Heroes Die

by Matthew Woodring Stover

  On the 270-degree POV screen, Caine’s party had now crossed Rogues’ Way, heads down into the slant of the driving rain. Kollberg might have only a minute to make up his mind—but if Caine could hold off for, say, ten minutes—long enough for word to spread through the programming centers of the net—everyone would want a piece of this feed, everyone, all over the world . . . Why simply offer, why just throw the feed out onto Adventure Update?

  They’d pay, all of them would pay. They’d go for it en masse like a swarm of lemmings; how could they afford not to? No channel could afford to be the only one in a market who’s not showing Caine and Pallas live. Licensing fees—the licensing fees for these few minutes could pay the overhead for the whole bloody Adventure, with millions left over!

  Once his decision was made, Kollberg wasted no time in ordering the Studio comm nexus cleared for incoming traffic. A hundred marks per second? A thousand? He let the boys down in Marketing settle on a price that would make program directors gnash their teeth and tear their hair but stop short of actually fainting dead away; then he cleared a line to the Adventure Update office.

  “Give me Entertainer Clearlake,” he snapped. “This is B—Administrator Kollberg.”

  But not for long; I can feel it: not a mere Administrator for very much longer.

  18

  THE VOICES THAT speak from five billion wallscreens across Earth use tones of urgency that are usually reserved for declarations of war. Nearly all of the voices speak English; the few remaining ethnic channels that struggle for market share in their isolated backwaters are too poor to pay the Studio’s per-second asking price. The words spoken by these disembodied voices vary from channel to channel, but their meaning is identical: You must watch this. You must care about this. Nothing else in your life is as important as this.

  And that face, his beautiful, earnest, clean-cut, honest face with the locked-down hair and the eyes with the glycerin glitter. Behind that face there’s an emotion so powerful it defies expression, some combination of religious exaltation and bone-deep smugness: I am here. I know. But you will know only what I choose to tell.

  And there is a power in him; he blazes with it: a furnace of energy that pours into him from the eager eyes of the ten billion people who look at his face right now.

  “Live, from Studio Center in San Francisco, I’m Jed Clearlake.”

  19

  WHEN MAJESTY SAYS, “This is it,” shouting to be heard over the waterfall sizzle of rain on our hats, my heart stammers.

  Can I really be this close?

  The broken hulk of the warehouse looms shadowy in the fade-to-black grey-scale of the downpour, and a door gapes darkness. A chill river runs down my spine and empties along the leg of my breeches. I look up at Lamorak on the horse and at Talann, who’s kept a hand on the horse’s bridle throughout this furtive walk: they’re only ghostly silhouettes. I lean close enough to Majesty’s ear that our hat brims overlap, providing a handbreadth of sheltered air through which to speak.

  “Pull your boys in,” I tell him. “Best to keep all your strikers here until Pallas is ready to move—we can’t have one of them talking about this to the wrong guy.”

  He gives me that sidelong look again, the way you check something out of the corner of your eye to see if it looks the same as it did full-on, but then he nods.

  “Way ahead of you.” He lifts his hand overhead and swings his arm in a long arc to call the strikers in. I can’t believe they can see it, but shortly men begin to appear, shuffling shapes with shoulders hunched against the rain. “But, I’m tellin’ you, we’ve watched this place. Tommie’s here right now. Shit, Berne himself was followed back here; he went inside to search, right after the shitfight. She’s not here.”

  I allow myself a knowing smile. “You don’t know her like I do. She had thirty-some people here, set up with food and water, a place to sleep and a place to crap. She’s not going to abandon all that, not when she has nowhere else to go, no one she can trust. The best place to hide is where the hunters have already looked.” I look around: a dozen Subjects now surround us. “Let’s go in.”

  I lead; Talann follows, drawing Lamorak’s horse; Majesty pauses for one last head count before bringing all the Subjects in behind us. Once inside, Majesty directs us through the maze of tumbled, half-charred beams, back to an interior office from which emanates the cheerfully rosy glow of a small campfire.

