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The Thran

Page 14

by J. Robert King


  The camps were built and maintained by a new soldiery. The imperial guard and Thran army had undergone purges at the highest levels. Young officers had been promoted and indoctrinated in the new military philosophy. They were accountable to the council, of course, and the council was Yawgmoth. These fighting forces would work hand-in-glove with the healing corps to protect the people from foes internal and external.

  Folk who had lived in complacent ignorance only a year before now saw threats at every hand. Each danger made them love Yawgmoth the more. He was as much a savior in Losanon and Chignon, Wington and Nyoron as in Halcyon. Between healers and soldiers and civilians, Yawgmoth’s every spare moment was taken up. His time had passed in a flurry of activity.

  For Rebbec, the two months had been a long respite. She had wandered the greatest boulevards in the empire, had toured the vast temples and palaces and state-houses of the ancient land. To be immersed in its stone colonnades, to see how light strolled through it, to taste the air that breathed from ancient masonry—all of it had been a communion with bygone minds.

  Rebbec had tried to convey this to Yawgmoth, but only in the cutter did they have any time to talk. Usually he dominated those moments. He spoke of his health program and his hopes for the future of the nation that once had banished him. Now, at last, she had the chance.

  They were flying home over a high and beautiful land. Snow-capped mountains lorded over wide valleys, green with summer. Pines climbed the chiseled heights. Crystalline rivers chanted in rocky beds below. Black earth filled the glades. Aspens shimmered with cool wind.

  “Look at this sweet place,” Yawgmoth said with a contented sigh. “Look at it. This is what I want for our people—for all of our people. A life of splendor and plenty, yes, but not in overcrowded cities rank with disease. A life in wide, natural spaces. A life in paradise beneath the skies.”

  “Do you know what I want, what I’ve been looking at?” Rebbec blurted in a rush. “I’ve been looking at the past, but I’ve been seeing the future. In old crypts I’ve seen castles in the clouds—and they’re perfectly possible. The Thran Temple could be a floating universe. I’ve been looking at art, but this is what I’ve been seeing.” She opened her sketch pad. From the page, unmistakably, a drawing of Yawgmoth peered forth. His piercing eyes and chiseled jaw and broad shoulders had been rendered in quick and expert lines, in the style of an elder’s bust. “And this—” She flipped the page, which showed Yawgmoth again, this time in the style of the old emperors. “And this—” The next page showed him in a frieze that depicted the eight patriarchs of the Thran as they entered the virgin continent. “And this—” He was no less than a god in that final depiction, mortals rising as formless clay figures in his shaping palm.

  Each of these images, Yawgmoth took in with a single, intense stare. Each time, face impassive, he turned his eyes back on the grand panorama before him.

  “Do you see?” Rebbec asked. “Do you see what I have seen?”

  His lips were a grim line on his face. “You’ve seen a lot of sculpture.”

  “No, I’ve seen through a lot of sculpture. I’ve seen the future. The future is you.”

  He blinked. He took a deep breath. “I’m not sure what to say to that.”

  Rebbec saved him the trouble, leaning across the helm of that great cutter and kissing him full on the lips. She cradled the back of his head in her hand, felt the warmth of his lips, breathed in the scent of him.

  Yawgmoth pushed her gently back. “What are you doing?”

  Her eyes searched his. “What do you mean, ‘What am I doing?’ ”

  He seemed almost to blush. The great granite Yawgmoth blushed. “It’s just that with these icy peaks—they can come up suddenly. I don’t want to risk a crash.” He paused, seeming to sense how awkward he was being, and laughed lightly. “I don’t want to risk the future….”

  Rebbec sat back in the seat. She felt as though he had sliced her open and dragged all her insides out on the floor—

  “It will be good to see the city again,” Yawgmoth said. “I have some new ideas for treating your husband.”

  —and then, had spitted and roasted her heart on a slow flame.

