“Stay here,” Ayaan told her, and started hobbling away toward the yurt. Was she going to protect the Tsarevich? Sarah could hardly believe it. They’d done it. They had broken Ayaan, broken her mind. Such a thing shouldn’t have been possible. Yet Ayaan herself had frequently warned Sarah that humanity was a liability. Sarah remembered perfectly what Ayaan had said around the campfire one night when Sarah was sixteen years old. “None of us,” she said, “is immune to death or madness. The time may come when you have to sanitize me. You may have to shoot me because I’ve panicked so badly I threaten the squad. None of you may hesitate, when that moment comes.”
Now she seemed to have changed her tune. Was she really a believer? Did she really believe in the Tsarevich, like the two liches Sarah had already killed? Or was she just afraid of death, like her father had been, and Gary before him?
Speaking of the devil—Sarah looked up to see Gary whirling through the Tsarevich’s army like a top. He was under sustained gunfire and his skull had taken on a patchy and mottled appearance—he was being healed as fast as he was being injured but the process wasn’t perfect. Sarah just didn’t know how long it could be kept up. She knew her father was doing it. She knew he had to be somewhere nearby. Gary’s legs flexed and sharp fragments of bone jutted out of him, covered him in vicious spikes. He tore through a machine gun position and the weapon’s wooden stock shivered into pieces. The gunners were thrown away like crumpled bits of paper.
Sarah suddenly realized she’d been left alone. Ayaan and the werewolf had both abandoned her. Well, they had more serious problems. Sarah’s hands were tied so securely there wasn’t much she could do, anyway.
Or maybe there was. She turned around in place, taking in the frenetic energy of the camp, the living people running in every direction, the ghouls taking up defensive formations. She found what she wanted and headed toward it at a run. A single mummy, standing alone at the back of the valley next to a big rock formation. It—she—held a jar in her hands with something round and murky inside.
“I was sent by Ptolemaeus Canopus,” she said, skidding to a stop in the dirt. “Are you alright? We need to work together if we’re going to get out of here.”
The mummy didn’t move. The thing in the jar didn’t move either but she could feel a haze of dark energy wafting off of it. It was desperately trying to get her attention. She looked down, through the glass, and saw a human brain there. Nasty, but hardly the worst thing she’d ever seen.
Behind her she heard a prolonged scream and she turned to look. Blood jetted high over the crowd, a fountain of it. Gary had grown an extra joint at the end of his legs, a curved, scythe-like foot that looked perfect for evisceration.
She looked back down at the brain. It was trying to tell her something. She felt a strange weight in her left hand. It felt heavy, as if it was being pushed downward. She frowned. What the hell did the brain want? She could reach into the pockets of her sweatshirt, just as she had done while she watched Ptolemy’s execution. She reached in and felt something soft and hairy. She drew it out of her pocket.
Oh. Okay. They had taken the green sword away from her, as they had stripped her of all her weapons. They had left her the noose and the withered piece of matted fur Mael Mag Och once worn as an armband.
Sarah, he said, as she ran the fox fur between her fingers. I didn’t really expect you to make it this far. I suppose I didn’t expect you to fail, either. Though some things run in families, alas.
“Hello,” Sarah said. “You must be Mael Mag Och. I’ve heard all about you but I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.”
The voice that roared its reply into Sarah’s head held a trace of regret. Or maybe she was just imagining it. If I had come to you in my own shape you would have run away from me. I pretended to be Jack because I knew it was a name to conjure with, lass. Does it really matter so much? I still gave you your gift.
“Why?” she asked. “Why did you do that? Why did you do any of this? Did I really need another parent who was just going to disappear on me at the worst possible moment?”
It was Nilla’s notion, to be honest. The blonde lass you saw vanish out yonder.
“I’ve never heard of her.”
Ah, Mael Mag Och said, and yet she’s heard all about you. The daughter of the lost hero, turned out in a foreign land to be raised by warriors, made strong and fierce. Her heart went out to you, lass, and where Nilla’s involved, my heart goes there too.
