The Strategist

by Gerrard Cowan

  ‘Hmm,’ said Cranwyl. He sounded strange: distant.

  ‘What’d you see, down there?’ she asked him.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ He looked at her. ‘Do you?’

  She shook her head. ‘Nope.’

  As they walked forward, Drayn slowly became aware of other people. They emerged from the shadows along the walls, blinking in the dull light of the real world, perhaps a dozen: men, women, and children. They seemed confused, startled, helpless. Is that how we look? But she knew she was different. I tricked the Voice.

  The people gathered together, though they did not communicate; they did not even make eye contact. They walked forward as a group, deeper into the cavern. As they went, the light grew brighter. Soon she could see the mouth of the cave. The flickering light that came from the opening was unnatural. Torches. It is night.

  ‘Stop walking.’

  The voice came from the lights.

  ‘I said, stop walking.’

  The group did as it was told.

  ‘You are the Unchosen. You know what comes next. There’s nothing you can do about it now. So don’t try anything stupid.’

  Figures appeared before them, monsters climbing out of the dark. Guards. They lumbered forward, holding their pikes, wearing their hats and their terrible masks, looking for all the world like dumb birds that had never learned to fly.

  The Guards surrounded them. There were perhaps six of them, maybe seven.

  ‘Move forward,’ said one at the back.

  Drayn turned slightly, and in the light of the torches she saw a gleam of gold. The Protector.

  The group began to walk towards the mouth of the cave. Drayn heard sobbing, somewhere to her side. She didn’t look to see who was crying. She didn’t want to see.

  But she did check that it wasn’t Cranwyl. She couldn’t have Cranwyl crying. Not her Cranwyl.

  They came to the threshold, and walked out onto the top of the island.

  **

  Mother was not in the crowd.

  Drayn did not know what made her so certain. There were thousands of people, baying for the blood of the Unchosen. What made her so confident Mother wasn’t there, hidden away amid the throng?

  But she knew it. She just knew it. And she was glad of it.

  Something is different.

  She looked towards the edge of the cliff. Lord Squatstout was there, below a torch, smiling at the Unchosen, his hands in the air.

  Something is different, and it’s him.

  ‘People of my Habitation,’ he said. ‘What a sight you are to behold tonight!’

  He did not use the ancient words. There was something fearsome about him: a kind of triumphant aggression. The crowd could sense it. They backed away from him, glancing at one another. This was not the Autocrat they knew.

  Squatstout walked towards the people, and Cranwyl squeezed Drayn’s hand. He’d always been a bit afraid of the Autocrat. So was she, truth be told. So was everyone.

  ‘I am an old creature,’ Squatstout said. Drayn could feel the oldness in his voice, a grinding sense of exhaustion. His appearance began to change; lines formed upon his skin and the strands of chestnut hair turned a spectral white. ‘I am an old creature, from an old family.’

  He bowed his head, and his body seemed to fold over, creaking painfully. But when he looked up again, he was refreshed: his skin was smooth, and his hair was as brown as it had ever been.

  ‘It is not a happy family.’ He frowned. ‘Our own brother betrayed us. We trusted him – that was how he deceived us. We never thought he would hurt us. For that naivety, we can only blame ourselves.’ He grinned, and his teeth were daggers. ‘But the universe has a way of exacting revenge upon traitors, and it has handed this one to me.’

  He raised a hand. There was a flash of white light, and the people cowered before the glare. When they looked back up, they saw something incredible.

  A creature was there, suspended in the night air beyond the cliff, held within a ball of light that crackled with a thousand colours. Drayn could see faces in the light, miserable faces, screaming and crying. She sensed memories, there: so many painful memories.

  Drayn did not know the prisoner, but she could tell he was one of Squatstout’s people. This must be the one Mother was talking about. He was naked, apart from a black rag, and his pale body was a patchwork of wounds. His hair was long and dark, and covered his face completely. He seemed to be asleep, or frozen. Drayn shivered when she looked at him. What has the Lord Squatstout done?