  Rebbec’s heart was in her throat as she strode down the infirmary hall. Upon landing, she’d planned to go to bed and sleep for a week, but the healers said her husband was awake. He’d emerged from his coma just after Rebbec and Yawgmoth had embarked on their trip. In their conspicuous absence, Glacian had been busy, very busy.

  She entered Yawgmoth’s laboratory. Glacian was nowhere to be seen. His wheeled chair, bed, desk, sketches—all were gone. Crossing the hall, she looked into two more chambers before she found him.

  Glacian looked thin and only vaguely human. His face was at once blissful and intent. He sat in a much-modified wheeled chair. Mechanisms of artifice surrounded him. A body sling compressed his chest, helping him exhale. A bellows drove air through a tube that pierced his throat. Another tube induced a continual flow of serum into his blood. A metal halo lifted his chin away from his neck. The small powerstones that ran all these devices winked in an array to one side, votive candles for a martyred god.

  A crew of goblins circulated about the man, checking the various devices that sustained his life. Servitor automatons worked quietly among them. The goblins glanced up disinterestedly as Rebbec entered.

  Glacian’s eyes were piercing. “Ah, Rebbec…” he said quietly. His voice rasped away as he waited for the bellows to inflate his lungs again. “You’re back from your little…fling.”

  Rebbec blushed, coming to kneel before her husband’s chair. She drew the edge of her cloak over her mouth.

  “I’m sorry, love. I tended you for two months in coma. It was killing me as surely as it was killing you.”

  “It wasn’t killing…me, as you can see. I knew you were with me…when you were. I also knew when you’d…gone. And where. And with whom.”

  “It was a mission for the council,” Rebbec said. “Yawgmoth was establishing—”

  “I know what he was establishing…” interrupted Glacian, “his own private army throughout the empire. He’s positioning himself to…seize control.”

  “Seize control? Of what? Of the empire? One healer?”

  “Of the empire, of the world, of everything, of…you.”

  Rebbec’s face hardened. “Yawgmoth hasn’t made the slightest attempt to seize control of me.”

  “Don’t you think it strange I awakened just after…he left? Once he wasn’t around to dilute the serum or put soporifics in it…when it was just his toadies left caring for me, I awakened…”

  “You’re paranoid—”

  “…and I have toadies of my own. Apprentices, here in Halcyon but also in the other capitals….Some are even elders, now. And these goblins here, and in the rig—I’m still their master….And as long as I have this—” he lifted his hand, fingertips smudged with the stylus he clutched “—I have my own army….First, these machines. My toadies built them. They are doing more…for me than any serum. They breathe for me, hold me up. I’m designing one to pump…my heart.”

  “But they can’t stop the lesions. They can’t keep your body from breaking apart, your mind from breaking in two.”

  “Does it matter? I wake to find new plans I’ve designed….I’m shaking them out of my sleeve. Look at this…a mantis warrior. It’s based on my old design but with improved armaments….Razor mandibles, scythe claws, flex-steel abdomen and stinger, and these…incendiary antennae. The council’s already ordered fifty. I’ve sent…an apprentice to the capital guilds. The other city-states will be building them…soon. I’ll have my own army. The artificer unions know Yawgmoth is…a charlatan. They’ll build my warriors. They’re based on a new…powerstone configuration—”

  “Powerstone configurations? Insect warriors? Look at you!” Rebbec said, shaking her head in as
tonishment. “You’re turning yourself into a powerstone configuration, an insect warrior.”

  “What else am I supposed to be?” Glacian shouted. “Nothing at all…? Am I supposed to just placidly fall to…pieces? I’m still the genius of Halcyon. I’m still your husband. You can’t just…fling me on the refuse heap, like you do all the others with this…disease.”

  “Fling on the refuse heap—?”

  “I’m going to fight him, Rebbec. I’m going to fight him for you….I’m going to fight Yawgmoth, and I’m going to fight death…and they are one and the same.”

  “Oh, Glacian—you’re not yourself. You’re not seeing things as they are.”

