The Black Dream

by Col Buchanan

  ‘Is this your way of raising our spirits?’ remarked Aléas.

  ‘What I mean to say is that in all the years I’ve flown since then, I’ve seen how far these ships have come along. The Falcon is one of the finest. If any ship can make it through this, it’s her.’

  ‘And what if no ship can make it through this?’

  Another clatter against the hull. A sudden rending of wood.

  ‘We’ll make it,’ declared the longhunter over the sounds of the storm, and he sounded certain in his words. As though fate itself had decided the outcome long before now.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Casualties of War

  Where am I? Shard wondered from where she sat in a tangle of stupe-fed thoughts, blinking about at her surroundings.

  And then she remembered how they had hiked up the Mount of Truth to the Ministry of War, where they had been told to wait in this draughty hallway on the third floor by a thin man behind a desk.

  But that must have been hours ago, she realized now, looking out through one of the many windows at the darkness of night outside.

  What are we doing here again?

  ‘Two hours he keeps me waiting,’ hissed Coya as he rose from the sedan chair quickened with anger, and rapped his cane on the marble floor for attention; and at last Shard remembered the reason they were here, and realized that Coya had reached the limit of his patience.

  ‘What’s he at in there, eh?’ he demanded of the spectacled man behind the desk.

  ‘I told you, friend Coya. The Lord Protector won’t see you, no matter how long you wait.’

  ‘Creed knows I’m still here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well damn him then,’ Coya exclaimed and took a step for the door. ‘He’ll see me whether he wants to or not.’

  But the two guards before the door steadfastly blocked his path.

  ‘Marsh,’ Coya snapped. ‘These men are in my way.’

  Shard barely followed what happened next. The bodyguard Marsh stepped up to the two soldiers even as they reached for their swords, and after a swift sequence of moves he held each of them by a hand locked in a position of pain, so that Coya was able to duck around them and open the door.

  ‘Coming?’ he said to Shard, then stepped inside.

  *

  They found the Lord Protector as Marsh had warned they might find him, a hollow shell of his former self.

  Creed was seated on the balcony of his private study, his great muscular bulk slumped in a wheeled chair with a blanket spread across his legs, the man withdrawn yet surly-eyed, staring at the disaster still unfolding on the Shield while he was forced to watch from afar.

  He failed to stir when Coya and Shard stepped out onto the balcony beside him with their boots scraping against stone.

  Coya’s eyes widened at his appearance. The general’s long hair was tied back in a knot, though it seemed more silver than black now, as though the man had forsaken his rumoured vanity of darkening its appearance. His eyes, normally renowned for their piercing glare, were narrowed and bloodshot from lack of sleep, sunken deep in a face etched with lines of worry and sallow in complexion.

  He looked like a man barely returned to life.

  ‘Any word?’ Coya asked him casually, gently, his anger seeming to have fled, and General Creed craned his head round until he could see Coya from the corner of his eye. He betrayed no surprise in seeing him there, as though he had no care for human company one way or the other.

  ‘Coya Zeziké,’ he grumbled. ‘Word on what?’

  ‘On the wall, man,’ Coya remarked sharply, jabbing his cane towards the fires burning on the Shield. ‘The wall of course.’

  A clenching of jaw muscles. A few rapid blinks.

  ‘We’ve lost it. General Tanserine’s last counter-attack was beaten back. Kharnost is theirs.’ And his voice was a flat monotone, the voice of a man beyond hope.

  It seemed to provoke Coya’s ire, for when he slapped the general’s shoulder in camaraderie he did it hard like a soldier. ‘By all accounts, Kharnost’s Wall was barely standing. They’ll have a tougher time with the remaining three walls, we can be certain of that.’

  ‘Tell that to the men dying down there, even now.’

  Coya glanced at Shard, and she saw the shadow of fear in his eyes. There was something wrong here, his expression said, and she suspected he was right, for Shard could sense it herself.

  Time for work. Or at least what work she could manage in her present condition, which likely was not much. Shard tried to call up a glyph in her vision but found her mind still too wildly unfocused to craft it. Closing her eyes she tried again with more care – such effort for a normally trivial thing as this – and managed to call it into life weakly; a searcher glyph which cast a pulse out around them, fading without echoes.

