped us build new lives.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Drayn said.

  ‘We lived terrible lives,’ Allos said. He began to tremble.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Jaco whispered. He looked from Drayn to Jandell. ‘The people here were slaves. For ten millennia, they were slaves. They scrabbled out lives in the forests and along the coast, while she used them as she wished.’

  ‘Green Eyes,’ said Allos.

  ‘Shirkra,’ Jandell whispered. He bowed his head.

  ‘No one knows what this place was like before she came,’ Jaco said, gesturing at the world around them. ‘Perhaps it was advanced. Who knows? In the end, she made it into her land. She was looking for something, you see.’

  ‘Host,�
� said Allos.

  ‘A host for a spirit the people never saw,’ Jaco said. ‘A host for the one they call Mother. Green Eyes would come among them and take people away.’

  ‘Other things as well,’ Allos said. ‘In the dark came other things. Torture. Torture of the past.’

  They were silent for a moment.

  ‘But she never found the right host,’ Jaco said.

  ‘Not until the end,’ said Allos. ‘The end of all that once was.’

  ‘My daughter.’ The words pained Jaco.

  Allos looked to Drayn. ‘Look in me, and you will see.’

  Drayn nodded.

  They were in a clearing in the forest, surrounded by skeletal wrecks of human beings, ragged and pale and dying. In the centre stood a red-haired woman in a white mask, a baby in her hands.

  Shirkra, said a voice in Drayn’s mind.

  Purple smoke filled the sky above them. It spread quickly, covering the sun, until the daylight was gone and all of them cowered below in darkness. Drayn could not understand what the people were saying, but she could feel it.

  It is her. It is her. It is her!

  A voice came, then, a voice of many, as if all of the dead had spoken together. Drayn wondered if it was speaking within her mind: within all of their minds.

  Where did you find this child?

  ‘In the forest, Mother, in the forest!’ Shirkra cried. ‘She is wonderful! Her memories have a lovely little flicker … they are so like you!’

  The purple smoke roiled in the sky.

  I feel it. I feel her.

  There was a great crack, and a streak of purple lightning. Mother was a storm.

  She will be my host. You have done well, my daughter.

  The smoke began to contract, converging into a narrow patch of the sky, before floating down to them. It shrank as it came, from the size of a person’s head to a fist to an eyeball, until eventually it floated just above the baby girl, no bigger than a fingernail. The girl’s eyes burned purple for a moment, and the smoke was gone.

  The people moaned.

  ‘What now?’ Shirkra asked. ‘Where will I go?’

  We must return to the land we left behind. I will go alone, and you will follow.

  ‘How will you go? You are so weak …’

  Someone will come for me. I see it now. I will be safe with him. I need to go with him. It is the path for me.

  There was a bustle at the side of the clearing, and a man ran in among them, thinner even than the others. His eyes were wild, and he was pointing to some unseen danger. Drayn did not understand the language he spoke, but the meaning somehow reached her.

  Strangers have come.

  When the memory disappeared, the small group sat in silence for a while, staring at the flickering light from the torch.

  ‘Were there any others here?’ Jandell asked, glancing up at Allos.

  ‘Others?’ Allos frowned.

  ‘Others like me,’ Jandell replied, gesturing at his chest. ‘Others like Mother and Shirkra – Green Eyes.’

  Allos shook his head. ‘No. Not till you. None before. None other than them.’

  Jandell nodded.

  ‘Why did you come back?’

  The other three looked at Drayn. She had not meant to speak – the words had come tumbling out. Speaking without meaning to speak. Very, very, unlike a Thonn. But so very like me.

  She gestured at Jaco. ‘Why did you come back here?’

  ‘Good question.’ Jaco nodded at Drayn. ‘Why don’t you take us there yourself?’

  Drayn felt the edge of another memory, and gave it a little tug.

  They were in a room in the tower of an old house. Jaco was there, decades younger. He was moving frantically around, searching behind chairs, looking under a desk, even sweeping down the contents of a shelf.

  ‘He must be here somewhere,’ said this memory Jaco. ‘He must … he can’t have …’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  A woman was at the door, a willowy presence, her face gaunt. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked again. There was a trill of panic in her voice.

  ‘It’s nothing. The boy is playing.’

  The woman’s eyes widened. ‘Playing? Up here?’ She cast a glance at the corners. ‘Never. He never plays up here. You’d kill him.’

  Jaco waved a hand dismissively. ‘He’s somewhere. I’ll find him.’

  He walked towards the door, trying to push past the woman. She grasped his arm.

  ‘What do you mean, find him?’ The note of panic had grown shriller. ‘Find him means he is lost. Where is he?’

  ‘He was in the hall. He went down there …’

  ‘And now he’s not there?’

  ‘No.’

  The woman let out a cry: a yelp. She opened her mouth to speak again, but this part of the memory faded away.