  “I am! I’ve never been so sure of a thing.” He reached out to stroke her hair, but she drew away from his scabrous touch. Angered, he said, “I’m the only one who sees….I’m the only one who has ever seen…!”

  She stood and turned toward the door. “Yes, my love. You are the only one.”

  * * *

  —

  “He’s diluting it,” Gix insisted, looking around the candlelit table in a deep chamber of the caves.

  In the month since Yawgmoth’s return, Gix had considerably deteriorated. Beneath the white scarf that wrapped his head and mouth, lesions split his skin open. He felt his face might simply slough off. His hands were no better. As his skin deteriorated, his will grew stronger. He spent twelve hours a day caring for patients in the quarantine and three more lobbying the Untouchables in the upper caves. They allowed him in their midst only wrapped like this, with promises he would touch no one. Even so, they were beginning to listen.

  “Yawgmoth is diluting the serum. It no longer halts the disease. The healthier ones grow worse. The rest die.”

  Eyes around that candle flame were sullen and withdrawn.

  “He’s exterminating us. Don’t you see?”

  A pillow-faced woman spoke for the others. “He is liberating us, not exterminating us.”

  “It’s been months since he’s allowed any more folk out of the caves. Still, every day, another ten or fifteen exiles reach the quarantine. It’s been one thousand twenty-three patients since the last Untouchable was allowed to ascend.”

  “Untouchable is no longer an acceptable word,” the woman corrected primly, pulling her ragged clothes up around her. “Yawgmoth himself has outlawed it. None of us are Untouchable anymore.”

  “All of us are. Don’t you see? He’s taken from the caves everyone he can use—everyone he can command and hold in thrall. The rest of you, he’ll leave to rot with us.”

  A nervous chill circulated among the folk huddled there around the table.

  The woman spoke again. “It is dangerous to talk like this.”

  “It is dangerous not to,” Gix insisted. “He will kill all of us.”

  At last, another voice spoke up—this belonging to a young man in a shadowed hood. “What do you want us to do?”

  “Rebel. I want us to rebel.”

  “What about the guards?” the young man asked.

  “I know a thousand ways around the guards. I could lead you up into the city.”

  “You could lead us up?” the woman echoed, suddenly interested. “You could smuggle us into Halcyon?”

  “Yes, and once there, we’ll raid the infirmary, take Yawgmoth and Glacian hostage. We’ll demand serum. We’ll demand the release of every healthy person in the caves.”

  “You could lead us into the city!” the woman said. “Could you find us shelter? Could you find us a place to hide until we can get jobs, get a place to live—?”

  “No!” Gix interrupted. “I’m talking about a revolution.”

  The young man said, “And we’re talking about living. We’re talking about escaping from the caves. If Yawgmoth won’t lead us to freedom, why won’t you? We don’t want to kill and die. We want to live.”

  Better to live in atrocity than to die in glory.

  “Won’t you save us?”

  Heaving a sigh within his bandages, Gix said, “Yes…Yes, I will.”

  * * *

  —

  “They’ve been pouring out of the gutters like rats,” declared Eldest Jameth of Halcyon. A stately woman in red silk, she wore her office like a diadem. From her raised podium, she addressed the council. “How do we know which are legitimate? It used to be albinism was sufficient cause for arrest. Now we have Untouch—excuse me…what is the preferred term? Now we have the damned in our midst. Your liberation program is running aground, Yawgmoth.”

  “As you know, Madam,” replied Yawgmoth. “The liberation program has been suspended for four months. Those who were elevated carry papers, have homes, and work to better the city. The others can be rounded up. Provide me the personnel and funding, and I will.”

  A discontented growl moved through the gathering.

  “These incursions are the result of diluted serum,” Yawgmoth continued. “My budget does not allow full-strength serum for every patient in the caves. The precious metal components are expensive. If refugees can climb to the city, so can rioters. They will climb, unless I get the funding for full-strength serum.”

  The growl became an uneasy moan.

