by Glen Cook
Heris asked, "Has anything unusual happened? Unexplained noises? Food gone missing? Has anyone seen a ghost?"
The servants looked worried. More worried, and a little trapped.
Delari observed, "We seem to be onto something, now. Mrs. Creedon. Tell me your ghost story. Turking, Felske, don't interrupt. But signal me if you have something to add. Start, woman."
She did not have much, after all. Unexplained noises. Footsteps heard. Nothing there when she looked. A feeling she was being watched. The usual. But no poltergeist activity. No intrusion into the realm of the living.
"Felske?"
"The ghost don't seem malicious. Not like you hear they can be. It's like it just don't care."
"I see. I suppose that fits."
Hecht asked, "Could it be a ghost?"
"No. Mrs. Creedon. Where did you sense the spirit?"
Hecht became unsettled. There might be some sizable Instrumentality of the Night afoot. His encounters with that side of reality were never pleasant. But his amulet was no more active than usual around Principate Delari. His most improbable grandfather.
Delari consulted the others. Then, "You, too, Heris?"
"I don't know that part of the house. But I've felt the watching eyes."
The old man met Hecht's gaze. "Let's go see."
Out of earshot of the staff, Hecht said, "Your Grace, I could never publicly be the man you want."
"That's why you'll always be Piper Hecht. Soldier with an angel."
As was common with the homes of the Brothen rich, the Principate's town house surrounded a central garden. The establishment was smaller than those of the Five Families. It lacked a curtain wall to mask it from the street. The garden had not been maintained-except for the cook's herb bed. Though not much could be told by the light of the earthenware lamps everyone carried.
Delari said, "I need to invest in some upkeep."
The wing they entered definitely needed the kiss of mop and broom. Delari volunteered, "If we have a squatter he'll be here. This wing hasn't been used in ages."
Heris observed, "They wouldn't come here if they bought it was haunted."
Not only was cleaning needed, so was plaster restoration and paintwork.
The dust on the floor showed signs of regular traffic.
Delari said, "The staff still ought to be doing more. This ghost hasn't bitten anyone yet."
Heris said, "They don't have permission to spend your money. Or to bring workmen in."
"You do. Now. Take charge. Piper? What?"
"Back there."
Something clicked. Lamplight glittered off disturbed dust.
"A door," Hecht said. "It must have been open a crack. I didn't catch that." His amulet had begun to itch. The itch turned to pain momentarily.
Delari asked, "Are you all right, Piper?"
"Stomach spasm. I have them sometimes."
The Principate frowned. Before he followed up, Heris asked, "Do we want to open this, Grandfather?" Her voice squeaked. She was terrified.
"Huh? Oh. Yes. Go ahead. I just said he hasn't bitten anybody."
Bright light blasted into the corridor when she pulled on the door.
Hecht leapt past her, into a small, square room. He heard soft laughter. "How come the light went away?"
"It was supposed to startle and distract us." But it had not prevented Hecht from seeing a man duck out.
"Did you see that? Was that him? Is he real?"
"Real, or one vigorous ghost. Either way, definitely the Lord of the Silent Kingdom."
"Cloven Februaren."
"Yes."
"Your grandfather?"
"Your great-great-grandfather."
"Still alive. Looking younger than Grade Drocker when I met him."
"I don't understand, either."
Hecht said, "I thought you were Lord of the Silent Kingdom."
"I was. Never comfortably. But I'm not it if he's still here. He was the original. He was the one who charged the Construct."
"Uhm?"
"I don't have the flare. My father or me. We weren't dramatic enough. The program is largely forgotten now."
The program might be, but not the dread. The entire Collegium feared Muniero Delari.
"Come, Heris." Delari scanned the little room. It had a door in each wall. Floor and walls were a polished marble that, by lamplight, appeared to be the shade called flesh. Veined with gray, like cheese.
