I looked the other way, over a precipice and down into a massive crater whose upper walls were sheer, unclimbable cliffs. The ink-clotted hair on the top of my head stirred. I knew where we were. But why were we here?
Had they escaped?
“Of all the decisions I’ve made in my long life,” said Malien, “this is the one I regret most.”
“Allowing us to send the Merdrun to prison here?” said Flydd.
“Why couldn’t you have dealt with them on Santhenar?”
It was an old argument. “They were already going through their portal, thinking they were invading their long-lost home-world. We had to trick them and send them to another world, and Aachan was the only one we could reach.”
“I fell out with my people over it,” said Malien. “And even on my death bed, which is comfortably close now, we won’t be reconciled. A hard thing, that.”
“I’m truly sorry,” said Flydd. “But needs must.”
She rose, supporting herself on a black metal cane with intricate silver tracery down its length. Symbols that meant nothing to me.
“We sentenced them to thirty years servitude,” said Malien. “A modest punishment, considering the ruin they visited on so many other peoples over the eons, and the utter lack of mercy they showed to anyone. If they worked hard to restore this desolation, and submitted to moral instruction, and changed at the end of thirty years, they would have been freed.”
“I remember,” said Flydd.
“No one could fault their work. They turned the crater into a garden…”
“But?”
“The Merdrun believe themselves superior to every other intelligent species. They refused to listen to guidance from their inferiors.”
“You’re saying…?”
“It became clear to us that they were incapable of change, and could never be freed.”
“You told them so?”
“Two years ago,” said Malien.
“How did they react?”
“They didn’t.”
“They see emotions and feelings as signs of weakness,” I said, “and crush them out of their children from an early age. Except for triumph after a military victory. That’s an allowable emotion.”
“And now?” said Flydd.
“Get on,” said Malien.
Mystified, I followed Flydd to the platform and climbed up. It was about five yards by three, the sides silver metal in sinuous curves. The flat deck was lined with swirls of small green and black tiles. A thick rod rose from the floor in front of Malien’s chair, which was made from some kind of black metal, twisted into a spiral. She sat, took hold of the rod, and the platform lifted with a nausea-inducing jerk and sailed out over the rim of the crater.
I had seen images of the place when I was nine, when it had been a stony, heat-baked wilderness. Now large areas of the crater floor, thousands of feet below us, were covered in dark blue and purple crops, strips of woodland and a patchwork of vegetable gardens.
As the hover platform angled across the crater and down towards the western slope, I began to sense pain, despair and overwhelming rage. With an effort, I blocked my gift. It was more often a curse.
Hundreds of long, low stone buildings, built from rubble, ran along the western slope of the crater. I saw no signs of life there, or in the fields.
“Those buildings look like barracks,” said Flydd.
“Living quarters,” said Malien. “Very cramped and basic. The Merdrun are prodigious workers, but they live in hovels, as if the conveniences of life are anathema to them.”
“It’s said they don’t want to become comfortable, in case they lose sight of their goals.”
“And now we come to why you’re here,” said Malien. “You picking anything up, Sulien?”
“Don’t know what you mean,” I lied.
“You’re an empath!” Malien said irritably. “The most sensitive one I’ve ever met. And you have a great gift for the Secret Art.”
“I haven’t used either gift in years.”
“Well, start! That’s why I ordered you here.”
“You’re distant kin, Malien,” I said, choosing my words carefully, though I seethed inside, “and venerable, and deserving of respect—”
“Spit it out, girl! Don’t hold back on my account.”
“I don’t take kindly to being ordered about. I had too much of that as a kid—from enemies and friends.”
Malien was the best of her people, and she had been good to me when I was little, but the Aachim were ever lofty and arrogant, and dismissive of all other human species. Especially those who share part of their blood.
She snorted. “What are you picking up?”
The platform skimmed over a small hill, then hovered a couple of hundred feet above the ground.
“Despair,” I said. “And humiliation, rage and pain. But they’re fading.”
“They didn’t succeed in suppressing all their emotions, then,” said Flydd.
I went carefully towards the front of the platform, since there was no rail, and looked down. And my skin crawled.
The bodies were laid out in rows. Hundreds of rows, and hundreds of columns, in the partial shade of the purple-leaved, black-trunked trees that grew nowhere but Aachan.
“Two hundred and eight rows,” said Malien in a drear voice. “And four hundred and seven columns. More than a hundred thousand Merdrun. All of them, in fact.”
“What happened to them?” I’d seen a lot of dead people in my time, and it’s never been easy, but this was different. Why were the bodies arranged so neatly? And if they were all dead, who had laid them out?
“No idea. They were busy at their allotted tasks when the weekly identification parade was held, three days ago. They appear to have committed mass suicide overnight.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“But there must have been signs,” said Flydd, leaning over the side of the platform.
“Our sentries kept their distance,” said Malien. “We promised to guard them, and we did our duty faithfully, but we had no interest in the Merdrun or what motivated them.”
“Only a hundred thousand,” he mused. “In the beginning, three times that number were imprisoned here.”
“They did not take well to servitude. Mortality has been very high.”
