Griffiths’s eyes went wide.
“Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” he screamed, his feet pushing him violently back against the forward bulkhead.
Targ turned from his contemplation of the hatch mechanism. “Griffiths! What is it?”
“Oh, my God!” was all that Griffiths could say. His feet were still flailing against the carpeted flooring of the golden ship even though his back was against the wall.
Targ grabbed the man by the front of his vac suit. He was having a hard time holding onto him though Griffiths was barely aware of it. “Damn it, Griffiths! What is it!”
“They’re still here!”
“What are you talking about?”
“They’re … still … here!” Griffiths repeated, his wild eyes glancing back at the compartment. The adrenaline rush was still pounding through him, he was having a hard time getting control of himself. He had to look again, if only to confirm that he had not made a mistake … that he had not imagined it.
Targ turned as well. “By the Nine!” he murmured.
People stared back at them.
Row after row of seats, lit only dimly from the filtered light through the starboard-side windows, were filled with passengers over three thousand years dead. They sat perfectly preserved in the darkness. Men sat with their hands patiently folded in their laps. Women sat smiling with their hands clasped around their children’s hands. Each stared back at them in perfect stillness.
They were smiling.
Griffiths and Targ held perfectly still for what seemed like an eternity. Targ glanced down at the arm of his vac suit. The indicator was black. Pure vacuum. Yet here these people sat, color still in their cheeks as though they should simply stand up and walk out of the cabin.
At last, Targ released Griffiths, and, straightening up, took a step toward the aft cabin. Griffiths held his breath.
Targ leaned forward toward one of the nearest seats where a young woman with bright eyes and exquisite features sat calmly facing forward. A hint of a smile played on her full lips. She looked as though she were about to speak. She wore a white tunic with a short skirt—an outfit which seemed to be common between both the men and the women, so far as Griffiths could see in the dimness of the compartment. Her shapely legs were cocked casually under her seat.
“Are they alive?” Griffiths asked in a whisper, as though the sound of his words might break some mystic sleep.
“In a vacuum?” Targ turned his head toward the Earther and scoffed. “You must be mad.”
Griffiths shuddered. “Just give me a minute and we’ll see.”
Targ turned back to examine the woman more closely. “She’s perfect. I wonder why …”
Targ shifted his footing slightly, the knee of his vac suit brushing slightly against the woman’s own knee.
Griffiths wanted to look away but somehow could not force himself to do so.
The flesh over the woman’s patella crumbled away as dust from the impact, drifting away in the weightlessness of the cabin. The insignificant force of Targ’s brush cascaded as the knee bones separated. Her tibia pressed downward, the supple flesh of her calf scattering over her slippered feet. The woman’s femur drifted backward, scattering the flesh of the thigh across her skirt.
“By the Nine!” Targ exclaimed in horror as he stepped back.
The flesh scattered from her leg like dried leaves in a gentle, unseen wind. The femur rebounded against the pelvis bones, flipping upward, end over end, until it brushed her beautiful face. Her left cheek vanished into powder as the large leg bone continued upward. Her hair parted with the scalp, drifting like seaweed suddenly freed as the skull beneath it separated into its component pieces. The flesh of the right side of her face drifted away from the collapsing skull in a single piece, a horrible mask floating directly toward Griffiths.
Griffiths couldn’t stop watching.
Suddenly Targ’s fist smashed through the ghastly face, shattering it into dust.
Griffiths suddenly realized he was holding his breath. “We’ve got to get out of here!”
Targ quickly moved closer to Griffiths until the clear bubble of his vac suit was pressed against Griffiths’s own, filling his vision and blocking out the grizzly scene beyond. “Think, Griffiths! Merinda’s in there! Are you going to leave her in the middle of this?”
“We … we don’t know she’s in there,” Griffiths stammered. “She might not be in here at all! She might still be in her ship! That might not even be her ship!”
“It’s hers, all right.” Targ spoke in clear, even tones. “She beat us here and now she’s inside, here among the dead. We’ve got to find her, don’t we, Griffiths?”