  Built in the center of the floor, out of scraps pulled from the walls, invisible from outside, the fire’s keeping the chill off Tommie. He straightens from his squat when he sees me. “Hey, Caine! What’re you—” Then he sees Majesty behind me and straightens farther to do the chest-thump salute to me and then to his king.

  “ ’Sno sign of Pallas Ril, if that’s what you’re after,” he says. “Didja bring anything to eat?”

  “Where were they, a basement? Where’s the door?”

  “Right there.” He points. “But . . .” Now through the empty doorway he can see Lamorak on his horse, which snuffles irritably at the fire, and Talann, and the other Subjects, and he shakes his head in wonder. “Outa all you bastards, nobody’s got nothing to eat?”

  By this time I’ve taken Tommie’s lamp and lit it with a splinter from the campfire. I pull open the door and start down the squealing stairs; Majesty’s right on my heels. I can’t breathe—surging adrenaline makes my whole body thrum like a plucked bowstring.

  I made it. I made it in time, with time to spare. I can’t believe I’m really here, really doing this. My stomach churns in time with my spinning brain, and we finally reach the basement floor.

  “See?” Majesty says. “Nobody here.”

  The floor is stone; it slops with a handbreadth of water that gleams black in the lamplight as it swirls around my boots. Old broken crates and stacks of mossy lumber lie scattered across it, and the combined deepwood smell of mildew and rot plugs my nose like a cork. It’s a big room, five-meter ceiling in places brushed by the mountains of old crates, sagging and waterlogged. I move deeper into the room, sliding my feet and feeling my way carefully under the concealing water. There are no doors, beyond the hole cut for the stairwell.

  Majesty, out of sight behind me, says, “Dammit, Caine, bring that light back over here. This place is crawling with rats.”

  Yeah, that’s all that seems to live here. I can see their tiny red lamps of eyes staring at me out of the shadows, and once in a while see their sinuous backs writhing through the water past my feet.

  “Come on, Pallas,” I say loudly. “Quit screwing around. We need to talk.”

  “Give it up, Caine,” Majesty tells me. “There’s nobody here—shit! Fuckin’ rat came halfway up my leg! Will you come back here with that fuckin’ lamp?”

  Could I have been wrong about this? Impossible—this is exactly what Pallas would do.

  Isn’t it?

  “Goddammit, Pallas, you have no idea what I went through to get here.” A whiny edge of desperation creeps into my voice, against my will. “Drop the damned Cloak. I have news from home.”

  That’s a code phrase that every one of us knows.

  And a wave passes over and through me, a ripple through my mind, and now I can suddenly remember that I’m not alone.

  As though from the bottom of a deep, deep well I can hear Majesty’s gasp.

  It’s dreamlike—it’s exactly like one of those dreams where you’re out in public and you all at once remember that you’ve left your pants at home; this remembering comes in a surging rush, as though I’ve had my eyes closed and was pretending so hard that I was alone that I’d made myself believe it, but now my eyes have opened, and this reeking basement room is full of people.

  It seems like they’re everywhere, perched on the crates and the roof timbers, men and women with children clinging close by their hips; they wear clothes that run from the sumptuous brocade of a merchant prince to the filthy, stained rags of a street beggar. But all of them are dirty, faces smeared by days without wate
r enough to wash; all of them are silent; all of them watch me with eyes round in apprehension.

  There’s a little group that I recognize, a man and wife with two daughters: it’s the Konnosi. I nearly nod in recognition before I remember that though I know them, they’ve never met me. I find myself deeply, inexplicably glad that they’ve made it, that Konnos’ funny self-important researcher act has not vanished from the world, that his wife is still loyal and his daughters still lovely beneath the marks of their ordeal.

  And—she’s here.

  She’s standing on a ledge of packing crates high above me, her arms folded over her breasts, one trim leg forward and her hips slightly cocked to emphasize the curve of her slim waist in a way that makes me ache to hold her. Her cloak drapes back over her muscular shoulders, and she gives her head that single toss, to swing the spray of her hair back out of her luminous, bottomless eyes—and y’know, she doesn’t look happy to see me at all.

  “God damn you, Caine,” she says distinctly. “What will it take to finally keep you the hell out of my life?”

