Heroes Die

by Matthew Woodring Stover

  “Garthan Hold,” the Acting Ambassador had supplied absently. “No, his records are here. After the Battle of Ceraeno, Caine’s transfer to Ankhana became official, and his records were forwarded here. They may not be entirely up-to-date, but if you will wait in the scriptorium, they will be brought to you.”

  Toa-Sytell had bowed his thanks and done as the Ambassador had suggested. Shortly two novices had arrived, each bearing a massive leather-bound book. One of them was full, and the other had been filled to a third. The Duke was astonished—how could one man have done so much in a single short life?

  Through his night of study, his astonishment had only grown. Caine had been everywhere, had done everything; he had an unsettling tendency to abruptly appear in the middle of important events with little or no explanation of why he was there or even how he’d made the journey. In between these battles and assassinations and adventures so incredible that Toa-Sytell dismissed most of them as fantasy, he didn’t seem to be anywhere at all. He had no fixed home; there were no records of him spending any significant amount of time at any Monastery after he’d completed his novitiate and left Garthan Hold nearly twenty years ago.

  His youth was equally puzzling. He’d arrived at the gates of Garthan Hold with a tale of having been born to a Pathquan freedman and sold to a Lipkan trader as a body servant during the Blood Famine—but it was recorded that he spoke Pathquan with an accent that no one had ever been able to identify. No attempt to contact his family was recorded; the Abbot at Garthan Hold had assumed the story was fabricated, that Caine was an escaped slave or a runaway serf of one of the local nobles. The Abbot had thought it significant that Caine displayed no particular aptitude, liking, or understanding for either horses or ironwork—seeing as how his supposed father allegedly was a farrier and the village blacksmith.

  Toa-Sytell began to understand the Emperor’s fascination with this man; Caine was like some force of nature, some wind or storm that would suddenly appear and blast the land for miles about, then vanish again. No one knew where he came from, no one knew where he went: his only tracks were the indelible scars he left on the lives that he touched.

  And Caine was more than this, more than a mere elemental power—the elements, after all, Ma’elKoth had shown he could control to a nicety. Caine was like a griffin or a dragon, a supremely dangerous animal that could be befriended but never tamed. At any moment his thin veneer of humanity could burst to reveal howling destruction within.

  Thin veneer of humanity. . . It was true that there was something not quite human about him: his astonishing luck, his preternatural confidence, the way he could come from nowhere and go at will, as if by magick . . .

  Like an Aktir.

  Toa-Sytell froze in midstretch, his mouth open to yawn—but his breath stopped in his lungs as though the air had become stone.

  Like an Aktir . . . Toa-Sytell himself had said it, again and again, reminding himself and others of the destruction and death that followed Caine wherever he appeared. Even Ma’elKoth had said it, down in the Donjon as he leaned on the rail around the Pit balcony: Caine could hardly cause more damage if he were, himself, an Aktir.

  The truth had been there, before their eyes; every one of them had looked right at it but had refused to see.

  There was more than this—small coincidences of timing, tiny reactions that had seemed inexplicable then, but now made sense. Toa-Sytell needed none of these.

  He knew.

  He knew beyond the possibility of doubt, he knew with the faith of a saint: Caine was an Aktir. Caine intended the destruction of Ma’elKoth, of the Empire, of all that was good in the world. Caine had to be stopped. He had to be killed.

  One convulsive gesture—his fist smacked down upon the open page. He stood for a moment, breathing hard, thinking. Then he turned away, leaving the books open on the table, and he ran from the room as though pursued by wolves.

  Berne, he thought, running. I have to find Berne.

  3

  THE PALLAS RIL Lifeclock graphic had ticked a steady yellow at the corner of the Adventure Update transmission for six days. At dawn it clicked over to scarlet and pulsed bloody light from wall-screens across the Earth.

  That meant, explained the perpetually smiling Bronson Underwood, that Pallas Ril had entered the margin-of-error range on the phase-locking capability of her thoughtmitter. The time she had remaining was no longer possible to predict.

  This announcement was followed by an extended feature on amplitude decay, including never-before-released images of the remains of the very few Actors who had suffered this fate and left any remains to be viewed. The unconscionably hideous nature of these images provoked a storm of protesting screencalls to Studio Central; but even larger was the flood of calls requesting that the feature be replayed, so that people who’d missed it the first time could record it properly on their home netplayers.