Griffiths stopped and thought for a moment, gathering his composure. “Yes,” he said, nodding. “We’ve got to find her.”
“You’ve got to open this door,” Targ said to him, an oiled edge of menace in his tone.
Griffiths looked into Targ’s eyes. He knew that the vaunted Prime didn’t at this point give a damn whether he found Merinda or not.
Jeremy pushed off from Targ and, spinning in the weightlessness, examined the still-closed port-side door. “What is it that you are looking for among the dead, Targ,” he said, as he began working the release handle. “What drives a man who has all the power of the galaxy at his command to throw it all away on a cursed artifact?”
“My reasons are my own,” Targ said simply. “Is there pressure on the other side of that door?”
“Now how the hell am I supposed to know that?” Griffiths was sweating now both out of fear and his exertions with the door. “It’s dark through the porthole. I can’t see a thing, let alone tell you what the weather is like!”
The door shifted suddenly away from the outer frame.
“Well, since I wasn’t blown out the other door, I guess there’s no atmosphere in the lock either,” Griffiths said, shaking his head to clear the sweat from his eyes. “What are you doing now?”
Targ had closed his eyes, presenting the palms of both hands in front of his face. He then raised both arms high above his head and made a sweeping motion, first clockwise, then counter-clockwise, across his body. Both hands suddenly clapped together and, when they parted, a point of dazzling light hovered just in front of Targ’s chest, illuminating the area. Griffiths studiously avoided looking into the compartment beyond Targ.
“Open the door,” Targ said quietly.
Griffiths pulled back on the door. It easily rotated backward and swung out of the way, exposing the access umbilical.
“Damn!” Griffiths shouted.
The dead blocked the entire corridor leading to the interior of the ship. They stood as though waiting to board, sometimes singly and sometimes in pairs. Their ranks stretched back into the darkness of the walkway.
Targ raised his hand. The point of light he had created rose in response, casting shifting shadows across the faces that stood before them. Targ pointed and the light flew past the silent men and women, who quickly became grotesque silhouettes as the light receded down the access corridor. Griffiths was shaking uncontrollably at the sight.
“The far door appears to be open,” Targ said with satisfaction. “We can enter here.”
“You are insane,” Griffiths said through chattering teeth. “Enter here? How?”
Targ pressed Griffiths back against the bulkhead. The first man standing in line appeared to be holding a large luggage bag in his hand. Targ reached forward and, grasping both sides of the case, pulled it toward him. The man’s arm disintegrated. Targ braced his feet on either side of the doorway. He raised the case over his head, the bones of the dead man’s hand still entangled in the handle, and threw it squarely down the corridor.
The first man was hit squarely in the chest by his own heavy luggage, exploding into dried leaves, shattered bones, and strands of hair and cloth. The careening baggage continued to spin down the umbilical, barely slowed in its path of terrible destruction by the bodies interposed in its path.
A couple locked in earnest conversation disintegrated, their hands still clasped together, suddenly free and drifting. An overweight woman broke in two, her massive arms flailing in the air. A noble-looking man vanished into dust. One by one, the force of Targ’s throw shattered their tranquil deaths.
“That is how,” Targ said. Then he grabbed Griffiths and shoved him into the bone-strewn access umbilical.
It was a descent into hell that Griffiths was sure was never going to end. The corridor had indeed opened onto a departure or staging area of some kind. Just as before, there were the ancient dead standing or, depending upon your viewpoint, floating in the darkness. The stark illumination from Targ’s floating light brought the figures out of the blackness for the first time in three millennia, if Griffiths understood the dating correctly. The shifting light caused the shadows falling across the figures to move, playing tricks with his eyes and causing him to glance nervously at the dead forms from time to time. There was no getting past the haunting visages of these ancient dead frozen in these tableaux.
“Griffiths,” Targ had said, “what do you make of this?”