“Also, I’m not seeing any children among the bodies.”
“They grew up.”
“But tens of thousands must have been born here.”
“In the sixteen years of their servitude, I’m not aware that a single Merdrun woman became pregnant. There were certainly no babies born.”
“That defies belief,” said Flydd. “It’s against human nature.”
The temperature was mild down here, but I shivered. This was bad. Really bad.
“To a people who believed themselves superior to all,” said Malien, “servitude must have been unbearable. Theirs was an utterly joyless society. Tormented.”
“Well, they’re gone,” said Flydd, “and I won’t pretend I’m sorry. What do you want from me?”
“Find out what happened here, and why. My health isn’t up to it, and none of my people are willing.”
“What else do you know?”
“Nothing. They left no written records, no notes, no explanation at all.”
“Something’s wrong,” I said. “Why would a nation so single-mindedly determined decide to end itself?”
“We tried to rehabilitate them,” Malien said defensively, “but it wasn’t in them. Perhaps they felt death was better than perpetual incarceration.”
Flydd’s bony jaw was set. “I don’t think so. We’ll have to inspect the bodies.”
“What, all of them?” I said. It was bound to bring memories to the surface that I would sooner have stayed buried.
“We’ll walk the rows. We may find something.”
Malien set the hover platform down on blue-black grass, some distance from the remains.
&n
bsp; “There’s no need for you to come,” Flydd said to her.
“They were my responsibility. I have to account for them.”
I trailed behind, bracing myself for a ghastly scene, but the bodies, men and women, young and old, showed no sign of violence, or poison. There was no indication as to what had killed them, though some of the faces were twisted in terror. However they’d died, they had suffered.
I felt a throat here and there. All were cold, dead for quite a few hours. I was looking down at a muscular, black-haired young woman when I saw that she had a slightly withered look, as if the flesh under the skin had shrunk.
The little hairs on my arms stirred. Withering would not have happened within hours of death; not in this cool shade.
The next body was a middle-aged man, his beard shadow so black it might have been painted on with my printing ink, and he too was withered. Flydd and Malien had missed the signs, but I’d seen them before. Unfortunately.
“Flydd!” I yelled.
He came running. An odd, clumsy gait, but surprisingly fast for someone his age. I pointed out the subtle signs of withering. Most of the bodies had them.
All the blood withdrew from his face, leaving the ancient scars standing out, purple against grey. He swore under his breath.
“What are we looking at?” said Malien.
I swallowed, painfully. “Someone drank the life forces of a hundred thousand Merdrun.”
“Why?” she croaked.
Flydd replied. “Drinking lives is considered shameful; and the Merdrun’s magiz, and his few dozen sus-magizes, only ever had one reason to do it: when they had no other source of magical power.”
“But was it a suicide pact, or mass murder?” I said.
“How can it be mass murder? They’re all dead.”
“Yet the life-drinking spell was cast, and powerfully,” I replied. “Where’s the adept who cast it?”
“And his or her magical focus,” said Malien. “Merdrun can’t cast spells with their bare hands. But we searched them intimately after they were imprisoned here, and destroyed every device they had.”
Flydd paled. “You must have missed one.”
“You haven’t asked the two most important questions,” I said. “Why were all those lives drunk? And what happened to all that magical power?”
“We’d better check the rest of the bodies,” said Flydd.
As we trudged along the rows, I realized that I was looking for one particular corpse. A huge Merdrun male—a former warrior captain who had become a junior sus-magiz. A hero who had subsequently betrayed the Merdrun nation and destroyed their hope of going home. He had been ritually mutilated afterwards, and I would know him instantly.
“Skald isn’t among the dead,” I said when I met Flydd at the end of the last row.
“He was here at the last roll check, three days ago,” said Malien.
“Come away,” said Flydd. He led us through a patch of forest until the dead were out of sight, then lowered his voice. “Skald was the most determined man I ever met. He once drank part of his own life to escape capture. He, almost single-handedly, made it possible for the Merdrun’s dreams to be fulfilled.”
“Until his forbidden love for a human slave, Uletta, ruined their plans,” I said. “Then, in the thrall of his life-drinking addiction, he drank the life of the woman he had been trying to save.”
“And with her dying breath, she laid an unbreakable curse on him and the Merdrun nation.”
“She cursed the whole of Santhenar. Nothing has gone right for us since.”
“You were his prisoner, and you knew him better than anyone,” said Flydd. “What are you thinking, Sulien?”
“I liked Skald at first. He was a tormented man, the son of a coward, and the magiz persecuted him mercilessly. I sensed Skald’s pain.”
“Go on.”
“He was desperate to restore his family’s tainted name. He drove himself to the limits of human endurance to do his duty.”
“And after he destroyed his people’s hopes and it led to their imprisonment here? After he became the lowest of the low?”
I felt a sickening dread. “I…I don’t think he would have changed. He would still have schemed to restore his name. And there’s only one way he could have done that.”
“By completing the Merdrun’s plan after all,” said Flydd. “He’s not dead!”
“Then where’s he gone?”
“They always build a cubic temple. Where is it, Malien?”