  ‘His name is Jandell,’ Squatstout boomed. He spat it out like a swear word from ancient times: Jandell. ‘He is my brother. Long ago, he betrayed us, in a war, and took the side of our enemies. He crushed us. He built a terrible thing, a powerful thing, and he handed it to our foes. This thing was called the Machinery.’

  A murmur ran through the crowd. They did not like the sound of this Machinery.

  Squatstout looked at his brother, hanging in the air above the cliff. For a moment, a pang of sympathy, perhaps even love, flashed across the Autocrat’s eyes. But it vanished as quickly as it had come.

  ‘My brother is arrogant,’ Squatstout said. His voice was quieter now. It seemed he was speaking directly to this Jandell. ‘He was told, at the very beginning, that his Machinery would break. It would break, and our Mother would return, and she would bring Ruin to the world, the beautiful Ruin we love so much. We all knew it was true: all of us except Jandell. While I have been nurturing my own strength, here on this island, he sat in the Old Place, or in his little mortal kingdom, lazy and dissolute. He is weaker than me, now, for the first time in our lives.’

  Squatstout turned back to the crowd. ‘Still his arrogance survived, even after the Machinery broke! It must have, for why else would he dare to come here, to me, after all he did? He, who threw me to the waters, all those years ago. If it had not been for the Voice, which guided me to this beloved place, I would have perished.’

  ‘All hail the Voice,’ the crowd murmured.

  ‘He thought he could come here, and that I would help him,’ Squatstout continued. ‘He wants to know where Mother came from. He knows I have watched the world for ten thousand years, while he languished in his ignorance. But I will not help him. Oh, no. I will certainly not help him!’

  Squatstout twisted, and turned his gaze upon Jandell. He began to mutter something. His words were quiet at first, but slowly became louder. ‘… So treacherous! But I have taken new power, from new memories. I feel their energy within me. You will see it now, my brother. I have waited to show you!’

  The creature known as Squatstout began to change before their eyes. The outline of his body became hazy, and a flame flickered in his eyes. He is a memory, too. All of this is memory.

  Squatstout rose up from the side of the cliff, to the gasps of the crowd: all except Drayn. As he went, his body changed again, becoming mangled and deformed. His legs fell away into black smoke, and his arms stretched outwards, his hands melting and reforming into long blades. He turned his face from the crowd to Jandell and back again; his eyes were dark, bloodied holes.

  Our Lord is a monster from a dream: the poison of a nightmare.

  The crowd hissed, and backed away from the edge of the cliff, even the Guards. The only exception was the Protector, who moved forward, to the edge, on to his master.

  ‘This is a great moment,’ Squatstout said in a pained, scratching voice. The creature floated towards his brother, almost entering the crackling haze, the daggers of his hands held aloft. ‘It is the last day that Jandell the Bleak torments us.’

  As Drayn looked at Jandell’s strange prison, at the faces in the storm of colour, she knew what it was. She recognised this thing. Can the others not see it? It was a memory, too. No: it was a million memories, all of them twisted, all of them torn apart and sewn together.

  She focused on one corner of the haze. She felt herself able to touch it, very gently, with her own thoughts. It noticed her; it respond
ed to her. A thin, black tendril, so slight that no one else could see it, not even Lord Squatstout, untangled itself from the glittering orb and began to snake towards her. She could feel, rather than hear, a melancholic tune. It wrapped itself around her, like a cord, ensnaring her legs, then her torso, reaching ever upwards until it surrounded her head. It meant no harm, she knew. It was looking into her, wondering about her, speaking to her.

  Fallen Girl, it said.

  She did not respond. She did not know how. Instead, she took the tendril in her hand. She began to pull, lightly, afraid she might break it, though knowing in truth that it could never break, oh no, not this thing.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  She looked at Cranwyl, and smiled.

  The creature that once was Squatstout had noticed her now, too. It turned to her, glaring at her, willing her to die. But it was too late for that.

  She pulled it again. No: it pulled her.

  Fallen Girl.

  And then she was inside the haze, with the creature called Jandell. She saw Squatstout staring in at her, his eyes glowing slits.

  ‘You can’t get in here now.’ She didn’t know why she said it, but she knew it was the truth.