“I refuse to believe you did anything out of the goodness of your own heart. You planned this—all of this. I half believe you got Ayaan captured just so I would come chasing after her and end up right here.”
All too true, he admitted. Yet incomplete. The entire world does not revolve around you, Sarah. I had plans for the others as well. Ayaan was supposed to assassinate the Tsarevich for me. She was the perfect candidate, I thought. Once he was dead I could take over his empire, seeing that I was the only one capable of controlling his undead army. That didn’t work out. You were supposed to crash this particular party. It is supposed to be me who mounts that scaffolding, not his Majesty the undying deformity. Didn’t I tell you to bring an army? Instead you bring a handful of mummies and one twisted freak.
“My freak seems to be doing alright for himself,” Sarah said, turning around to watch Gary plow through a line of ghouls. His bony frame had grown considerably while she spoke with the brain until he resembled nothing so more as a giant white spider with a tiny human skull perched atop its carapace.
The werewolf came at him, claws on hands and feet flashing through the air. Gary stabbed downwards with a bony tail like a scorpion’s sting that penetrated deep into the earth. Erasmus rolled to the side and came back up to slash at one of Gary’s tree-trunk legs. Gary knelt forward under the pressure and Erasmus tried to scamper up onto his back, his clawed feet digging into Gary’s flesh to find purchase.
A toothy mouth opened in Gary’s side. Lips studded with bony spikes grabbed at Erasmus’ left arm and the teeth sheared it clean off. Erasmus howled in agony as his furry body pinwheeled down to the carpet of bones while the giant mouth chewed the werewolf’s limb into pulp. A dozen thin spines lanced down from Gary’s body to impale the werewolf in as many places. Erasmus didn’t get back up.
“See? Look at that,” Sarah crowed, excited.
Ah, the druid said, our Gary. He’s a scrapper, I’ll allow you that much. Yett the only thing he believes in is the integrity of his own skin. He’d never take on this fight if he was in any danger. And unless I miss my guess, your Ayaan is about ready to strike.
“What are you talking about?” Sarah demanded. The mummy holding the brain inclined her head and Sarah pivoted around to look where she indicated. She just had time to see Ayaan crest a pile of boulders high up on the ridge wall to the south. Sarah looked closer and saw her father on the other side of the pile. He was sitting calmly, his eyes closed, his arms outstretched, the palms of his skeletal hands pointed at Gary.
“No,” Sarah said, the syllable meaningless in her mouth. “No, that’s not right.”
It’s a hard world, lass, Mael Mag Och told her. It has been for twelve years.
Ayaan grabbed Dekalb’s head in both of her hands. He jerked and flexed and tried to escape from her but he was caught like a fish on a line. Ayaan pressed harder and the skin on Dekalb’s head darkened and split like the skin of a rotten fruit. Sarah’s father kicked out with his legs but he couldn’t seem to hit Ayaan.
Sarah watched in mute horror as her father’s face peeled off in long dry strips of skin. The skull underneath glowed with dark energy. The skull flexed and shook and a network of fine cracks appeared over its surface. Shafts of dark energy leaked through the fissures. Darkness burst from empty eyesockets and Dekalb’s skull cracked open in a hundred pieces.
Ayaan let the headless body fall forward. She was done. Down on the battlefield Gary must have felt it right away. He must have realized instantly that he was no longer i
mmune to the attacks of the Tsarevich’s army. He made a quick slash at all the ghouls and cultists nearby and then ran for the hills.
“Daddy,” Sarah said. The last thing she’d said to him was that he was a bad parent. He had begged her not to get herself into this mess.
“Daddy,” she said again. The brain in the jar had enough tact to keep silent.
Chapter Sixteen
“If,” the Tsarevich said, his voice loud enough to roll around the rocks and bones and echo in the still, cold air, “if there are to be no more of interruptions. Then perhaps it is possible to do this thing.”