She took us there. It was a perfect cube built from black, volcanic rock, about forty feet square, with no doors or windows. Flydd pointed his ring finger at the wall, blasted a hole through it, and we went in. The temple was empty apart from a central stone altar, on which lay a big, ruddy body. I generously let Flydd go first.
“It’s him, but turned to stone,” he said.
“I’m sensing a magical device,” I said. “One I’ve touched before.”
I went closer. Dare I? I reached out, my stomach throbbing, and gingerly pulled aside the eye patch covering the petrified Skald’s empty eye socket. And at the very back, something glowed green.
“What’s that?” said Flydd.
“After his betrayal was exposed,” I said, squirming at the memories, “and he was ritually mutilated, his magical focus, called a rue-har, was thrust through his right eye. Part of it must have broken off, leaving that shard embedded in bone. It was missed in the search—and it’s glowing with power.”
“What is a rue-har?” said Malien.
“A fragment from the Crimson Gate that corrupted the Merdrun an eon ago. Every sus-magiz had one.”
“So,” said Flydd, looking hard at Malien, “unknown to the Aachim, and perhaps to his own people, Skald has always been able to do magic here by using this ancient, corrupt relic. And, by secretly drinking lives, he could have become very powerful.”
My throat felt as though it had closed over; it was a struggle to draw breath. “In all the time the Merdrun were lost in the void,” I said, “more than ten thousand years, they never once changed their plans. They were betrayed and cast from their home-world into the void, long ago. All they wanted was to return to Tallallame—and take revenge on every one of their enemies.” I glanced up at Flydd. “So why would they end their lives, now?”
“You’ll be on their list, Sulien,” said Malien. “You too, Xervish. And me, I dare say.”
My heart hammered, panic rising. I fought it down. We had to work this out, and quickly. “The rest of Skald’s enemies, including my family, are at the reunion back home.”
“And it can’t be a coincidence that he drank his people’s lives last night,” said Flydd.
“But are they really dead?” I said. “Or does he just want us to think so?”
“What are you saying?”
“People whose lives have been drunk look a lot more shrunken than the bodies we checked. They’re hardly withered at all. What if Skald only partly drank his people’s lives, to get the massive power he needed to escape, leaving them apparently dead but actually under a stasis spell? So they could be reawakened afterwards, to carry out their plan?”
“It wouldn’t be easy to partly drink a life. It’s addictive and, once started, it’s hard to stop. And why would they trust the man who had so betrayed them?”
“Because Skald needed the plan to work even more than they did. Besides, they had nothing more to lose—and everything to gain.”
“Was there any hint of a stasis spell on the bodies?” said Malien.
“I couldn’t tell,” said Flydd.
“When the Merdrun held me prisoner,” I said, “Skald and I were mind-linked for a time. Could he have learned about the reunion through me?”
“Perhaps,” said Flydd, idly fingering the Waystone. Then he cried, “He wants the Waystone, more than anything! If he gets it, he’ll open a portal to Tallallame and take his people home. It would erase the taint on his name—he’d be a hero again.”
We all stared at the petrified corpse.
“No, that’s just a shell.” Flydd walked around the altar, and again. “He’s gone to Tullymool. To the reunion! To get the Waystone, and take revenge on his enemies.”
“Take us there!” snapped Malien.
I felt sick. With that much power, how could anyone resist him?
But something else was wrong here.
“Why would he leave the shard?” I said shakily. “It’s the last of their magical relics, the one thing they have left from their victorious past.”
“Maybe he couldn’t take it with him.” Flydd reached into the red eye socket and pulled it out, and his finger and thumb were smoking. “It’s bursting with power.”
“Don’t touch it with your bare skin.” Malien took it, slipped it into a little, round metal case like a pill box and handed it back. We raced out. “One last adventure,” she said. “Hurry!”
I grabbed Flydd’s wrist and Malien caught mine. Flydd touched the Waystone to his platinum ring and the portal hurled us away so violently that I felt Malien lose her grip. I tried to grab her in the darkness but she was gone.
Flydd and I emerged outside the door of my studio with a boom that shook down half a dozen loose roof slates.
“Where’s Malien?” I said frantically.
“Lost, between,” said Flydd, bowing his head. “No time for that now. Go!”
But I’d known her all my life; how could she be dead, just like that? Yet the living had to come first and if I didn’t warn them, Skald would take them from me as well. I would grieve for Malien later—if I survived.
Three-quarters of a mile away was the meadow, shaded by huge old trees, where everyone had gathered for the reunion. Almost everyone I cared about was there. Staying away now seemed foolish, childish.
I had to warn them. I ran.
“He’s back!” I shrieked as I reached the picnic area. “Get up, quick!”
“Who’s back?” said my father, Llian, raising a crystal goblet in an extravagant gesture. He looked tipsy, and no one could blame him, but this was the worst time to be witless.
I looked around wildly. “Skald!”
“Where?”
A good question. Skald had drawn a monumental amount of power from all those lives, then left his petrified body behind. Had he turned to stone because living flesh could not endure that much power? If so, what was he now?
Relics, Wrecks and Ruins Page 20
