Child of Sorrows

by Michaelbrent Collings

  Brother Luca hardly seemed to notice. He looked around, not seeing the others in the chamber, but looking past them to some terrible threat.

  Then he grabbed The Tree and ran.

  The move was so sudden and so unexpected that Scieran, Mother Maci, and Father Inmil all froze. Scieran was the first to react, stumbling toward the tunnel Brother Luca had run down. Mother Maci and Father Inmil were fast on his heels an instant later, then passed him and ran as fast as they could.

  Scieran felt an instant of hot jealousy. Of anger at the body that had been stolen from him.

  Then he focused on moving as fast as his bent body would let him.

  They were, he realized, moving into the tunnel where Father Inmil had been stabbed by the red-haired man. A moment later, he saw the assassin. Mother Maci had said she intended to have an Adherent come fetch the body. Apparently she had forgotten in the heat of their investigation.

  The corpse remained where it had fallen. Where Father Inmil had killed him.

  Scieran had seen dead men – more than pleased him. The red-haired assassin looked better than most after laying untended this long: the cool, dry air in the catacombs was slowing the decomposition process. Still, the blood had started to settle, leaving the top-facing parts of the body gray and empty, while deep purple and black patches had appeared on the parts that pressed closest to the tunnel floor.

  Not a terrible-looking corpse, all things considered. Certainly not worthy of the shocked, even terrified, looks of the others. Brother Luca stood staring at the body with his mouth hanging open and his eyes nearly vacant of reason. Mother Maci and her brother bore similar expressions.

  The Tree hung from Father Inmil's fingers. The front cover and most of the pages were clenched in his hand. Scieran pulled it out of his friend's grasp, careful not to lose the place that had been opened.

  He looked at it. Saw.

  There was a picture. Under it was a single word, one he was able to translate fairly easily. But the word meant nothing to him. Nor, for that matter, did the picture.

  No, that's not true. It does mean something. It means that the universe has gone mad.

  The Tree was an old book. Hundreds of Turns old. And it was a copy of a book that was likely older than that. A truly Old Book, which meant it was from the time before Emperor Eka's Ascension. Over a thousand Turns old.

  "How can this be?" murmured Father Inmil.

  His sister shook her head. "It can't."

  Scieran did not speak. He just looked at the picture. Hoping for some mistake, some difference.

  There was none.

  The man on the floor – the dead man who looked to be perhaps thirty Turns old – had his picture in a book that dated back over a millenium. Nor was it just someone who looked similar. Scieran had seen a few such people in his life: unrelated men or women who looked so alike that it was hard to believe they weren't twins. But this….

  He's the same. The same.

  The picture in the book he held allowed no argument. The angles and lines of the face. The ears that stuck out ever-so-slightly. Even the waves of the hair that lay across the killer's forehead were exactly the same.

  No. Not a killer. Not just a killer.

  The book called him something different. Something else that made no sense: "Guardian."

  But what kind of guardian would try to kill a priest?

  No answer for that. Just as there was no answer to how a dead man of thirty Turns could have been the subject of an image created a millenium before.

  "What is this?" asked Brother Luca. His voice quavered. He sounded like a child whose room has just been invaded by a monster.

  No one answered. Mother Maci slowly turned and headed back to the Archive. Father Inmil followed his sister. Brother Luca, with a last glance at the man who had died a day before, but should have died a thousand Turns before that, finally walked after them.

  Scieran stayed. Last and longest with the dead man.

  Who are you?

  Then he, too, returned to the stone table and the Old Books.

  The recently-dead man would give no answers.

  Perhaps the words of the long-dead would provide them.

  Phoenix had given Sword the first clue. Had he meant it to lead here?

  Scieran didn't know.

  But he knew he could not stop looking. And felt that to do so would be to court the doom of all Ansborn.

  THREE: alliances

  "What lays below is one of the great Mysteries. Some will say that this means they are never to be known or understood. To this I say: You do not understand the nature of mystery. Mystery exists not as a wall that cannot be breached, but as a locked door which awaits only the right key to open."

  - Emperor Eka, First Rules and

  Commandments of the Ascension

  1

  This was not how it was supposed to be.

  Nothing was how it was supposed to be.

  He had asked her if she wanted to know what was really happening. Who the real enemy was.

  And Sword didn't move. Didn't try to kill him, or even to attack Marionette – the one behind the attack on the Strongholds, and from there the camp of Halaw refugees.

  She stood. Just a moment, but something told her to listen. Told her that, though Phoenix was a murderer, a corrupter – a liar – he was not lying now. Something was coming. Something worse than anything that had yet come.

  "Sorry for making you walk," said Phoenix. He looked chipper, still wearing Devar's face, his wry grin spreading in half-secret amusement. "I didn't want to chat with Tiawan. Not at the moment, anyway."

  Something about the way he said "Tiawan" caught Sword's attention. "You know him?" she said. It wasn't really a question.

  Nor was it a surprise when Phoenix nodded. "Of course," he said. He opened his mouth to speak – clearly intending to tell her how he knew the other man – then visibly shifted gears. "Where did he go?" he asked.

