Heroes Die

by Matthew Woodring Stover

  The growing ache in my chest, that’s the strain of carrying Lamorak. The tears, they’re from the stench. And the sickening, retching revulsion in the pit of my stomach—

  A squeal of hinges from above, and far, far back I can see a pinprick of light. We’re out of time.

  “I see it!” Talann breathes hoarsely—and she’s looking ahead, downhill. She must mean the sump.

  “All right. When you get there, don’t even slow down. Douse the lighter and hold it tight in your fist. Until Lamorak wakes up, that’s all the light we’ve got. When you hit bottom, move to one side as fast as you can; Lamorak and I will be right behind you.”

  We reach the sump: it’s nothing more than a ragged natural fissure in the stone of the floor. Faintly up it comes the slap of water on rock.

  Loud voices and the clatter of boots come from above. It won’t be long before the guards are in crossbow range despite the low ceiling: crossbows have an extremely flat trajectory.

  Talann’s vividly violet eyes hold mine for a moment across the flame of the lighter, then she snuffs it; blackness so deep you can taste it surrounds us.

  Her hand touches my arm, and on my mouth comes the quick brush of her lips; then a rushing absence fills the space where she had been.

  It seems like a sizable bite of eternity before I hear her call faintly from below. “Go!” is all she says.

  I take a deep breath and shift Lamorak’s weight on my shoulders; it takes every milligram of courage I possess to step from the stone and plunge into space.

  We fall and fall and fall and bounce from stone and slide across shit-slickened rock: nothing can be seen—how far to go, how far we’ve come—we bounce and tumble and fall some more—

  And land, driven deep into a soft pile that makes wooden splintering crackles beneath and around us.

  I dig my way out of it, trying not to think about what’s smearing in and around the open wounds on my shoulder and knee.

  “Talann?”

  She strikes the lighter. My god, I hope I don’t look as bad she does. It’s impossible to say what it is that layers and cakes every inch of her body because my sense of smell shorted out a couple of minutes ago up in the Shaft. The pile in which we lie is an unknowable number of corpses, layered with an unconscionable amount of human waste.

  Hah, I can take it; landing here isn’t that different from the end of the Ritual of Rebirth.

  By the light of the tiny, smoking flame we manage to locate Lamorak. The underground river is only a couple of meters away. That’s what’s kept this pile from swelling until it choked the sump: some of it is always washing away when it gets too high.

  Lamorak is out cold; there’s only one thing left to do. I take off my cable-cored garroting belt and tie one end tight around Lamorak’s upper arm, the other tight around my own.

  “Remember,” I tell Talann, “don’t swim until you count to sixty.”

  “One-ankhana, two-ankhana,” she says. “I remember.”

  “Go, then.”

  She snuffs the lighter and slips noiselessly into the water. I get both hands over Lamorak’s mouth and nose, pinch them both shut, and follow her.

  The water closes over my head like a blessing of the Mother, and I float in total darkness, without sensation, almost without thought except for the slow beat of the seconds I count in my head. If I were less exhausted, if the water were not so cool and soothing on my wounds, I might be tempted to panic, but as it is, I have no energy left for worry.

  Seconds pass more swiftly than the beat of my heart.

  I start to suspect that I’ve been trying too hard, that all my struggle and worry is a mirage, a dream, that I could be happy to simply float along in my life as I float here.

  How long has it been? I’ve lost count, and I don’t care anymore. Struggling to hold my breath is too much work, and I know that pretty soon I’ll let it bubble out between my lips. I’ll breathe in water, and it’ll be as cool and soothing in my lungs and on my heart as it is on the leaking hole in my shoulder.

  Now a point of light joins the shimmering phosphenes in my vision, and a familiar voice calls my name. I wonder if this is the tunnel they all talk about, if that voice might be my mother’s, until a powerful, calloused hand clamps my wrist and hauls me gasping up out of the water.

  The lighter sits on the stone bank by the stream, and Talann belts me on the side of the head. “Wake up, damn you!”

  I shake my head sharply and remember what’s going on. “All right. All right, I’m back now.”

  Talann treads water beside me. “You’re sure?”