Some of the cultists had still been screaming. All of them had been shouting for help or for succor. They fell silent at their lord’s command. Those who had been busy before with assembling the machinery around the scaffold and those who had been erecting the two sharp metal spikes at its top got back to work. There were a lot of bodies to be removed from the battlefield, many of them already struggling to get back up, to begin the new and glorious phase of their existence.
No one touched Dekalb’s headless body. It was just so much dead meat to them. Sarah wanted to go to it, to hold her father’s hands once last time, but she knew if she tried to do so the Tsarevich’s troops would simply shoot her. There would be no warnings, no second chances. They would kill her. Without her father to protect and heal her she would just die. And then come back.
A sort of convulsion went through her, wracking her body. Her muscles spasmed and her eyes ached. A sob came up out of her throat and threatened to turn into a wail. She was surprised by the emotional reaction. She didn’t understand it. It was grief, and she had known she would feel grief, but this just wasn’t the time. It wasn’t yet time for her to process everything that had happened.
It shook her and shook her until she dropped to her knees and bowed her head and hot tears fell into the dust. It made no sense. She was tougher than this. She shoved her hands in her pockets to try to keep them from trembling. She found the noose and ran it between and around her fingers as if she were making a cat’s cradle.
Lass, I feel for you, I do. But I’m the last fellow you should be coming to for comfort. You failed me. You failed all of us.
Sarah shook her head, uncomprehending. “What is so important,” she asked, staring into the brain’s jar, wanting to reach into the liquid there and shred the grey matter inside. “What is so important that it had to bring me to my father, and then tear him away from me like this? What is so important that Ayaan had to be turned into a monster? Please, Mael Mag Och, help me. Help me understand.”
The end of the world, he told her. What could be more important than the end of the world?
She stood up, straining her legs to get up off her knees. The mummy holding the jar stood as still as the dead thing she’d once been. A perfect statue, a thing to prop up the jar and nothing more. The mummy didn’t react at all when Sarah stumbled forward and grabbed at the jar with her bound hands. She had trouble grasping it so she put her chin down on its top and supported it from beneath with spread fingers. The mummy didn’t try to stop her. It didn’t even relax its arms—it just stood there, elbows bent, hands extended, waiting for her to put the jar back.
Instead she turned around and started walking. Toward the Source.
What should have been won by strength of arms can still be won by guile, he told her. She ignored him, though she didn’t let go of the noose either. She stepped on a jagged piece of pelvis and nearly fell over but managed to recover her balance.
She took another step and felt the jar grow warm in her hands. The brain inside had no muscles and couldn’t spasm but she could feel its consciousness bashing against the walls of the jar, trying to break free.
Lass! Don’t quit on me now. I took a chance with your Ayaan and she quit on me too soon. That’s why so many had to die. I’m telling you full truth, now. Don’t make the same mistake she did, not if you value the things I’ve given you.
Sarah took another step. Another one. A bubble appeared inside the jar and splattered apart against its lid. She felt Mael Mag Och kick at her hands. It was all in her mind, she knew that, but he was fighting her. He didn’t want to go any farther in.
“My mother. My father. Ayaan. Jack. All of my parents, all of them dead. Undead. And then murdered fucking again,” she chanted.
I feel I really must protest. Ayaan isn’t twice dead, Jack was just a false persona and your mother—
“You know nothing about my mother! Neither do I! That’s the goddamned point!”
She kept walking. The liquid in the jar grew uncomfortably hot. Her chin burned against the metal lid. Her hands ached from his attacks. She took another step and the heat was just too much. She let go and the jar fell away from her. The glass cracked as it struck the carpet of bones. The jar broke apart and half the liquid inside sloshed out. The brain sat in what remained of the jar—a kind of broken-edged cup, half-full of liquid. Steam lifted from between its two hemispheres like a ghostly crest.
