The Memory

by Gerrard Cowan

  ‘Father,’ said the Strategist, rising to her feet. ‘You have … you opened the door yourself.’

  Father laughed. ‘Yes. I opened it myself.’ This was the voice of an old man, a hard-edged voice, a voice like a blunt axe-head. ‘Are you surprised?’

  The Strategist cringed. Cringed. She who had made the earth tremble, not so long before. ‘I came for you, Father. I came to release you from the remains of the Machinery, as promised.’

  The smile faded from Father’s face. ‘Prophecies are for fools,’ he whispered. ‘You have always been a fool, though I love you.’

  The Strategist bowed her head.

  Father gestured behind him. ‘The Machinery did not imprison me. The Machinery made me. I am greater now than any of you.’ He looked at the Dust Queen. ‘Even you.’ He raised a hand. ‘You should assume a new form, your majesty: one that reflects your status.’ He clicked his fingers, and the Dust Queen transformed into three small girls, wide-eyed and innocent and terrified. The other Operators gasped and chattered, as they saw the power Ruin held over the creature they once believed was the greatest of them.

  Ruin laughed, and the queen transformed back into her usual self. A dead silence fell across the shattered remnants of the table.

  Ruin strode forward, away from his cage. ‘Power came to me, my children, one burning at a time, one Selection after another.’ He laughed. ‘All the while, you danced to my song. All of you – Operators, mortals, and the Old Place itself.’

  The Operators stared in wide-eyed awe as Ruin grinned down upon them. He turned his gaze on Mother, and his eyes flickered.

  ‘You fool.’

  Mother shrank from Father, her hands over her face. She scrabbled back, attempting perhaps to flee. But Father raised a finger, and she was frozen in place.

  ‘How could you allow yourself to be defeated at Jandell’s hand?’ Ruin shook his head. ‘How could you fall prey to such an attack?’

  He gazed out at the other Operators. When he spoke again, his voice blew over them like a dry and arid wind.

  ‘I am the greatest creation of the Old Place. I am the weapon that destroyed the Absence. And now I have grown more powerful than the god itself. Soon I will consume it. But first, I will take its children: my children. I will take them within me.’

  Ruin flicked a finger, and Mother was cast into the air.

  ‘The god will be a weapon; the weapon will be a god. All the world will be Ruin, the world and all its memories.’

  Mother remained suspended for a moment, gazing down at Father. Aranfal saw something new in her expression, in the dark eyes of Katrina Paprissi. She is pleading with him. But there was no mercy to be had here.

  Ruin gestured with his finger, and the flames came again. They coiled around him like burning snakes, and he smiled. Aranfal found himself almost hypnotised by that fire, and the stories it told: he saw moments there, terrible moments from the past, snippets of agony. He saw his own father, dying in the cold, a bloodied …

  He forced himself to look at Ruin’s eyes. They were burning now, too.

  ‘The flames no longer harm me,’ he whispered. He whipped his hand forward, and a coil of fire shot towards the Strategist. She screamed as the flames curled around her, and dragged her towards her lover.

  At first, Aranfal seemed to be staring at two separate beings, standing one in front of the other, switching places over and over again. Then the Strategist was surrounded by shadow and flame, a thing with dark and burning claws, pawing at her. Her expression changed, and she began to smile.

  ‘We will be together again,’ she whispered. ‘We will bring all our children home.’

  Ruin was alone. His eyes burned purple.

  ‘Now then,’ he said, in the voice of Katrina Paprissi, ‘who is next?’

  He grinned down at them and spoke again in his own voice.

  ‘Come to me, my children.’

  He raised his arms in the air and flame filled the Circus.

  Aranfal was in the Bowels of the See House. He knew what this was: a memory, conjured in the flames of Ruin. But there was something different, here.

  The memory was not real.

  They were in some cell, one of many he frequented in his days as the torturer. This was a small, damp room, with no light of its own, the only illumination coming from a torch in the passageway beyond. Two children sat before him, tied to chairs: two girls, in the silk dresses of the rich, dirty and worn. They were shivering. Perhaps it was the cold. Perhaps.