  The lighter gives me something to swim toward, and by way of answer I make for it with a strong sidestroke, Lamorak trailing limply by my belt.

  It takes Talann and me a couple of minutes to pump the water out of Lamorak’s lungs and breathe life once again into his nostrils. Once he’s breathing normally, we let ourselves collapse side by side on the stone.

  “We made it,” Talann murmurs. “You did it, Caine. I can’t believe we really made it.”

  “Yeah,” I say. Talk about passing through the belly of the beast . . .

  “Yeah, we made it, but we have to keep moving. One or two of those guys might have the guts to follow us.”

  “In a minute or two,” she says, putting a warm hand softly on my upper arm.

  The water washed away the filth that smeared her features, and she’s really spectacularly beautiful, and she worships me.

  “No,” I tell her. “Now. Come on, get up. The oil in that lighter won’t last forever.”

  She pushes herself into a sitting position. “You can be a real bastard, you know that?”

  I shrug. “That’s what my mother always said. Now move.”

  13

  TOA-SYTELL CONSULTED HIS tally sheet, checking his addition one last time before speaking. “My best preliminary estimate—that is, without knowledge of the current status of the guards and prisoners who were still alive when taken to the infirmary—is that twelve guards were killed, with fifteen more wounded in varying degrees of severity. Fourteen prisoners died in the riot that accompanied the escape, and eight more were wounded severely; fifty-six slightly injured. One of Arkadeil’s apprentices was killed, and Arkadeil himself is half blinded and may not regain full use of his arm.”

  The stone rail of the Pit balcony creaked under the massive hands that gripped it; Ma’elKoth’s beard shifted as muscle bulged at the corners of his jaw, and a cracking sound came from deep within the stone as his grip tightened.

  “Their wives, their children—they thought it would be safe for them to raise families, detailed here at the Donjon, away from the fields of battle,” he rumbled, deep within his throat. “They must be pensioned, each and every one. None shall ever know want due to My misjudgment.”

  Ma’elKoth had insisted on coming personally to the Donjon to view the carnage with his own eyes. “It is not good,” he’d said to Toa-Sytell in passing, “for even God to sit removed from the pain of His Children; they too easily become abstract, and vague. I must taste the fruits of My commands, all the more so when that fruit is bitter unto death.”

  By the time the three of them had arrived, the riot was long over. Surgeons had been moving about on the Pit floor, tending to the deep puncture wounds and limbs left shattered by the impact of steel quarrels. Ma’elKoth’s first order upon his arrival had been to carry the wounded prisoners up to the infirmary alongside the guards; he, himself, had followed.

  With Toa-Sytell at his side and Berne trailing behind with cynical reluctance, Ma’elKoth had stopped at the bedside of each wounded man, spoken with each, and summoned his power to stroke away the pain of every wound with the warm paternal pressure of his enormous hands.

  He opened the Imperial treasury to recompense two of the warrior-priests of Khryl, hastily summoned from their beds at their small sanctuary on Gods’ Way. Toa-Sytell had watched the creases of empathetic pain deepen across Ma’elKoth’s brow as he came upo
n men with limbs shattered beyond hope of even magickal repair; he saw crystalline tears swell in the Emperor’s coal black eyes as he blessed each of the dead.

  “Not even I, Emperor and God, can see beyond this portal,” he’d murmured, unaware that Toa-Sytell could overhear. “I wish you well, each of you, on your journey, or the peaceful slumber of oblivion, whichever you encounter.”

  When they had returned to the Donjon, the only remnants of the riot still visible from the Pit balcony were the pools of clotting blood on the floor.

  “Quite a piece of work,” said Count Berne, sounding bored. He leaned against the balcony rail at Ma’elKoth’s side opposite from Toa-Sytell, with his back to the Pit while he examined his fingernails. There was an edge to Berne’s nonchalance, though; Toa-Sytell sensed that Berne overplayed it, just a bit, and he wasn’t sure why.

  “Caine’s turned out to be an expensive indulgence, don’t you think?”

  Ma’elKoth’s only answer was a subterranean rumble from the bottom of his chest.