  They were outside now, somewhere in the grounds of a great house. Jaco was with a woman: a white-haired lady, imperious, powerful.

  ‘It was the Operator,’ Jaco said. ‘He took Alexander away. I know it.’

  The woman gave the slightest of nods.

  Jaco looked up at a window, high above. ‘Amyllia – I have to leave. Will you look after Katrina?’

  Amyllia’s eyes widened. She looked at the window, too: there was a young girl there, with black hair and dark eyes, staring down at them. Drayn knew somehow that this was the baby Jaco had taken. She could sense her presence there. Mother.

  ‘Yes,’ said Amyllia. It seemed she was about to speak again, but the scene vanished.

  They were at a dock, somewhere cold and wet. Men were hoisting equipment onto a ship, a sleek thing with billowing red sails. Jaco was standing by himself, watching them work, hands stuffed into the pockets of a pair of rough trousers.

  A woman approached him, holding a child by the hand. It was the white-haired woman – Amyllia – and Katrina.

  ‘Don’t do this,’ Amyllia said. She pointed at the ship. ‘You have a daughter to think of. You’re all she has left.’

  Jaco raised a finger. ‘No,’ he said. He cast a strange glance at Katrina. ‘She’s yours to think of, now. She’s a Brightling.’

  Amyllia seemed taken aback by these words. ‘Why are you abandoning her?’

  But Jaco did not respond. He climbed aboard the ship, without so much as kissing his daughter. He turned and glanced at her, though, before he disappeared: there was a strange mix of love and loathing in his gaze.

  They were back by the fire.

  ‘I came back to learn more,’ Jaco said. ‘This is where we found Katrina in the first place. I thought that perhaps there would be a way to free her from … whatever was inside her. And then I stayed. I am ashamed of it. I stayed because I did not know what else to do. My daughter was gone. I never had a daughter, in truth.’ He glanced at the Operator. ‘I should have gone back. I should have told you what I knew about Katrina. But I hoped … I don’t know what I hoped. Perhaps that she would cast out that monster by herself, and become my daughter again.’

  Jandell nodded.

  ‘I was broken, shattered,’ Jaco went on. ‘Maybe if I’d listened to Alexander at the beginning …’

  ‘Nothing would have changed,’ Jandell said. ‘We have all been manipulated by him. Ruin.’

  ‘Ruin is an Operator,’ Jaco said with certainty. ‘He spoke to Alexander. It wasn’t the Machinery.’

  Jandell’s words came in a quiet voice. ‘Ruin wanted Katrina to be left with Brightling. He made that happen. Perhaps he thought she would make a better … mother. There she was, all that time, under my very nose. Alexander told me that the One lived, but he never told me where she was: inside his sister. He was protected. I am sure of it now. Ruin kept me away from those memories.’ He whistled through his teeth. ‘Ruin is growing strong indeed …’

  Drayn turned away, and noticed something strange: the memory had not yet vanished completely. She could see it, in the corner of her eye: that dockside scene. Something there was calling to
her.

  She looked back at Jaco and Jandell. Can they see it, too?

  She turned her gaze fully on the memory. It floated before her, superimposed on the real world, a kind of moving painting, torn from the fabric of the air. It was calling to her, dragging her towards it. A thrill coursed through her. The power of memory. The power of memory is there.

  She glanced once more at Jandell and Jaco, who remained sunk in conversation about the vanished past. She stood, and returned to the memory.

  But this was not the same memory.

  The day had turned to night. Sheets of rain piled down upon them, and the sails of Jaco’s ships billowed madly in a tearing, whipping gale.

  It was as if the colours on a palette had been mixed, and one memory had bled into another. She could feel the mixture, in the air. There was something jarring about the scene. She looked up at the sky and saw lightning, burning in an unnatural, purple storm. She thought she could see something else there, too: a kind of line in the sky, like the seam of a piece of clothing, slightly torn …

  Something dragged her focus back to Amyllia. She looked at the girl by the woman’s side: now her dress was purple. No: it was not a dress. It was a thing of rags. The girl turned to Drayn. She was wearing a mask. A white rat.

  There was a flash of gold in the corner of her eye. Drayn spun around. She saw nothing but buildings and people in a darkening coastal town, an endless crowd, dozens deep, staring at her in silence. But who was that? Who was that face in the crowd? Who was it that wore a wide-brimmed hat and a dark cloak, who held a great stick in his hand, whose face was obscured by a golden mask with a long, sharp beak?

  It was a figure from her past. It was a figure from the Habitation.

  It was the ally of Squatstout. It was the Protector.

  CHAPTER 12

  The Hopeful Chambers were not chambers, and held little hope.

  Aranfal stood in an open courtyard, wide and dreary. The walls of a great, red-bricked house surrounded him on all sides, vast things that seemed to reach up into the sky. He knew, somehow, that this house was closed to him; perhaps it was closed to everyone.