  The Studio staffers who fielded the calls smilingly apologized: the feature would not be replayed, but copies were available for a low, low, one-time-only discount price . . .

  4

  TOA-SYTELL WASTED NO precious time searching for Berne himself. After warning the Acting Ambassador—and receiving full assurance that in the unlikely event that Caine presented himself for Sanctuary he’d be not only denied but detained—Toa-Sytell and his small contingent of personal guards galloped straight for the palace office of the King’s Eyes. There he spent only very few minutes quietly but forcefully giving a precisely detailed set of orders.

  He defined Caine as an immediate threat to the Empire and the primary target of the King’s Eyes: every Eye in the capital was to drop his or her business to search for him. Toa-Sytell himself dictated the updated description, and he sent politely worded orders to the commanders of the Constabulary and the capital detachment of the army requiring their assistance. Caine was to be taken, no matter what the cost. If he resisted, he was to be killed—a shoot-on-sight order was permissible, at the commanders’ discretion.

  Ma’elKoth would be furious, Toa-Sytell knew; but his loyalty was not to Ma’elKoth personally. His duty was to the throne, to the Empire, and he knew in his bones that the Empire would never be safe so long as Caine lived.

  When he inquired for Berne, he learned that the Count had returned in the early darkness this morning, had spoken briefly with Ma’elKoth before retiring, and was now enjoying a late breakfast in his palace apartment. Toa-Sytell went straight there.

  On his way up, he had time to marshal his thoughts, to arrange his evidence and organize his argument. He expected Berne to deny this revelation out of sheer contrariness, and Toa-Sytell was determined to overwhelm any resistance with a flood of facts.

  Moving at a near run even within the palace, he nearly collided in the corridor with a grim-faced Grey Cat who hurried away from Berne’s apartment. When Toa-Sytell burst into Berne’s outer chamber, the Count was at table in his silken lounging robe. He smirked up at Toa-Sytell and began to offer the Duke a place, but Toa-Sytell waved him off. “I have no time for this,” Toa-Sytell said. “I must find Caine. We must find him.”

  Berne’s fine-drawn brows pulled together. “Oh? That might be a problem . . .”

  “It cannot be a problem. Berne, he’s one of them. Caine is an Aktir.”

  Berne stared up at the Duke for one long second of stillness, then the corners of his mouth quirked toward a smile that grew into a grin.

  “All right . . .” he said, considering. He mopped his mouth with a linen handkerchief, and some inexpressible energy drew him to his feet and lit his face with joy. “All right!”

  Toa-Sytell was astonished. “You believe me?”

  “Of course I believe you,” Berne said happily. “I don’t care if it’s true or not; I still believe it. Because this means we have to kill him. Right now.”

  He snapped his fingers. A young valet appeared in the bedroom doorway, carrying an array of formal wear draped over his arms. “I was,” he said, “preparing to dress already.�
�

  While Berne selected clothing and donned it, he related to Toa-Sytell how he’d been given the task of following Caine and how Caine had slipped him.

  “But,” he said, showing as many teeth as could fit into his grin, “one of my boys handed me this, just now, before you came in.” He flipped a folded sheet of lambskin parchment at Toa-Sytell, who caught it neatly, unfolded it, and read the message in Lamorak’s spidery hand.

  Toa-Sytell’s face lit up. “You have him!”

  “Yeah, Caine led us there. I’m guessing he anticipated Ma’elKoth’s tag, and it was Lamorak who identified it on the net. He’s smarter than he looks.”

  “Which one?”

  “Both of them. Come on, let’s go see what he has to tell us.”

  “Ma’elKoth,” Toa-Sytell said. “We should see him first—he should know this. We need to tell him before we go.”

  “Fuck that.” Berne shook his head and ticked his points off with raised fingers. “One, he’s busy preparing that illusion, and if we interrupt him it could blunt the hook. Second, he’s in the Iron Room. If you want to break in on him there, well, be my guest, but don’t expect me to be standing behind you. And last, if we tell him this, he won’t believe it. He’s known Caine for years—longer than I have. Even if he does believe us, like as not he’ll make up some excuse to order us to leave Caine alone. You know how he is—he’ll probably think it’s more interesting if Caine’s alive, or some fuck-me-in-the-ass thing like that. Better we find Caine and kill him first, don’t you think?”