  She turned to Jandell. He had woken. He was weak, his breathing swift and ragged, yet he looked at her with interest.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘You have come to me, within my prison. You must be very special.’

  Drayn glanced around. ‘What is this place?’

  Jandell smiled. ‘It is a thing of memory, formed of those I once tormented. Squatstout is using it to hurt me. I am weak.’

  ‘I hate memories.’

  ‘No. You love them. You can feel the power in them – the same power that we feel ourselves, a power from the beginning of time, from before the beginning of time. Our addiction for so many ages. You are a power. I once knew a man like you.’ His face screwed up. ‘Who are you? Where did you come from?’

  ‘I’m Drayn. I fell into the Old Place. I was Unchosen. I came to the cliff’s edge to die.’

  ‘You fell,’ Jandell whispered. His eyes widened. ‘So that was true, as well.’

  He gestured with his finger, and they were no longer floating above the water.

  **

  They had come to a tower: a long and crooked thing, pointing at the sky like a broken finger. For a moment they stood at the base of the structure. But now they were at the top, standing in a wide courtyard of dark stone. In the centre was a table, upon which was the board of some game. Jandell was there, another Jandell, young and strong, huddled beneath a heavy black cloak and staring at the table. At the other side was a woman. In truth, she had the appearance of three women, identical creatures, their features hazy and swirling, as if formed of sand. But Drayn knew this was just one being, one creature wearing three crowns of glass.

  ‘You ask me to betray the others,’ the woman said.

  Her voice put Drayn in mind of the winds that shrieked around the peak of the Habitation.

  The other Jandell bowed his head. ‘If we do not, the war will carry on forever, or until one side is destroyed.’

  The three heads smiled, but without joy. ‘We take our powers from their memories. Now, they are able to use that power too. Of course they are: the memories belong to them.’

  Jandell moved to speak, but the woman silenced him with three raised hands.

  ‘Jandell the Bleak. I called you that, long ago, before your sisters and brothers were born, when you were the only child in your family. I saw, then, the things that you would do. I saw them.’

  She bowed her heads, and behind her, the air began to shimmer.

  ‘I will help you, Jandell, but not for the reasons you think. I will help you, because I am afraid. Do you understand? There are worse things in creation than you.’

  Jandell nodded.

  The creature of three bodies stood quite still. Something was taking form in the air behind her. A great bird appeared, stretching its dark wings out across the courtyard. No. Not a bird. A cloak. It billowed fiercely, its edges twisted and torn, though Drayn could feel no wind in this place.

  ‘The Bleak Jandell,’ said the woman. ‘Speak my name.’

  Jandell fell to his knees. ‘Dust Queen.’

  Drayn struggled to look at the woman now. Her features were almost hidden behind a twisting storm of sand, black and white and red, shifting into strange and unknowable patterns.

  Drayn looked to her right, to the real Jandell. The wounds on his body were bleeding.

  There was a rending sound in the air, a great clap of thunder, and the Dust Queen vanished into a whirlwind of sand. The great cloak sparked with a black light, and faces appeared in it, agonised faces, prisoners who wailed in their jail of cloth.

  ‘This cloak of memory,’ said the Dust Queen, though Drayn could not see her, ‘is your punishment. It will hold you, and restrain you, and remind you of the things you have done in the long years since your creation. It will always be with you; even if you remove it from your body, it will be there, within your mind.’

  Jandell looked up. ‘I have tried to be good, your Majesty, for so long.’ He glanced at the howling creatures in the material. ‘Do not make me … I cannot look at them forever …’

  ‘This is my price.’

  Jandell nodded. ‘If I wear this thing, you will assist me?’

  Yes, said the storm.

  The cloak flew forward and wrapped itself around the crouched form of Jandell. When he stood, the faces stared out from his body.

  The Dust Queen reformed.

  ‘Then it is done,’ she said. ‘I will help you, Jandell the Bleak. We will build a prison for our enemy. It will be more than a prison, though, much more.’

  ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘You will. It will be called … the Machinery.’ The Dust Queen raised her three right hands, and pointed into the air. ‘I ask only one thing. When all is done, you will tolerate none who question what we have created; you will send these Doubters to me.’