Griffiths turned in his vac suit. Just when you think things can’t get worse, he thought to himself, they always do.
There, on the floor under the harsh point of light, lay a man facing the ceiling. There was a huge stain in the carpet beneath him. His lips were pulled back in a terrible grimace of pain. Standing astride him was a man in some sort of uniform, a crimson version of the tunic-and-skirt style that seemed to be prevalent among the dead. In his hand he held an ornate, gleaming object of curved metal that appeared to be a weapon. The uniformed man’s head was drawn back in frozen, hideous laughter.
“My God,” Griffiths exclaimed. “That’s terrible!”
“Yes,” Targ said distractedly. “But notice the people situated all around them.”
“What about them?”
“Don’t you see,” Targ said. “They are taking no notice of the scene. It’s as though this terrible violence has taken place right at their feet and they didn’t even stop in their conversations to take a casual look at what has happened. Intriguing.”
Then Targ turned and moved out of the room. As his light receded with him, Griffiths hurried to keep up. It was all he could do to avoid touching the dead around him and maintain the determined pace that Targ was setting—a pace that led deeper and deeper into the bowels of the ancient interstellar coffin.
Hideous as the scene in the waiting room had been, the sights they saw as they descended became increasingly strange and grotesque. Time lost its meaning, and Griffiths soon could not seem to recall a blessed time when he was not walking carefully among the shockingly revolting and insane. The naked woman seeming to sleep on a dining platter in the center of a crowded mess hall as officers lined up with plates and long knives. The children who formed a circle holding hands in a play area, laughing around the figures of two smiling adults who were hanging by their necks from a cable.
“Where are we going,” Griffiths asked at last.
“We follow the vision,” Targ replied.
“The vision? Is that some sort of spell or whammy that you’ve cast?”
“Yes,” Targ replied. “I have called on the mystic forces to give me the Sight. It guides me towards the form that I seek. It gives me direction and distance. I see it before me even now—as I have always seen it, even without the magic and the spells. Its form has haunted me for these many decades. Now I shall look upon it once more … and I shall have peace at last.”
The point of light drifted before them as they moved across a bridge through a black space of unknown and unknowable dimension. On the other side they came to a set of doors.
Targ reached forward with his gloved hand. His fingers spread as he gently touched the door.
“It is on the other side,” he said, murmuring to himself. “This is the place of which I have dreamed and loathed since my youth. This is where I shall find the end of the tale. This is where I discharge my final duty.”
Griffiths watched him carefully. “Why are you here, Targ of Gandri?”
The tall man turned his white-haired head to look at Griffiths. It was as though he did not recognize the Earther. “I was the last one,” he said simply, though he seemed to be talking to someone beyond Griffiths. “It was up to me to bury the dead. But the dead wouldn’t stay buried, the tale was unfinished, and the song had no end. The songs of the dead, they drifted through my mind each night and each day, like a siren to my soul. It tempts me … it torments me. It drives me and gives me strength but, oh, how I long for peace. How I long for the song to end and the book of the tale to be closed!”
He turned again to the door, rage building in his voice. “It ends here. At last, it ends here!”
With an animal yell, Targ pushed on the great doors. They separated before him.
The circular hall was filled with dancers, all permanently affixed in their positions, their finest and most ornate costumes draped about them. Pillars had been placed around the outer promenade, guards in ornate armor standing with their long sabers held to the ready across their chests. Great cloaks were affixed to their armor plates, their faces hidden by massive hoods that cast deep shadows across their helmets. On the far side of the rotunda, a massive throne sat between the pillars, a lone figure slumped among its cushions.
Targ was animated. “Look there, Griffiths!”
Griffiths saw a scaled vac suit of greenish-brown lying on the floor. It was a mammoth suit, however, and appeared to have four arms and a massive, horned helmet.
“A Gorgon!” Targ said, nearly giddy. “Look there’s another … and another!” Targ moved quickly across the floor, his hasty motions disturbing several of the dancers in their poses, shattering their arms and destroying the illusion of the tranquil scene. “We are there, Griffiths! We have come to the place where …”
Suddenly Targ stopped.