  ‘We’re clean,’ she told Coya. ‘No one’s listening.’

  ‘My people sweep the rooms every day,’ Creed grumbled, and then he seemed to notice her standing there at last. ‘So, the only Dreamer in the Free Ports has finally paid Bar-Khos a visit.’

  ‘Not that I had much choice in the matter.’

  Creed grunted and dropped his chin, saying no more.

  A letter lay open on his lap; a thick square of paper with graceful handwriting upon it, ending with an elaborate signature. Her vision was swimming too much to read any of it though, and she pulled her gaze away, following his own attentions to the action on the Shield again.

  Shard was struck by the moonlit view they had here along the Lansway, like a laq-wide road thrusting out across the sea towards the dim southern continent. From their vantage on the southern side of the Ministry, they could see the three mammoth walls which remained standing in the path of the imperial army; and beyond them to the foremost battlements of the fallen wall, Kharnost, where fire brewed in smoky sections all across it. Occasionally the windows and the bricks of the Ministry shook with distant explosions, huge charges demolishing what was left of the wall, the Mannians wasting no time in reducing it to rubble.

  ‘That bastard Mokabi came back to finish the job,’ Creed suddenly growled with his hand clenching feebly around the arm of the chair.

  ‘Yes,’ said Coya. ‘Who would have thought he still had the stomach for it?’

  ‘My people say he has much of the loot from the southern continent at his disposal. That he has thrown the entire fortune into this effort. And all I can do is sit here, watching our downfall from afar.’

  ‘Marsalas, you shouldn’t try to carry these burdens alone. This is the problem with your Khosian ways—’ but then Coya stopped, hearing the glibness of what he was saying.

  They could see much of the southern portion of the city from here, lit by lanterns and braziers. In the gathering silence between them Shard explored it with her wandering gaze, taking in the wide thoroughfare of the Avenue of Lies and the great tented square of the Grand Bazaar, not far from the Stadium of Arms. Spotter balloons floated in the evening skies. Towards the south, the two harbours on either side of the Lansway’s mouth were filled with dark ships of all sizes. To the east, far beyond the city’s limits, the mountains of the High Tell stood tall in the moonlight, making her feel colder just looking at their snow-capped heights.

  The city itself was much the same as she remembered it. Shard recalled her time here grimly, a time of hunger and alienation. As refugees from southern Pathia they had been treated decently enough by the local Bar-Khosians, though some had openly resented their presence there, seeing them as further drains on the city. Their Contrarè features hadn’t helped either. A minority of city-folk had called them barkbeaters or worse, the intensity of the siege seeming to stir ancient prejudices to the surface.

  Bar-Khos, a city of noise day and night, with the thousands of windchimes strung across the streets clattering in the breeze, the shouts and yells of drunken soldiers and prostitutes, the repetitive songs of the street hawkers selling their wares, all of it pounded by the regular barrages of cann
on fire at the Shield, constant reminders of the war. A city that she’d had little desire ever to return to.

  Tabor Seech had known how she felt about this place, yet he had chosen it for their confrontation – this city living right on the edge. More mind games, she supposed. Tabor toying with her in every which way he could.

  ‘We’re still getting hit hard across the democras,’ she heard Coya’s distant voice say in response to something Creed had said. ‘Sky raids. Hit and run attacks from their naval fleets. Essentially, with all the reinforcements we’ve sent you, we’re stretched to breaking point and hoping that no one will notice.’

  Shard closed her eyes once more and carefully formed another searcher glyph in her mind, struggling to hold it long enough to cast into life, for she needed a stronger version this time, one that required an even greater effort of will. At last it came alive and sent a pulse outwards across the Shield and the Lansway to the far camp of the enemy, which she could see as a distant glimmer of lights. Shard slumped back against the balustrade to catch her breath, weakened by the effort, her glimmersuit warming even further.

  The pulse returned as a single faint echo in her mind, lacking any definition. Tabor Seech was out there indeed, perhaps in Camp Liberty, shielded as always, though leaking just enough of his presence for her to detect.

  ‘I can sense him,’ she said aloud. ‘He’s here. And he wants me to know it.’

  ‘Sense who?’ asked the general.