  They were staring at Aranfal, and there was terror in their eyes.

  Aranfal looked at his hand. He held a weapon there. This was real. It was something he used in the early days. It was an axe, of a kind, though it had a blunted edge. When he looked at it, he heard a howl.

  ‘This is not real,’ he said. He looked at the children. ‘I never …’

  A shadow filled the room.

  It may not have happened, Aranfal, but who is to say it isn’t real? The memory is real.

  ‘What memory? It didn’t happen, so there is no memory.’

  I feel you here, every inch of you, more of you than you know. I sense the pain in this moment. It brings such energy to me. We are so alike, Aranfal: both of us torturers. Both of us revelling in the extreme.

  Aranfal felt himself lifting the axe and pointing it towards one of the girls: the more terrified of the pair, if that was possible.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Everything I did had purpose. I am not a sadist.’

  Ruin only laughed.

  Aranfal had returned to the Circus, and to the flames. They lashed out from Ruin, screeching, grasping tendrils. He saw strange things, as the flames washed over him: memories that belonged to him, memories of cold nights in the North and fetid days in the Bowels. Others that did not: moments of pain and humiliation, of naked exposure and beatings in alleyways. This fire did not burn him, in the physical sense. But the same could not be said for the Operators, who screamed and screeched as it clawed at them. All of them were dragged towards Ruin, and one by one they disappeared.

  The weaker ones, those who had once formed the audience, simply vanished within the flame.

  Shirkra ran to Father, leering through the fire, and grasped him in a tight embrace. She turned and grinned at Aranfal, smiling from the inferno, before removing her mask and tossing it to the ground.

  ‘Chaos and Ruin belong together,’ she said. ‘They always have.’

  She turned back into Ruin and buried her head in his shoulder, before falling into ash. Ruin’s eyes flickered green, and he barked out a laugh in that staccato way of Shirkra’s. The madness is part of a greater whole, now. Shirkra is greater than she ever could have been alone. The notion filled Aranfal with dread.

  The children who held Canning began to creep forward, still grasping the strange chains that held their prisoner. They gazed at Father with expressions that suggested a mix of trepidation and excitement.

  ‘My Boy and Girl,’ said the mouth of Father. His voice had changed, as it echoed in the flames; it rang with the cadences of ten thousand speakers. ‘Come to me.’

  ‘We don’t want to die,’ said Girl. Her voice was trembling.

  Ruin laughed. ‘None of us will ever die. You know that. You will be part of something … more.’

  He flicked a finger, and Boy and Girl disappeared. He sucked in a breath, closed his eyes, and roared with triumph. The black chains vanished, and Canning collapsed onto his knees.

  Aranfal looked at the remnants of the world: the girl called Drayn, Brandione, Canning, and the torturer himself, standing helpless in the flames. He wondered what had happened to the rest of humanity. Were they all in their homes? Were they ignorant of the new world? Not for long. They’ll find out soon enough.

  All of the Operators were now part of Ruin, and he burned with their power. As Aranfal stared at the flames all around him, he felt that he saw them, standing side by side, gazing out at him, half in pain and half in triumph. All of them we
re there, living as one creature, apart from Jandell and the Dust Queen.

  Hope is disappearing.

  CHAPTER 26

  Drayn awoke to power. Power that appalled. Power that repelled.

  Power that attracted.

  Ruin. It was now unleashed, before a strange, twisted cage. Its prison. A prison of fire and metal. This was not the darkness she had seen before. This creature was part shadow, part human. It had taken the body of a woman: tall, muscular, white-haired. The woman from Jaco’s memory: the one who took the baby.

  Ruin was surrounded by flame, a fire of memory. At first it filled the great stadium, but over time it fell back, gathered around this creature. His clothing seemed part of his burning core, a dress of gold and red that looked ready to eviscerate any who touched it. His eyes were glowering coals. His arms were spread wide, and he seemed triumphant.

  Something here was strange. It was the silence. All the other Autocrats had disappeared. Drayn knew where they had gone, when she looked at Ruin. He has taken them all within himself.