Griffiths couldn’t see what the Prime was looking at and moved slightly to one side to try to get a clearer view. It was no use with the various dead couples between them. He watched as Targ bent over and then stood, holding a small crystal globe in his hand. Targ’s light shined down on him from above.
“Oh, Father,” Targ said softly.
Griffiths blinked, unsure for a moment of what he had seen. Suddenly he knew that it had not been an illusion.
“Targ!” he called out.
Targ looked up.
Next to the throne, one of the guards was moving. In a single motion, the guard reached down to the figure on the throne and picked up a large, ornate sword.
“The Nightsword,” Targ breathed, as he turned to face their foe.
The hood fell away from the clear helmet of the ancient vac suit.
It was Merinda.
44
The Edge
“It’s good to see you again, Griffiths,” Merinda said, though her steel gaze never left Targ for a moment.
“Nice to see you, too,” Griffiths replied with relief, “though I’m getting a little weary of grieving over your death.”
“The day is yet young,” Merinda replied.
“I, for one, agree with you,” Targ said casually, a scowl on his face. “I will not insult you by saying that this is a pleasant surprise, inasmuch as your presence is neither pleasant nor surprising. Just what do you intend to do with that thing?”
“I intend to borrow it just long enough to see that you stay, Targ,” Merinda said through the globe of her vac suit. The sword was set menacingly before her. Though the blade was wide and appeared heavy, she held it with a single hand, balanced and deft. Her left hand was raised behind her for balance. “We three—pardon me, four, if we count our host there on the throne—are the only ones who know the exact location of the Nightsword and I intend to keep it that way.”
“You’ve … borrowed it?” Targ’s eyebrows arched in disbelief.
“With the owner’s permission,” Merinda replied, nodding her
head back toward the throne.
“Lokan!” Targ scoffed. He began to move toward Merinda with deliberate footsteps. “You asked that old corpse if you could borrow the Nightsword and he just let you have it? ‘Pardon me, Lokan the Terrible, but would that happen to be the most powerful device in the known universe in your hand? Would you mind if I just destroyed a few worlds with it since you’re dead and won’t be needing it for any time soon?’ ”
“He’s not dead, Targ,” Griffiths said from the side of the hall.
The Prime stopped walking toward Merinda. “That corpse is over three millennia old, Captain.”
“No, Targ,” Merinda countered, taking two quick steps back and settling in her stance between the Prime and the throne. “Lokan lives, here on the throne before you.”
“Impossible!”
“No, not impossible,” Griffiths said, trying to move carefully into the room so as not to disturb the dancing dead around his vac suit. “Anything is possible with the Nightsword. He who wields it changes the nature of reality around them. That’s what the Nightsword is—a selective causality device. Any reality desired by the possessor of that device simply happens. That’s how Kendis-dai established the first empire. For a vast interstellar empire to function efficiently, it needs a cohesive, single reality. Interstellar shipping, trade, communication—all of these things become vastly easier when you don’t have to worry about multiple quantum zones of reality. Kendis-dai used the Nightsword to force his empire into one, massive quantum zone. Only something went wrong in the courts of Kendis-dai. The great emperor was gone and Lokan gained control of the Nightsword in his blind quest to rescue Shauna-kir and rule in the Emperor’s stead.” Griffiths looked over at the shriveled form on the throne. “He wanted to live forever.”
“Lokan’s body is but a shell—that is true,” Merinda said clearly through the vacuum. “His mind is mad beyond all comprehension from the loneliness he has suffered from here. Still, he lives, nevertheless. For thousands of years he has been trapped by his own desire for immortality. It was his driving desire, his obsession. To achieve it he stripped himself of every moral foundation that gave his life meaning in the first place. Now he lives on, but without purpose or a mind to even comprehend more than his own survival.”
Nightsword Page 37