  "To destroy the palace. To kill Malal and destroy the Empire." Bitterly she added, "To finish what you started."

  At least, that's what she intended to say. In reality, she only got as far as "the palace" before Phoenix lurched to his feet. Fear suddenly lit his expression.

  "What?" he roared. Then, without waiting for an answer, he said, "Marionette."

  The girl didn't look up from her play. "Is it time to make more poppets?" she asked.

  "We're leaving," said Phoenix. He looked at Sword. "You, too."

  She snorted. "You've got to be kidding –"

  Phoenix closed his eyes, and Sword realized in that instant he was going to travel somewhere. When she had first trained to be one of the Empire's assassins, she had been transported miles across the land, something far beyond the abilities of any Wanderer. She had assumed that was the Gift of one of Phoenix's other shapes – the power of a Greater Gift he had consumed, but one she had not seen. However, he did not shift to a new form. He remained in the shape of Devar.

  She didn't understand. Phoenix was bound by his form: he used the Gift of whatever person whose body he wore. And Devar's Gift was to travel instantly through space, but that was different than transporting others.

  "Devar's Second Gift?" she asked, not really knowing why it was important to understand.

  Phoenix opened his eyes. He gave a slight grin and put a hand over his heart. "Devar das no Second Gift," he said. "None of my selves do."

  How is that possible?

  Sword's mouth opened to speak in Fear…

  … and the words cut off in another land.

  Marionette and Phoenix still stood nearby. Marionette still played with her tortured doll, as though she hadn't even noticed the shift.

  They were outside the Emperor's castle – it seemed even Phoenix's gift was not enough to pass the Screens whose magic prevented anything transporting into the walls via magic.

  But Sword only registered that fact as background. The rest of her attention was focused on the castle itself.
r />   It had changed.

  Even after Tiawan's attack, there had been a sense of life about the place. As though the fact that this set of structures was the center of the Empire worked a unique magic of its own. Everyone inside the castle had a place to be and a task to see to. The walls themselves seemed to glow sometimes, nearly appearing aware of their place as the center of the world.

  Now, though… all was dark.

  A swirling dustcloud surrounded the palace: a gray cylinder taller than the eye could see. Dust and particles of stone and other detritus spun around and around, the same bits visible time and again as they circled endlessly.

  The moat had widened to the circle of spires that marked the boundary between the castle and the rest of Ansborn. The stalls and shops of the market beyond had been abandoned, though some brave souls stood a hundred feet or so from the wind – either their fascination overwhelming their fear, or that fear itself so great they could not move.

  Sword suspected the latter.

  The drawbridge had been destroyed, so completely that it was not even wreckage – merely a memory.

  Lightning shattered the sky. It lit everything with a pale ghostlight that somehow seemed to darken as much as it illuminated. It slashed through the windstorm – not inside it, not outside, but through the middle of the winds themselves.

  Cloud.

  Only he could create something like this. No one else had such mastery of the weather, of the storm.

  But why would he do this?

  The winds swirled.

  The castle could not be entered.

  For a moment, she actually believed that.

  Then, she heard the roar of flame. She looked up.

  She saw Tiawan.

  He fell from the sky, a bright halo of flame seeming to surround him, as though the Gods themselves had sent an emissary from above. An avenger to wipe clean the Empire for its sins.

  For a moment, a dreadful, horrible moment, Sword wondered if this was all the punishment of the Gods. If it might not be deserved. If it might not be better.

  Tiawan touched down, and any semblance of heavenly form disappeared. La'ug dropped from one side of him, Wahy from the other.

  He clanked toward Sword. His mechanical voice came out dry, empty of emotion. Humanity was gone from him, and he was only a machine of death.

  "You should have stayed away," he said to Sword.

  Then his gaze turned to Phoenix. The helmet clicked back, revealing Tiawan's face. The rage was still there, the killing intent. But sudden shock also masked his expression.

  "What are you doing here, Vrisha?" he asked.

  Sword looked over, and saw an old man where Phoenix had been standing.

  It is Phoenix.

  But he was wearing a form she had never seen. Bent over, a huge hunch distorting his back, and one leg was much longer than the other. His eyes seemed mismatched, and one was higher on his face, beside a nose that seemed to have been pressed by a huge fist.

  The deformed old man nodded. "Tiawan," he said. "A new enemy has come, and I have much to tell you." He eyed Sword. "I have much to tell you both."

  2

  Brother Luca turned the pages of The Tree. Showing the others what he had found. He was still reeling from the vision of a man long-dead, but still somehow alive.

  Luca was a man of knowledge. He was one of the Faithful, but he saw no difference between the ultimate aims of faith and study, of religion in its truest form and the search for understanding of the universe. Both were avenues to truth. Both were keys that together opened the doors of comprehension. Keys to the minds of the Gods, and so also keys to the hearts of humanity, and the workings of the world.

  A man of knowledge. A seeker of answers. A disciple of truth.

  And, for the first time in his adult life, he wished he could put the answers away. Wished he could forget what he knew, and return to a place where ignorance had kept him safe and happy.

  He wished, for the first time, that he could be a child again.

  But he could not. He kept turning the pages of The Tree.