  No: not all of them. Jandell still lay on the broken table, unmoving. Three women stood nearby, beings cut from the same cloth as Ruin and Jandell himself: strange things, formed of sand or dust, their features shifting in a perpetual dance. Not three creatures. One creature. A queen …

  The other mortals were here, too, the ones she had seen with the Eyeless One: Aranfal, Canning, and Brandione. No one to me a moment ago: now my only friends.

  And she needed friends, in this place. Ruin was different from the others. It wasn’t just the power that flowed from him in wave after wave, like sheets of knives. It was the way that power changed. The way it evolved. Ruin was all-consuming. Ruin was a fire, and he wanted to burn the world.

  Drayn sensed all this with a dead clarity. But more than this, she had a dangerous desire to become part of it. It was the feeling of crossing a bridge, and wanting to jump into the waters below.

  Ruin gazed upon her. There was a fire in those eyes, two sparks of an inferno dangling in the face of a hard woman. The little flames jumped out of her head and they floated towards Drayn, until the girl was lost inside them.

  Mother passed her the butter.

  Drayn was back in Thonn House, in the small dining room. Mother was the same as always, a stern figure, hard and unbending, the keeper of some boring secret. She glanced at Drayn with that familiar blend of expectation and disappointment.

  Drayn dug out a chunk of butter and dabbed at a piece of black bread. She was vaguely aware of a problem with this scene, some issue that had to be addressed. But the outlines of it were somehow hazy. It’s not clear, it’s not clear at all, perhaps nothing will ever be clear again, perhaps clarity was something we had before, before, before it all …

  Before what? She could not remember.

  An empty chair seized her attention. Father’s chair. This was after the dark day. He didn’t sit in that chair any more. He would never sit there again.

  There was a noise downstairs: a great bang.

  ‘Someone is at the door,’ said Mother. She seemed unconcerned, as if it was not strange that someone should arrive during dinner. That never happened, in the old days. No one would come during dinner. No one would disturb the House of Thonn while it ate.

  And then he came in through a side door: Cranwyl. He was different. Uneasy. That wasn’t like him at all. He usually had the answers to everything.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked. He didn’t look at Drayn. His gaze was locked on Mother, who slowly sucked at her soupspoon.

  ‘It’s the door, Cranwyl,’ she whispered.

  This is not a memory. Drayn found herself on her feet; the chair groaned as she pushed it back across the stone with her behind. This is not a true memory.

  Mother was looking at her. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Something’s wrong,’ she whispered. A pair of eyes appeared in her mind, little drops of fire. ‘Can you not feel it?’

  The banging noise started up again. This time, though, it wasn’t a knock. Someone was attacking the door in the great hall. Someone was trying to force it open.

  ‘They’re coming for you,’ Mother said. Her eyes were on Cranwyl. A look of real fear crossed his face, but he quickly turned away, and his focus fell on the door from the dining room.

  ‘You’ve told them I killed Teron,’ he said. There was no emotion in his voice, as if he was describing a change in the weather. They say it’s going to rain tomorrow. ‘They’ve been wondering what happened, so you told them it was me.’

  Mother did not respond, but Drayn knew Cranwyl was right.

  Cranwyl ran to the door and disappeared. Drayn tore after him, down the stairs, past the paintings of Thonn after Thonn, their feet thudding on stone and wood. They’d have to run by the main door before finding another way out, another route to escape the badness, whatever it was. But if the door opened before they got there, it would all be too late: the enemy would fall on Cranwyl, and he wouldn’t escape their grasp until death came. And maybe not even then.

  So down they went, under burning torches. They rounded the great door; it was shaking hard, thumped from outside, splinters breaking out and falling on the floor. But it held, and Drayn and Cranwyl were away, through the catacombs of the house, together again, running from the world.

  There were so many doors in Thonn House, so many ways in and out, that hardly anyone knew all of them. Not even Drayn and Cranwyl, truth be told, though they knew more than anyone else. They ran through the kitchens and dashed inside the scullery. There, low on the wall, was a little doorway, built into the stone. Drayn always wondered why it was there. Perhaps it was for cats. Did we have cats? I can’t remember.