  “Even then, the riots may come. We all remember what happened last time. It will be much worse. The plague will run the streets. Last time, I turned them back with an ill-equipped band of thirty healers. This time, I’ll need the newly trained Halcyte guard in combat. I make a motion that, in the event of a riot, I be given command of the guard.”

  “Let me understand this,” the Eldest of Halcyon said. “You want more personnel and more money to avert another riot and control of the Halcyte guard should there be another riot?”

  “Or, if you like, I can relocate my efforts to Losanon, where the plague also worsens every day. These are the conditions under which I will fight this plague for you. If you are unwilling to provide me these few provisions, you had better find someone else.”

  Eldest Jameth’s countenance had paled so much, she seemed one of the damned. “It is right that this vote be taken among Halcyon’s elders only, lest our friends from the other city-states vote down the measure in order to lure Yawgmoth away. As leader of the Halcyon elders, I claim the right to cast the city’s vote. I approve these allocations of personnel and money. Any Halcyte who opposes, speak.”

  The Council Hall was utterly silent.

  * * *

  —

  Twenty-six times in the last months, Gix had led healthy refugees up from the cave. Over a hundred and twenty folk had escaped because of him.

  The route was proven—a natural, star-shaped chimney that never intersected the mana rig. It first emerged in an unused dry well on the edge of the Halcyte sewer system. From there, Gix conducted each party past flushing dungases to various storm grates. At the darkest corner of night, he led them to whatever stable or shed would give them a night’s rest.

  This time was different. It was Gix’s twenty-seventh trip—thrice the evil number nine. His gut told him death waited above.

  Gix peered through a grate in a shadowed alley. Wooden pickets leaned like crooked teeth toward the lane. The way was narrow enough not to admit vehicles. It was dark enough to forbid casual traffic. A rainwater cistern along one edge of the road provided ample water for drinking and bathing. A granary nearby had plenty of abandoned mills and machine sheds where refugees could hide. This had been his fallback site, the best location in the worst situation.

  “I don’t think you should go,” Gix whispered to the five souls huddled in darkness behind him. “Something’s not right.”

  “What is it?” asked one of them. “Is someone there?”

  “Something’s not right. I don’t know what it is.”

  “Then take us to another place.”

  “No, this is the best place. It’s not the place. It’s the night
. Something’s different. It’s too still.”

  There came an incredulous silence. “So—you want us to sit here until tomorrow?”

  “Or come back down with me.”

  “Down? We didn’t climb for five hours up a volcanic vent just to go back.”

  Gix shook his head. “I just have the sense that if you go through that grate—any grate tonight—you will die.”

  “I’d rather die trying to escape than go back down.” The young speaker pushed past Gix, clambered up the rubble-strewn edge of the culvert, and shoved open the grate. He clambered out from beneath it. Hissing in fierce laughter, he said, “Come on, the rest of you. Come out! Breathe the air of freedom!”

  Another followed, then the third, fourth, and fifth. Gix held open the grate. They were a mob of black shadows cast against the leaning pickets. They crouched beneath the night sky as though they still lurked in sewers, but there was a manic joy in their hunched shoulders. Their feet were quick on the cobbles.

  Gix stared out at them. “Good luck to you.” He lowered the grate over the culvert.

  All five suddenly were dead. It was as quick as that. There were five quick flashes of dagger-light and the unmistakable smell of blood spraying. The manic shadows fell in wet mounds on alley stones.

  Behind those daggers came men and women. They were not Halcyte guards but a different brand of warrior. Sleek, silent, lethal. There was nothing of pomp and bluster in the work they did—only efficiency.

  “This one isn’t him,” one of the killers reported, dropping the head of a dead woman.

  “This one either,” another said.

  “None of these have phthisis,” came the voice of a third. “Are you sure their leader does?”

  “Yes,” responded a shadowy figure in their midst: Yawgmoth. “Just as sure as I am that he is lurking still in the sewer.”

 

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