Do you think this will kill me? he asked. He sounded quite calm. There’s no point to this, whatever it is you may want, lass. I have as many bodies as I like. I have as many—
She shoved the noose back into her pocket. She didn’t want to hear anymore. She watched the brain turn white and shrink down as the liquid bubbled and hissed and frothed. She watched the brain boil in its own juices. That was the point. It made her feel a little better. That was the point.
A mountain of flesh that stank like an unwashed cultist grabbed her around the waist and hauled her up into the air. Someone had noticed she was missing and had come to bring her back. She didn’t scream. Bodily she was carried back to the Tsarevich’s camp, most likely to be killed.
Life had a little surprise for her. Ayaan was waiting near the scaffolding. Sarah was dumped at the lich’s feet. Ayaan helped her stand up.
“I didn’t like him either, but the Tsarevich had a use for him.” Ayaan shook her head fiercely. “I hate to play at being the adult and telling you not to meddle in things you don’t understand.”
“Then don’t. And I’ll return the favor.” Sarah refused to meet Ayaan’s eyes.
The two women who had attended Nilla as she approached the Source returned. Their wires lead across the valley and up the ridge on the far side. Their faces and hands were covered in a fine powdering of white and yellow dust. A boy with a bucket of water and a ladle ran up to them and let them drink and wash up.
The Tsarevich, still sitting in a wire shopping cart, was wheeled closer to the scaffolding. His head dangled over the side and his knuckles twitched against the bones as he was brought bumping and rattling to the base of the construction.
“This is the master you serve,” Sarah said. She lacked the energy to really belabor the point but she couldn’t let it go without comment, either. “The monster’s monster.”
“He’ll be transformed in a moment. If physical beauty is all you look for in a leader then I’ve taught you poorly.” Ayaan sounded pissed. Sarah wondered how far she would have to go to make the lich attack her. If she was doomed, if she had no more chances, maybe it would be worth it. Maybe she could anger Ayaan so much that her body, or rather her corpse, would be of no use to the Tsarevich.
Sarah’s blood went cold at the thought. Not the thought of being a ghoul. At the thought of dying at all. She knew it was just her biology speaking, her ingrained survival instinct, but it didn’t seem to matter. Her body didn’t want to die, no matter what her mind might decide. It would rebel against her if she tried to commit suicide.
The electronic boxes bolted to the scaffolding started to buzz and the exposed vacuum tubes came to life, glowing a cheerful orange. One of them flared white and then burst into darkness, then another. Cultists were ready for this and switched out the bulbs with remarkable speed. They must have been training for this for months, Sarah decided. Drilling for their one big moment, their contribution to the Tsarevich’s ascendance.
Un
der the power of his own unequal arms the arch-lich dragged himself up a ladder on the side of the scaffolding. Rung by torturous rung he hauled himself upward. The air smelled of ozone and real heat was coming off the machinery by the time he reached the top. He waved at the crowd, who cheered in return. Then he threw himself forward, right onto the twin giant metal spikes.
He sank downward with a scream that was a little bit violent agony and a tad sexual. The spikes transfixed him. Impaled him. Pure energy rushed through them like water down high-pressure hoses. It flooded into him. Sarah could see it crackling around him like electricity crawling over his skin. His one visible eye went wide with it, his mouth opened in a perfectly round O. A stench of burning hair rushed down off of him and flowed across the spectators. Sarah raised her bound hands to her face.
“You can be part of the future, Sarah. You can come with me and build something. Wouldn’t that be nice? To stop destroying, to stop killing, and build?” Ayaan was shouting in her ear. Sarah hadn’t realized how noisy the little valley had become with all the popping vacuum tubes and crackling skin.
Every bone in the Tsarevich’s left arm cracked with a series of pops like muffled gunshots. The skin of his deformed hand flowed and flexed like a piece of rubber under stress. His face was changing shape, its contours shifting, rebuilding themselves.
“You don’t have to die today. It will be difficult,” Ayaan told her, “but I can convince them. I know I can. I only need you to say yes. I need you to agree to be a part of what we are working for.”
Monster Planet Page 29