  Drayn and Cranwyl fell to their knees before the doorway. The servant went first, forcing his body through the opening, with Drayn following quickly behind.

  She was only halfway out when she heard the man’s voice.

  ‘Stupid. Did you not think we knew about this one?’

  There came a great flurry of scrabbling activity and hurried words. Cranwyl urged her to get back inside, but it was too late for that. She looked up, and her gaze fell on a metallic beak. A Guard. His mask glowed in the light from the house, and he held Cranwyl tight, squeezed up against his armour.

  ‘This isn’t real,’ Drayn said. ‘This never happened.’

  It doesn’t matter.

  The voice spoke from everywhere and nowhere. It grabbed her hard, like a kitten being lifted by the scruff of its neck. She closed her eyes, willing herself to push through this, to fight her way past Ruin. When she opened them again, she saw that the Guard had a knife at Cranwyl’s throat. No, not just any knife: the knife. The one she had used against her own father.

  ‘Why are you helping this murderer, girl?’ asked the Guard. ‘Anyone would think you’d something to hide. Your mother told us what happened. This fucker killed your old da.’ Drayn imagined the smile under the mask. Lies, lies, lies, everyone is lying, everyone is always lying.

  Cranwyl nodded frantically. ‘He’s right, Drayn. Let him take me. I confess. Let him hurt me. I don’t mind.’

  A storm of emotions: gratitude and love for Cranwyl, hatred for the Guard and Mother, relief that it wasn’t her under the knife, and shame at her cowardice.

  ‘We’re going to really hurt this little prick for what he … what he did,’ the Guard said. Lies again. He knows he’s lying. It’s nothing but cruelty.

  ‘No,’ whispered Drayn. ‘Don’t hurt him.’

  And then the scene changed. They were in a cell, somewhere on the island, a dark and hopeless place. Cranwyl was hanging from chains on the ceiling, naked. His body was sweating, trembling, covered in lashes and blood. The Guard was before him, holding a whip. Another false memory, but real enough: too real. The same ingredients, mixed together into a stew, over and over and …

  ‘You will always remember this, Drayn.’

  Mother was there, at her side, grinning in a way she never ha
d before.

  ‘Ruin,’ Drayn said. The image of Mother fell away, and the face of that other woman appeared instead, the one with white hair and eyes of fire.

  Ruin leaned in close to Drayn. The girl tried to back away, but found she was frozen to the spot.

  ‘I feel such emotions within you, such a cascade, such a torrent.’ Ruin grinned. ‘Disgust. Hatred. Fear. From now until the end, you will hold this image in your mind: the picture of your friend, suffering for a crime that you committed. Dying in your place. Dying for you. It will haunt you, and it does not matter if it is real. I will be there, to drink these memories.’

  He reached forward and touched Drayn on the forehead. The girl felt a shock of cold. When Ruin drew back his hand, he held a small, white flame; the creature placed it inside his mouth, sighing with pleasure.

  ‘You are a power,’ Ruin said. ‘Once, there were others like you: they defeated us. Those days are gone. You will not surprise us again. I will take such pleasure from you, from dancing forever through the memories you hold, and the ones we will make together.’

  As Drayn gazed at this strange creature, this parasite of pain, she felt a flicker of anger. She knew Ruin’s victory was at hand, but she would not go easily into that darkness. She reached into her thoughts and felt the power of memory. She flicked her wrist. Something was in her hand: a weapon, forged from the power of the past, a thing in the shape of a black sword. She raised it, and she swung it at this beast.

  Ruin laughed at her. Laughed.

  And then she was back on the shattered table, back in the great stadium, helpless before Ruin, who turned his attention elsewhere.

  CHAPTER 27

  The past stretched before Canning, burning in the form of a single being.

  In Ruin’s eyes he saw only pain: his own, and that of countless unknown others. These things did not present themselves as images or moments, but in the flowing power of memories. He felt it tugging at him, urging him to throw himself at Ruin’s feet, to beg him to swallow him up in his fire, as he had done to his children.