Principate Delari began to chuckle. "Definitely his sense of humor at work here. This door opens onto the street. On the west side of the house. Which he could use whenever he wanted without being noticed. This door, that he just went out, will put us in a hallway behind the outer face of the house. Designed with defense in mind, a long time ago, and entirely impractical today. It will have little glazed windows that, at noon, let in only enough light to prove that the staff don't keep the place up."
Hecht and Heris awaited instructions. The Principate eyed them, then chuckled again. "I can be a right bastard sometimes, can't I?"
"You said it, Grandfather," Heris said. "I won't repeat it."
"Ouch! Clever girl. He went that way so we'll check the outside hallway. He'll have left whatever clues he thinks we need."
"Your Grace?" Hecht asked.
"Oh, do dispense with all that, Piper. Go. I'm right behind you. For what good that will do if the Ninth Unknown is in a bad mood."
Hecht pushed through the doorway. The hallway beyond met Principate Delari's gloomy expectations. He asked, "Is there still some point to this? He can stay ahead as long as he wants. We have to be careful. He doesn't. You have sorcerer's skills. This would be a time to tap them."
The itch under his amulet and the unease he felt when he peered into the clotted darkness led him to suggest that.
"He's the superior practitioner, Piper. He'd spank me."
"Do something, Grandfather. Piper is right. We'll be at this all night, otherwise."
The old man turned grim. And pale.
The hallway lit up suddenly, bright as day.
The man in brown, hair standing straight out, eyes bulging, lunged out of a doorway a dozen feet ahead. He croaked, "What have you done?"
Delari said, "Come meet my grandchildren."
The man in brown regained his aplomb. "Took you long enough."
From distress to calm to seriously irritated took scarcely a dozen seconds. Hecht growled, "Don't do that!" when he thought the man in brown was likely to respond unpleasantly. The man stopped, startled. Hecht asked, "Is this really Februaren?"
"It is. Looking pretty much the way he did the day I became his apprentice. I thought you were dead, Grandfather."
"You were supposed to, Muno. Along with everyone else."
"Why?"
"It's easier to roam around and stick your nose in when people think you're gone. So. You've found me out. Come on in. We'll talk about what needs doing."
Hecht said, "Not everyone thinks you're dead. Principate Mongoz recognized you in the mob in the Closed Ground."
"Hugo was born a pain in the ass. He was half the reason I went missing. He built his career on trying to reduce my funding. And it was all personal. He stopped being an asshole as soon as Humberto took over."
"My father," Delari clarified. "His son."
If there was any truth to the lineage proclaimed tonight, Hecht was just the latest in a long line of bastards.
At least he had avoided becoming an Episcopal priest. And a sorcerer. Thanks be to God and his mother, he supposed.
Cloven Februaren led them into small but comfortable quarters with a lived-in look. There were no seats. "I don't have company," he explained without being asked. "And you wouldn't have caught on, Muno, if this boy didn't make it so damned hard to protect him. When some seriously deadly people want him dead."
"Name two," Hecht challenged. "And tell me why."
"Er-Rashal al-Dhulquarnen. Why isn't clear, even with my insight. Something dark is stirring in Dreanger. S
omething neither Gordimer nor the Kaif are aware of." Hecht did not demur. That fit his own suspicions. "Then you have Immaculate II, Anne of Menand, Duke Tormond in the Connec, and everyone else who'd prefer a Patriarchy with no power to enforce the Patriarchal will. You frighten people everywhere.
"Finally, there would be Rudenes Schneidel in Artecipea. Whose motives are as opaque as those of er-Rashal. He's hiding deep in the High Athaphile, at Arn Bedu, in country never completely tamed by the emperors. It's impossible to spy on him. While Schneidel's motives may be opaque, recall that sorcerers like Masant el-Seyhan and the woman Starkden also tried to dispatch you."
"All right. I'm not sure I buy all that…"
"There are more. The queue seems endless. And none of the would-be killers know why you're needed dead." Februaren added, "For every attack that came close enough for you to notice I've foiled a dozen."
"Why?"
"You're family."
"Don't start…"
"Stop! That isn't all of it. But it's a big part. And none of your fabrications change a whit who you are."