  Toa-Sytell compressed his lips and nodded. “I agree. Give me five minutes to assemble an escort.”

  “Fuck the escort, too.”

  “The streets still aren’t secure—”

  “Sure they are: you’re riding with me.” Berne slid his arms through the harness that held Kosall’s scabbard, then fastened the rope-worked silver buckle across his chest. His fingertips brushed the hilt, and Kosall answered with a buzzing rattlesnake’s threat inside its steel scabbard.

  “We don’t need an escort. Let’s go.”

  5

  TOA-SYTELL STUDIED LAMORAK minutely while he listened to the traitor’s tale. Lamorak’s features appeared so open despite the swelling of his broken jaw and the crust of blood below his pulpy nose; Toa-Sytell could see that without these injuries he’d be ruggedly handsome. His was a face to inspire almost automatic trust.

  Toa-Sytell found him fascinating in an abstract sort of way. A man’s features follow his character closely, as a common rule. Toa-Sytell found it extraordinary that he could find no hint of weakness in Lamorak’s, no clue to the void where the man’s spine should be.

  When they’d entered the upper-floor den of Berne’s townhome, Lamorak had flinched like a guilty puppy; he cringed whenever Berne stepped close to him and twisted to keep his splinted leg as far from the Count as possible. He’d refused to speak until Toa-Sytell had given his personal guarantee that Lamorak would be taken from the hands of the Cats. Even after having received it, he spoke hesitantly through his tied-shut teeth, a guilty flush on his beardless cheeks. Toa-Sytell squinted at him, absently stroking the hilt of the poisoned stiletto concealed in his sleeve.

  Outside the door, Berne had warned him: “Lamorak’s a crappy thaumaturge, but he has one trick that he does well enough to be dangerous. It’s a Dominate. Watch for it.”

  Watch he did, but he saw no hint that Lamorak summoned power of any kind. A moment later all of these considerations were driven aside as Lamorak revealed the climax of Caine’s insidious plan.

  Lamorak stammered out his betrayal, wincing now and again when the linen strips that bound his jaw cut into his swollen cheek, when his eagerness to prove the value of his news made him forget his wounds.

  “. . . and, and then, you see, all he has to do is throw the net over the illusion, and the net cuts it off from Flow. It’ll vanish, don’t you get it? Twenty thousand people will see Ma’elKoth disappear exactly the way the Aktiri are supposed to. It’ll be proof. Ma’elKoth will never live it down.”

  “That net, that goatfucking net!” Berne snarled. Veins twisted in his neck. A chair that got in the way of his furious pacing exploded to splinters under his kick. He wheeled on Lamorak. “What about Pallas? How was this supposed to help him rescue Pallas?”

  “It wasn’t,” Toa-Sytell said, rising. “Don’t you see? He doesn’t care about her. Pallas is a blind, a decoy. Caine is the danger. The Empire has been his target from the beginning.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Berne said. “You don’t know what he’s gone through for her.”

  “But it’s all a game for them,” Toa-Sytell insisted. “Don’t you remember? Ma’elKoth learned this from the ones he captured in the palace. It’s a game, a play, just a story for them somehow. Entertainment. We suffer and die for the amusement of the Aktiri.”

  “Entertainment or not, he’ll still try for her—” Berne went on, but Toa-Sytell lost the thread of what he was saying. He once again stared at Lamorak.

  From the instant Toa-Sytell had spoken the word game, Lamorak had stared first at him, then at Berne, in eye-bulging panic. His lips hung slack as a blubbery child’s, and a guttural sound of breathless choking came from his throat.

  “What is it?” Toa-Sytell asked. “Lamorak, what’s wrong?”

  Lamorak waved him off with a trembling hand. “I, I, nothing, I just, I can’t—”

  Berne sneered contemptuously. “He’s about to piss himself, isn’t he? Aren’t you a little old to be afraid of Aktiri?”

  “I, no, I—” Lamorak’s chair scraped backward; he was blindly trying to press himself back with his good leg.

  “No, it’s more than that,” Toa-Sytell said, stepping close. “I’ve seen this before. It’s like a sickness. Some men fear spiders in this way; another man I once knew could not even mount a stepladder for his fear of falling.”