  "What is it?" asked Father Inmil.

  Luca didn't realize he was being spoken to. Not until Brother Scieran said his name, "Brother Luca?" in a tone of such concern it actually tore his gaze away from the book.

  "Yes, Sword?"

  Brother Scieran's lips pursed. He looked as though he worried that Luca might have lost his mind. "Sword isn't here," said the warrior-priest.

  Luca shook his head. "Not her. You. Scieran That's what your name means. It's a derivative of an old language, and it means 'sword.'" He frowned. "Or maybe 'blade.'"

  Brother Scieran cocked his head. He looked at the page of The Tree that Luca had been examining. "Where?" he said.

  Luca showed him the line, the tight, even script that translated the name. Below it was another translation, and another. Brother Scieran traced his finger down the text. Turned the page. Luca let him, glad to have an excuse to turn his eyes away from the dreadful burden of knowledge.

  "It says…." He smirked suddenly, and looked at Luca. "Is this you?"

  Luca nodded. The motion taxed him. He felt beyond old. His mind had expanded past comfort.

  If this is what the Gods feel like, then perhaps the Netherworlds would be a better place to live out eternity.

  Brother Scieran smirked again. "What a boring name you have," he said.

  Then he turned the page. Luca hadn't seen the page following the list of names – he had assumed it would be more of the same. Perhaps he could have discovered what Father Inmil's name meant, or Mother Maci's. Not all the names he had ever encountered were in there, but some of the more common ones were listed. A kind of genealogy of ancient times – a family tree with listings of where the names came from, places with names so odd and alien they defied expression.

  Father Scieran said, "Ansborn." He looked up. "It means 'born of God,'" he said.

  "The Gods?" said Mother Maci, half in automatic correction, half in legitimate question.

  Father Scieran just shook his head and turned the page.

  As the paper lifted, Luca was gripped by a sudden terror.

  As a child, living in the highlands of Strength, he had wandered off his family's farm. Not far, but he liked the silence of the forest that bordered the fields. They were a place he could hide – if only for a short time – from the demands of sowing and reaping, the need to lay up during times of plenty so that survival could be found in times of scarcity.

  It was, in short, a perfect place to steal away with a book. Not a children's book, no fables for him. He read books of learning. The teachings of the Gods' Book, Thoms' Broken Theologies.

  He read, and learned, and treasured those times.

  But one time, it was different. One time, he realized only a few pages into his present book – Cultures and Conflicts – that the forest was not just quiet, but absolutely still. Not a bird twittered, not a leaf seemed to move.

  Expectant. But not hopeful. Terror blanketed all like a cloth over a corpse.

  Luca sensed something behind him. He turned.

  The cats were rare, even in the highlands. Rarer still near human habitation – they preferred to keep to their own, deep in the crags of Strength where none but the bravest dared go. And even those sturdy souls didn't, for the simple reason that there was nothing there to have or find. Just rock, scrub, small animals… and the giant beasts that hunted them.

  The Claw stared at him for a long time, its gold eyes wide, the pupil only a small dot in the center. The creature was only about as big as Luca – a very small boy for his ten Turns – but every measure of it was either bone or muscle, claw or fang. Claws could attack and kill full-grown men.

  The beast seemed to realize this in that moment, and its eyes narrowed. It took a silent step toward Luca, and growled.

  Not a growl. A pur.

  It wasn't threatening, nor was it warning. It was making the contended sound of a warrior who has already se
en victory… or a man contemplating the rich meal before him.

  Luca was doomed. He closed his eyes.

  His father came at the last moment. Killed the beast, though the Claw wounded him badly. No Patch was near, nor did Luca's family have the money to hire one.

  And even if they had, the wounds were probably too severe. Luca's father died the day after he saved his son.

  Never since that moment had Luca felt anything he would describe as real fear. After witnessing his own death in the eyes of a monster, after seeing his father wrestle the demon, kill it, and then die himself… what, then, was there to fear?

  Even when he saw the red-haired man's picture, when he saw a man from a thousand Turns ago lying almost peacefully in his own blood, even then he had not known real terror.

  But now, watching Brother Scieran turn the page, that terror finally came again. He wanted to shout, to scream, "No!" but the word did not come from his frozen tongue.

  Brother Scieran turned the page…

  … and Luca felt silly. Felt ridiculous.

  It was only another picture of the tree that graced the front of the book. Though this time it was strangely stylized, only the vague outline of the dirt into which it stretched its pointed roots, the clouds into which its v-shaped outline disappeared.

  Nothing. Nothing.

  But Mother Maci shifted. Father Inmil made a strange sound, half gag, half gasp, as though his soul had suddenly tried to escape.

  Luca frowned. "What is it?" he said. He looked at Brother Scieran, who wore the same expression as he.

  Mother Maci reached across the stone table. She was standing opposite him, and now she spun the book so the pages were upside-down in front of Luca and Brother Scieran: the same viewpoint she and Father Inmil had had.

  Luca saw it.

  The tree… the vague outlines of ground and cloud formed two parallel, horizontal lines. The tree's wide, "V" shape became something more akin to an "A" when inverted.