  20

  “CUT!” KOLLBERG SHRIEKED, surging up from the stage manager’s station. “Cut cut cut!” The techs in the booth stabbed at switches, and instantly one reported that the worldwide live feed had ceased. Kollberg fell back into the chair, trembling with victory.

  That was perfect. That was better than he could have dreamed. Good god, he couldn’t have had a better teaser for a marketing campaign if he’d written it himself. Will Pallas survive? It wasn’t yet certain. Can Caine save her? No way to yet tell. What will it take to win her back? It was anyone’s guess.

  He eased deeper into the chair, twitching in every muscle, squirming in a sort of sexual afterglow.

  Perfection.

  21

  MAJESTY BABBLES SOMETHING, off on the other side of a stack of crates—he’s out of sight near the stairs. I struggle with a swelling roar in my ears, a thousand petty echoes of my voice, whining in righteous outrage: After all I’ve done for you, this is how you treat me.

  “I meant it, Pallas.” I keep my tone pretty level, I think. “About the news from home. We need to talk.”

  She sneers back at me with undisguised hostility. “I know why you’re here, Caine, and you can tell those greedy bastards that I’m handling things just fine, thank you. I don’t need your help. You can go home.”

  We both know which greedy bastards she’s talking about. “It’s not what you think—”

  “Then I suppose I should feel lucky to have you here to set me straight. Go on, Caine, tell me what I should think.”

  It’d be easy, so easy and seductive, to let that tiny, searing spark of anger behind my ribs flare up to full life, to dive right back into the shouting, the name calling, the snarling toe-to-toe gut ripping that poisoned the final months of our marriage. In a way, she trained me for it: at first, it was a problem that I never raised my voice; only later did the problem become that we raised our voices too often.

  Now I hang on, hold my temper with both hands: this is her life at stake. My wounded pride is meaningless here.

  “Please,” I say simply, setting the lamp on a nearby crate to empty my hands. “Please, let’s not fight. Five minutes alone, to talk. Then I’m gone.”

  The hard-set lines of her face soften for a moment: she was winding up for a brawl, and my preemptive surrender has taken her off guard.

  She looks down at me from her high perch surrounded by the tokali. For an instant I feel her really see me; for just that one precious moment when our eyes meet she’s looking at me, instead of looking at the mental image of me that she carries in her head, the image that’s sullen and cynical, that casually homicidal villain who’s caused her so much pain.

  We both carry those images, those built-up mental constructs. I think we’ve spent so long talking to ourselves, inside our own heads, arguing with an imaginary Caine, a fictitious Pallas, that we’ve virtually forgotten the reality that hides behind them.

  Yet, here we are, and I can read inside her eyes. I can see that there’s still something there when she looks at me, and she must see the same, that it doesn’t have to be over for us. Her lips part as she takes a breath to speak—

  A voice from behind those crates, from out of sight at the stairs, comes hoarsely. “Hey, Pallas. Bet you never thought you’d see us again.”

  Lamorak.

  I can’t see him, but she can from her high perch, and her face lights with a radiance that I haven’t seen there in years. Her lips move, she mouths part of a name that her conditioning won’t let her finish, that my conditioning won’t let me repeat—it begins with a K.

  “Lamorak!” she cries. “Oh great god, Lamorak!”

  She scrambles down off the crates and splashes joyfully toward him. “And Talann, you’re alive, I can’t believe it!”

  She’s forgotten I’m even here.

  There is a happy buzz among the tokali, and many of them move toward the stairs, crowding toward the returning heroes. The basement echoes with splashing and happy babble, and I stay put for a bit.

  I stand there with water lapping up the sides of my boots and stare at the deserted crates around me, and I listen to them all. I don’t think I can stand to watch this part, the part where she falls into his arms and covers him with kisses.

  So I wait, and I wait, and the longer I wait the more pathetically ridiculous I feel, like an adolescent sulking in a corner at a high school dance. Only a couple of minutes pass before I can’t take it anymore; besides, seeing her in another man’s arms is something I’m gonna have to get used to, sooner or later.

  With effort, I join the others. I move out of the darkness, into their circle of lamplight.