  Toa-Sytell coughed pointedly, and then said, low enough to be heard only by the Emperor and his Count, “I have not yet determined what, precisely, went wrong. The sentry from the rooftop guardwalk was found much more swiftly than can be accounted for by the normal routine of foot patrol. Does the Emperor wish me to pursue this, as a line of investigation?”

  As he spoke, he kept his eyes on Berne, not Ma’elKoth, and so he caught the subtle flicker in the Count’s eyes, the tiny crack in his mask of unconcern. So, indeed: he knew already where such an investigation would lead.

  But Ma’elKoth shook his head shortly. “No. You must bend all your efforts as you would a bow, with shaft aimed directly at recapturing Lamorak and the woman, and Caine. Anything less would be unconvincing to Our enemies; Caine must be given every chance for success.”

  Berne glanced to his side and found Toa-Sytell staring at him; their gazes met for a brief, significant moment beneath Ma’elKoth’s chin. Berne forced a friendly, slightly sheepish smile, which Toa-Sytell returned with a bland I’ll be watching you stare. Berne shrugged and went back to cleaning his nails.

  “What if,” Toa-Sytell asked slowly, “what if we catch him?”

  “I surmise, in that event,” Ma’elKoth replied, “that a substantial number of your men will die.”

  He shook his leonine head in sad disbelief, looking down on the clot-dulled surfaces of the blood pools that scattered across the Pit and on the balcony itself. “Twenty-seven men and women killed.

  Twenty-five wounded, maimed, some crippled. More strokes added to Simon Jester’s bloody account—an account that I must share against My Will.”

  “The Emperor will pardon my saying so,” Toa-Sytell murmured, “but that seems to be an inevitable consequence of associating oneself with Caine.”

  The Emperor nodded slowly, lowering his head as if in prayer. “Yes. And I knew this when I sought him.” He released a long, slow sigh. “Twenty-seven dead . . . such boundless slaughter.”

  He lifted his eyes as though looking at something deep within the stone, or something far beyond it.

  “Caine could hardly cause more damage if he were, himself, an Aktir.”

  14

  ALWAYS CLEAN, ALWAYS crisp, brilliant white teeth gleaming within his polished smile. “This is Adventure Update, your only Worldwide Twenty-four-hour Source for Studio News. I’m Bronson Underwood.

  “It’s now noon, Ankhana time, and this is our latest update from the Studio on Caine’s progress in his desperate search for his missing wife, Pallas Ril. As you can see by the Pallas Ril Lifeclock graphic in the corner of your screen, our best estimate leaves her with less than eighty hours remaining, plus or minus ten hours—perhaps as much as nearly four days, or as little as less than three. The entire world waits breathless, hoping and praying that Caine can find her in time. Here’s Jed Clearlake.”

  “Thank you, Bronson. Our report from the Studio this hour has Caine still holed up in the Warrens with the native woman Talann and Lamorak—that’s the Actor, Karl Shanks. The Imperials are engaged in a manhunt on an unheard-of scale, flooding the city with troops, searching door-to-door for the escaped prisoners. It’s making Caine keep his head down, and I can’t imagine he’s very happy about it.”

  “I’m sure he isn’t. What’s the status on the search for Pallas Ril?”

  “As you might recall, Bronson, Caine organized last night’s unprecedented escape from the Imperial Donjon, at extreme personal risk, in hopes that one or both of Pallas’ companions could lead him to a prearranged rendezvous with Pallas herself. This hope has been dashed by the extreme nature of the Imperial response, making it simply too dangerous for them to move about the city. The rumor is that friends of Caine are checking the meeting places even as we speak.”

  “And, I’m told, the situation there is interesting, politically.”

  “Politically?”

  “Sexual politics, Jed.”

  “Oh, yes—” a dry chuckle “—well, yes, indeed. Most of the world knows by now of the astonishing measures Caine took last night to save Lamorak’s life. Caine and Lamorak are in real life quite good friends—I don’t know if you know that, Bronson. What our viewers might not know as well is that Lamorak and Pallas Ril are also good friends, close friends; perhaps very close friends indeed.”

  “I’ve heard some rumors . . .”

  “They’re not only rumors, Bronson. It’s been kind of an open secret for some time, now. The question is, how much of this does Caine know? The Studio isn’t saying. I think the question on everyone’s mind is: what will Caine do when he finds out?”