Principate Delari asked, "You're certain, Grandfather?"
"There is no doubt. Excepting in his own mind, possibly. Because he doesn't want it to be true."
Delari asked, "Did they know who he was when they sent him over?"
"No. They still don't. They sent him because they wanted shut of him. Gordimer feared his popularity with the soldiers. Er-Rashal feared him because of what he knows. He couldn't silence him there because questions would be asked."
Hecht didn't argue. "The world is full of fools."
"One named Piper Hecht," the Principate said. "I can figure it out third hand. It would be about the truth concerning the brothers who raided the haunted burial ground."
The man in brown said, "Young Piper, you need not fear betrayal. We three alone know who you really are."
"Really? You just mentioned the Rascal. What about a half-dozen Deves who helped me early on? Or Anna? Or Ferris Renfrow, the Imperial spymaster?" He chose not to mention Osa Stile or Bone and his band of the betrayed.
Cloven Februaren stared. He wore a small, knowing smile. "I was the Ninth Unknown, Piper. More powerful than the Patriarch. I gave that up so I could study the world through naked eyes instead of the lens of the Construct. Thus, I've wasted the best part of fifty years. Mostly trying to deflect inimical fortune. The raid that ushered you children into slavery was a complete surprise. Had there been the least likelihood of slavers striking so far from the usual places, neither of you would have been taken. But even the gods themselves don't post guardians against the impossible."
The man seemed much less than Collegium legend declared. He did not stand nine feet tall and fart lightning. He was just a middle-aged man so used to power that he could not imagine being disobeyed. Nothing about him suggested any supernatural power or congress with the Night.
Nothing suggested that Muniero Delari was a big bull sorcerer, either. But Hecht had seen what he could do. And he, in his seventies, was still intimidated by his grandfather.
The man in brown said, "Muno, you and Heris can go, now. You've solved your mystery. I'll join you for breakfast."
Delari started to say something.
"In the morning, Muno. Right now I need to talk to Piper privately."
Heris was a biddable child, though a grown woman who was Hecht's senior. She went to the doorway, her eyes unfocused.
"Use the other door, please. Over there, Muno. In the interests of efficiency. That opens onto the interior hallway. Easier for you."
"As ever, I must defer to your judgment."
"He doesn't like that," Februaren said after Heris and Delari left.
"And you'd be pleased if you were in his shoes?"
"I wouldn't be thrilled. Stipulated. I went through it with my own grandfather. He wouldn't lie down and stay dead, either. But there's a method to my madness, to dust off a cliche. First, get Muno out of here. There's work to do. Now. The emotionalism and long explanations would just get in the way."
"Let me confess to complete ignorance of whatever the hell it is you're talking about."
"Clever. Excellent. Borrowing your attitude from your friend Pinkus Ghort."
"If there's something so time-critical that the Principate has to be hustled out…"
"Where was I an hour ago? Right here. But undiscovered. Just the fact that you're onto me changes the equation. Now I can't be the ghost in the walls who's your guardian angel. You knowing I'm real and here, and Muno doing the same, changes your attitude toward everything. I'm about to be hauled out of the realm of legend into a world where somebody besides that asshole Hugo Mongoz can see me."
Hecht did not understand. He was disinclined to pursue enlightenment.
Februaren said, "We've failed to examine one whole class of would-be assassins. The Instrumentalities of the Night."
"What?"
"The soultaken you defeated at al-Khazen were neither the beginning nor the end of your war with the Night. Their reasoning is fallacious. It's too late to stuff the djinn back into the bottle. But the Night doesn't see time the way we do. They think in centuries. They don't often recognize individuals. But you they know. You're a threat. You're the Godslayer. You have to be stopped. Despite the obvious fact, from our viewpoint, that a lot of other people have figured it out, too, by now. Because you're the spark who sparked bright enough for them to see."
"One who hasn't figured it out being Piper Hecht." Cloven Februaren told him, "A while ago you decided to go along. You'd stop insisting that you're Piper Hecht from Duarnenia. You'd let us define what we want you to be. As once you promised Ferris Renfrow you'd let him. As you've done with everyone since you arrived in Firaldia.