  “Yeah?” Grinning, Berne suddenly jumped at Lamorak and grabbed his shoulders. He hauled him up out of the chair, holding him off the floor and shaking him like a child.

  “Are we a little scared, then? Have a little problem with this?” He laughed drunkenly. “Say it with me: Caine is an Aktir. Go on, say it! Caine is an Aktir.”

  Lamorak shook his battered head wordlessly, struck mute with terror.

  “Berne,” Toa-Sytell said with a hand on his arm, “this serves no purpose. He can’t help himself.”

  Berne turned only his head toward the Duke. The look on his face was that of a puma challenged over its kill. “Take your hand off me if you want to keep it attached to your wrist. He’ll say it, or I’ll pull his fucking arm off.”

  Lamorak moaned as Berne pulled him close and shook him again. “You think I can’t? You think I’m not strong enough? Say it! Caine is an Aktir. Say it!”

  Lamorak’s eyes rolled like those of a horse caught in a barn fire. His face went red, then purple. “C . . . C . . .” he forced out through his teeth, choking, “C-Caine . . .”

  Toa-Sytell felt a chill flame climb his spine. His mouth dropped open, then closed again, and opened to say, “Berne, wait! He can’t say it! Don’t you see he’s trying? But he can’t! Remember that spell, the one that blocks the tongues of the Aktiri? Remember? You must have heard Ma’elKoth speak of it—!”

  Berne frowned at him; for a moment Lamorak dangled forgotten from his fists. “I don’t see what you mean.”

  “Don’t you? Lamorak is one of them! He can’t tell us that Caine is an Aktir because he knows it’s true!”

  “I’m not!” Lamorak said shrilly. “I swear! I’m not, I swear it! It’s not true, it’s all a lie, I—”

  “Shut up,” Berne said absently, emphasizing the order with a shake that snapped Lamorak’s head back. Without transition he’d become calm and bonelessly relaxed, with a sort of luxurious satisfaction like sexual afterglow.

  “Well. How about that? Fuck me like a virgin goat. Thieves fall out, they say.”

  Toa-Sytell nodded grim
agreement. “They do say indeed. Do you understand what this means?”

  Berne shrugged. Lamorak whimpered, and Berne slapped him with stunning force on the purple-black swelling over his broken jaw. “Quiet.”

  “It means we’ve found a test. Set him down in that chair.”

  Berne did so.

  “Take his hand,” Toa-Sytell said.

  Lamorak tried to cower away, but Berne’s strength was irresistible.

  “Now,” Toa-Sytell said, “pull his fingers off one by one until he repeats the phrase, ‘I am an Aktir.’ My guess is, he’ll lose all ten.”

  Lamorak began to howl, his screams muffled and distant behind his teeth, even before Berne twisted and yanked his smallest finger from his hand. The bones crackled like crumpling paper, and the flesh tore with a sound like the ripping of heavy cloth. Berne tossed the finger over his shoulder like a gnawed-clean chicken bone. Blood sprayed his grin, and he licked it from his lips.

  Toa-Sytell stepped in and tied his belt around Lamorak’s wrist, tightening it until the crimson spray trickled to a sluggish drip.

  “Why don’t you just go ahead and say it?” Berne asked. “I can do this nine more times without any trouble at all. It’s easy enough to say, no? I am an Aktir. I am an Aktir.”

  Lamorak shook his head and drew breath to speak, but Berne covered his mouth with his bloody hand. “Think about what you’re gonna say, Lamorak. Anything that comes out of your mouth that’s not I am an Aktir is gonna cost you another finger.”

  He took his hand away. Lamorak said nothing, only looked a silent plea at Toa-Sytell. The Duke shrugged—Lamorak would be of little use to anyone if he was in deep shock or dead from blood loss. “We’ve learned what we need to know here, Berne. Now we must take Lamorak to Ma’elKoth. This is a way we can prove to him the danger of Caine. With the evidence of Lamorak, Caine’s true nature no longer rests on speculation.”

  Berne nodded. “You go on with that. Some of the boys can escort you. Me, I’m thinking that for his plan to work, he needs that net. I posted four men to watch it and follow him when he comes for it. They might know where Caine is right now. I’m gonna go and ask them.”