  Many of the tokali are crying. Many of them try to keep a hand touching Lamorak or Talann, as though ensuring that these are not ghosts, not apparitions that will disappear as soon as their backs are turned. Pallas is between them; Talann is at her side, but Pallas’ arms are around Lamorak’s shoulders, there on the stairs, where he sits with his broken leg out before him.

  I can’t help thinking, can’t help remembering that in the Theater of Truth, in the Donjon, during the whole escape, he never once asked about her. Not once. From Talann, it was one of the first things out of her mouth: Did Pallas send you? Is she well? Did she escape? Not Lamorak.

  I wish there were some way I could tell Pallas that without making myself look like a petty, jealous asshole—which, of course, is exactly what I am.

  Pallas now looks at me with shining eyes and speaks in a breathy voice. “Is this true? You broke them out of the Donjon? Alone? You?”

  I shrug. “It was the only way I could think of to find you.” Well, sort of; but the truth would serve nothing, here.

  Lamorak murmurs: “He saved me, saved my life over and over. There were plenty of chances; he could have left me behind and no one would have blamed him. Not even me.”

  That’s a painless display of nobility for him—scraps from a rich man’s table.

  Pallas gazes adoringly into his eyes; then she suddenly glances at me as though she’s only now remembered that I’m in the room. She starts to blush as she delicately disentangles herself. Seeing her effort to be considerate of my feelings hurts as much as seeing her arms around him did.

  “Caine—I’m sorry, I . . . Well, you know. I thought—”

  “Yeah, I know what you thought. Forget about it. Any other time, you’d have been right.”

  “So, mm . . .” She leans forward uncomfortably. “So there really is news from home?”

  “Yeah,” I say simply. “You’re off-line.”

  All right, I admit it: it’s a childish thing to do, but I’m tired of screwing around. I’ll let her invent the lie to explain to the natives what off-line means.

  She couldn’t look more stunned if I’d beaned her with a rock. Her face goes white, then red, then white again.

  She stammers, “For, for how long?”

  “About four
days.”

  She takes in this information slowly and chews it over in her mind, and she’s thinking about something that I have a feeling I’m not gonna like. She stares through me, at some internal scene beyond this basement, then glances at Lamorak, then at me, and it’s me to whom she speaks.

  “You’re right. We do need to talk. The three of us.”

  22

  TOGETHER WE HALF carry Lamorak back up the stairs, leaving Talann staring mournfully after us. That red surge climbs back into Majesty’s face as he watches us go, and his eyes go toward slits until a quiet word from Pallas sets him at ease. We go out past the Subjects, who are cheerfully chaffing Tommie for being fooled, and move deeper into the ruins of the collapsing warehouse.

  I’ve got my good shoulder jammed up hard into Lamorak’s armpit; Pallas carries the lamp and helps him along from the opposite side; and I try not to think about the acid disappointment that’s eating the pit of my stomach.

  Looks like she won’t even give me the chance to talk to her alone . . .

  We find a sheltered spot, away from gaps where the drumming rain pours through the roof, and Pallas sets down the lamp. The floor is a jackstraw tumble of rot-eaten support members, and the place reeks with the chemical stench of wet charcoal. As we try to gently lower Lamorak to a seat on a fallen timber, he inadvertently grabs my injured trapezius. I wince and grunt, and Pallas looks at me, our faces only a foot apart, close enough that she should somehow sense my ache to touch her . . .

  “You’re hurt.”

  “Crossbow,” I tell her with a shrug. I know she hates this macho downgrade of pain, but it’s a habit; I can’t help it. “Through and through, missed the bone. Not serious.”

  A silent moment cuts deep with sudden, overpowering shame. I can read her eyes: she can’t decide how much concern to show. She doesn’t want to be cold, but she also doesn’t want to encourage me. She can’t find anything to say, and it stings me at least as much as it does her, so I let her off the hook.

  “What’s up with Majesty? Since when is he your guard dog?”

  “I, ah—” She shrugs and looks away; she can’t meet my gaze as she says this. “I wasn’t sure I could trust him. There was too much at stake—”