"Right here, right now, I'm telling you-between you and me, boy-the age of bullshit is over. I know every detail of your life. The most critical is that you stumbled on a way to kill the Instrumentalities of the Night. They don't know how you did and they don't know why it works, but they saw you spark. And your entire life since has been shaped by that night in Esther's Wood.
"And your life is only one of thousands. On either side of the curtain between the world and the Night. More so, probably, on the other side. They're slow to learn but they can smell a threat before it arises. The soultaken meant to destroy you began their journey two hundred years before you were born. And though they've failed so far, they haven't failed yet.
"You've shown the world that there's a way to free itself from the Tyranny of the Night. Unfortunately, those dedicated to that end are captained by a lunatic named Sublime who is the slave of his own obsessions. And who is continuously manipulated by people who make sure he never comes into contact with any taint of reality."
"I'm no messiah."
"Of course not. You can't crusade against the Instrumentalities of the Night. You have neither the will, the skill, nor the temperament. You're a talisman. A totem of the living. While you live, the Night feels threatened."
"Wouldn't it be threatened anyway, if the knowledge is loose?"
"Of course. But the Night is constrained by its own mythical thinking. You need to understand that. You can't reason with the Night any more than you can with a crocodile. But you can figure out what goes on behind the curtain by studying the shadows cast."
"I'm lost. I always am around this kind of talk."
Februaren said, "The wells of power are weakening everywhere. The same thing happened in antiquity. Which is partly why those people were able to tame that generation of Instrumentalities. The wells came back that time. Hopefully, they will again. Meanwhile, though, we suffer the consequences. Sea levels are falling. The ice is coming south. And building up in the high mountains. Fast. Populations are running ahead of the ice. The Instrumentalities of the Night as well as humans and animals."
"Animals?"
"It shouldn't be many years before we see species formerly found only in the north. They shouldn't be a problem. Refugees will. The
y are already. But worst will be the hidden things. As they flee the ice they'll be forced into closer contact. The predators will get stronger. The confined, constrained, and shattered monsters of the past will grab the imaginations of fools, offering a lie. 'Free me. I will be your God, before all others, and you shall reign over all the nations. That sort of thing."
"Resurrecting the old devils."
"As you wish. What they're called doesn't matter. What does is, it's already happening along the edges of the ice. And in the other cold places. They've smelled the essence of Rook in the End of Connec. The ghost of the Windwalker has been seen up where your imaginary forbears battled the pagan horde. On the steppe…"
"Hang on. Kharoulke the Windwalker isn't a Sheard god. He belongs to a pantheon displaced by the northern Old Ones."
"You're right. And those Old Ones have fallen, blessings be upon you. Some of their strengths have been taken by the monster in the Jago Mountains. The survivors are locked inside a pocket reality that is, itself, trapped inside a closed realm they created for themselves long, long ago. Meaning they can't constrain the terrors they conquered when they arose anymore. More are sure to reemerge after the Windwalker."
"There are worse things to come?"
"It will happen, Piper. Everywhere. But this time we can fight."
"Uhm?"
Irked, Februaren snapped, "Because of your damned toy cannon! What was it called? A falcon? A silver and iron blast from one of those will stop the most powerful Instrumentality."
"Even God Himself?"
Februaren missed only one beat. "Most likely. If He assumes a corporeal form."
Hecht shuddered. It was true. Godslayer.
"Like it or not, the God of the Chaldareans, and the God of the Pramans, is just a glorified brownie."
"Excuse me?"
"Brownie, Piper. Pay attention. A little bitty Instrumentality. The difference between a grain of sand and a mountain is the size of the rock. A brownie is a God who hasn't grown up yet."
"There is no God but God."
"You can't possibly be that blind ignorant. Take five minutes when you have five free. Use them to think. Then use the next five to think some more."
Hecht started to say something underpinned by a foundation of his faith. The faith on which his life had been built since his earliest days in the Vibrant Spring School.