  Jandell nodded.

  **

  They had come to a dead place, where the land was black and blasted.

  The Dust Queen and Jandell were standing on the edge of a pit, from which smoke poured. They were not alone. A red-haired woman lay on the ground, broken and bloodied, her green dress torn into rags; Drayn wondered if she was dead, until the woman coughed once, violently. Her eyes opened and closed, over and over; she was battling to stay conscious.

  The Lord Squatstout was there, too, at Jandell’s side. He stared into the pit with mournful eyes.

  ‘It is done,’ the Dust Queen said. ‘It is held inside the Machinery.’

  Squatstout’s head snapped up, and he gave the three women a hard stare. ‘Inside the … inside the what?’

  ‘The Machinery,’ Jandell said. ‘The price of peace.’

  Squatstout’s mouth hung open. ‘You cannot be serious, my brother.’

  Jandell nodded.

  Squatstout stamped a foot on the blackened earth. ‘The Duet are gone. You have killed our Mother, and poor Shirkra is on the edge of death. And you have cast our—’

  ‘Do not call it that,’ Jandell whispered, before nodding at the hole. ‘It is nothing but Ruin.’

  Squatstout shook his head. ‘In the Machinery.’ He walked to the edge, and stared down into the blackness. ‘What part of the Old Place have you put it in? Will you know where to find it, you fool?’

  Jandell shrugged. ‘When I need to. It doesn’t matter. The Machinery will speak to me alone.’

  ‘Until it begins to break,’ said the Dust Queen.

  Jandell looked at the Queen.

  ‘No,’ he said. The confidence had drained from his voice. ‘That cannot be. You promised me, your Majesty.’

  The three heads smiled. ‘You will have ten millennia of glory in your land. But then the Machinery will break, and it will Select her, Jandell. And after she is Selected … Ruin will come with the One.’

  S
quatstout clapped his hands. ‘Then Mother lives!’

  The Dust Queen gave him a strange look, halfway between pity and confusion. ‘All I know are the words I saw, in the darkness. But she may well be alive. She may even be in the air now, listening to us.’ The Dust Queen chuckled, and somehow it was more disconcerting than if she had screamed.

  She threw her three heads back, and began to speak to the sky.

  ‘Ruin will come with the One.’

  The Queen looked at Jandell, and spoke to him alone. ‘I have seen other things, Jandell, in there.’ She nodded at the pit. ‘But I know you do not believe me. You trusted me to this point; you came to me for help. Still, you do not believe me now, because you do not want to. Know this: your arrogance will take you to the brink of death. Only one thing can save you. I tell you now, Jandell – when she comes, look within the Fallen Girl. She will be your redemption.’

  She was gone, then. One moment she stood before them; in the next there was nothing but dust.

  Squatstout turned to Jandell. ‘The One lives, Jandell, and one day she will bring Ruin! It is not yet over.’

  Jandell closed his eyes. ‘No. The Queen is mistaken. The One is dead. I killed her, with my own hands.’

  Squatstout laughed. ‘Of course you didn’t kill her. She is too strong for you. But I am weak. You are going to kill me.’

  ‘No,’ Jandell said. ‘I am not.’

  **

  They were once more in their bubble, suspended above the cliff.

  ‘The Queen told me about you, long ago,’ Jandell said. ‘I did not believe her. I did not believe her about anything, but I should have.’ He nodded to himself. ‘I have allowed myself to wither. But you are the Fallen Girl, and you will be my saviour.’

  He reached out to her.

  ‘May I …’

  She nodded. She knew what he wanted. Memories, memories, memories.

  A dark wind ran through Drayn, and there was no hiding her memories from this storm. She could feel Jandell, the contours of his power. He was weak, now; his being ached.

  ‘You are strong,’ Jandell said. Drayn opened her eyes. ‘Your memories have great power, and they have given this power to me.’

  The strange prison vanished, and Jandell and Drayn stood in the middle of the air, with nothing supporting them. There came a noise on the wind, a terrible howl, and in a moment the cloak reappeared; it wrapped itself around Jandell, and for half a heartbeat the faces in the cloth seemed to smile.