  “That’s a good question, Jed—interesting for us. For Lamorak, I’d guess, it’s rather terrifying.”

  “Well, Bronson, as they say, Lamorak’s made his bed, and now he has to lie in it.” Another dry chuckle. “From Studio Center in San Francisco, I’m Jed Clearlake.”

  “Thank you, Jed. In our next hour, we’ll have a Studio expert on—are you ready for this?—‘chaotic perturbation in multidimensional superstrings’ here, live, to take your calls. He’ll be explaining why we have such a large margin of error in our estimated Pallas Ril Lifeclock, and he’ll be answering your questions about the Winston Transfer. I’m Bronson Underwood. Stay with us.”

  15

  ARTURO KOLLBERG STUFFED another cake roll into his bulging cheeks and glared at the huge, curving POV screen. Every time Caine glanced away from the sunlit street outside to the ragged straw-leaking pallet on which Lamorak lay bundled in dirty blankets, the chant inside Kollberg’s head gained force, became a mantra, an incantation.

  Die, you bastard, die. Die, you ratfuck, die die die.

  But he wasn’t dying. When Caine and Talann had finally hauled him up out of the caverns, he was unconscious and shivering in deep shock; he should have died a long time ago. But they’d kept him warm, and now from time to time he woke up and they’d feed him warm broth provided by the Subjects of Cant. He’d pulled magick of some kind or other to help himself recover; they’d even managed to splint his leg while he used magick to dull the pain and relax the convulsive cramp of his thigh muscles around the tearing ends of bone within.

  His leg swiftly and efficiently set, Lamorak had claimed he’d be able to walk with a crutch by nightfall, and then he’d promptly fallen back asleep. Caine and Talann and the amateur surgeon from the Subjects of Cant had taken advantage of his unconsciousness to unstitch his thigh and wash the insect eggs from the wound with the strongest brandy they could find, then resewed it and stitched together the deep slash across his abdomen, as well.

  Anger had taken Kollberg wholly as he’d watched this, and he knew he couldn’t let the negative emotions rule his judgment; he swallowed another capsule of amphetamine and stuffed his mouth with sweets before the drug could kill his appetite, and he began to feel a little better.

  And through it all the chant had rung in Kollberg’s brain, losing all sense, a meaningless singsong collection of
syllables that would have, if there was any justice in the universe, driven the breath from Lamorak’s lungs and stopped his treacherous little heart.

  Whenever the glowing mushroom of the emergency transfer switch crept into the bottom of his peripheral vision, his chest tightened and his teeth clenched. He wasn’t helpless here, he kept reminding himself. Caine’s little crack comparing the Shaft to a Labor slum had been nearly pointed enough to justify yanking him. It’s timing, y’see, that’s what’s important now, he told himself.

  Timing is everything.

  16

  “MAJESTY’S ON HIS way,” the kid says, and he sounds a little awed. “I never seen Majesty come out for somebody . . .”

  I look away, out the small window; I don’t want to admit that I don’t remember his name. From where I sit, here on the sharp terminus of sun and shadow, I can see the spot in the bazaar where I leveled this kid with a mutton leg a couple of lifetimes ago, there by Lum’s shack in the curving shade of the stadium wall.

  “What about Pallas?”

  “Nobody knows where she is, Baron. Tommie ’n’ me, we went there, an’ nobody’s there. I mean, we waited and everything, and Tommie’s still there, but I don’t know.”

  A glance at Talann where she sits on the floor near Lamorak’s pallet, a glance that she returns with an irritable shrug. “It’s the only one I remember. I can’t help it.”

  No, she can’t. It’s amazing that even one meet point leaked through the shield of enforced forgetfulness of that goddamn spell. She’s been getting more and more cranky ever since I explained what Pallas did, and I don’t blame her.

  “Yeah,” the kid says, “nobody’s seen her since the big shitfight yesterday.”

  “You’ve seen her?”

  Something that’s been squeezing my chest suddenly lets up. I can breathe now, and I gasp, “Is, is she well? Was she hurt? How did she look?”

  He grins at me. “Pretty damn good, considering half the damn Grey Cats were chasing her down the street. That’s when the shitfight started.”