  ‘Tabor Seech,’ explained Coya. ‘The traitor works for the Empire now.’

  ‘You came here personally just to give me bad news?’

  ‘Yes, Marsalas, it’s what I live for. Though for balance I’ve brought some good news too. I may have a solution to your Mokabi problem.’

  ‘Mokabi? You let us worry about Mokabi.’

  ‘Oh? You have some way of stopping him?’

  ‘So my people tell me. Or of delaying him, anyway. A young engineer from the Al-Khos Academy has come forward with a plan. It seems the ground behind Singer’s Wall has subsided over the centuries. Now we’re digging it out further. If Mokabi’s horde takes another wall, they may well be in for something of a surprise.’

  An image flashed in Shard’s mind, leaking from the general’s thoughts. Thousands of civilians excavating the killing ground between the foremost two walls, and lines of zel-drawn carts carrying away mounds of red earth. Beyond them, along one of the seawalls that ran along the coastline of the Lansway, crews with cranes were exposing the foundations and digging through them. The scene became dizzying to look at. Shard shook her head to be clear of it.

  ‘Well consider this a bonus then,’ Coya replied, smiling a little. ‘Right now I have nine Rōshun quartered in the city, all eager to have a crack at the Mannians.’

  A startled blink, some life in the old general yet. ‘What’s this, Coya, getting blood on your hands at last?’

  ‘These are bloody times, Marsalas.’

  ‘The Rōshun though. Truly?’

  ‘It wasn’t so hard to persuade them. Not after they lost their home to a Mannian commando attack.’

  The general’s gaze danced for a moment, considering possibilities.

  ‘Maybe the Few are not so useless after all.’

  ‘Please, we’ve hardly forsaken you. There are more of us in the city besides myself and Shard. If you do not see their work then that is because you are not meant to see their work, but they are out there, believe me. Now stop griping and listen, man. The Rōshun will remain here to engage in operations against Mokabi and his personnel. In the meantime, I’ll be travelling into the Windrush to speak with the native Contrarè. I intend to enlist their help in this if I can.’

  ‘Save yourself the trouble. We’ve tried appealing to the Longalla already. They turned down our offers of gold. They aren’t interested in helping us, nor even themselves.’

  ‘Then maybe trying to buy their friendship was your mistake? We will see what they make of a Dreamer who is one of their own, for Shard has agreed to come with me into the Windrush. If we are able to, we will call for a council of the Longalla and try to bring them into this war on our side, as I have already brought you the Rōshun. Their help would be invaluable in dealing with the imperial threat to the north.’

  Once more the general’s attention was upon her, observing her mask and her swarthy skin, her narrow eyes set above sharp cheek bones. Was he one of them, she wondered? One of those Khosians who thought of her kind as savages? There was no way to tell from his gaze.

  ‘What news have you, by the way?’ Coya added. ‘Are the Imperials still holding fast around Tume?’

  Shard didn’t hear the answer.

  A figure was standing next to her that hadn’t been there a moment before. A man, leaning on the balustrade with relaxed poise. For the first instant she thought it was a vision of Tabor Seech, but in the next she saw that it was a handsome Contrarè in tribal clothing, observing her with eyes not dark but strikingly blue.

  He smiled as though they were friends. A beautiful man, she saw now, unable to tear her gaze from his own.

  ‘Walks With Herself,’ he whispered, and his voice sounded far away.

  Yes?

  ‘We will meet again, can’t you sense it?’

  ‘Shard?’

  Coya was watching her as she stared at the empty space by her side.

  ‘Let her dream,’ rumbled the Lord Protector. ‘It’s all any of us have left now.’

  ‘Sweet Mercy,’ breathed Coya, taking in her dazed condition and then the state of Creed, shaking his head in dismay.

  I need something to keep me grounded, Shard thought to herself. Something stronger than tannis tea.

  Tentatively, Coya was holding a hand out to place it on the general’s broad shoulder. Coya was so stooped that his eyes were almost level with Creed’s in his chair.

  ‘What has happened to you, my friend? You seem sick of spirit in a way I’ve never seen before. Have they no Milk for you to take, none of these damned Michinè of yours?’

  Annoyed, the general shrugged Coya’s hand from his shoulder, bunched the muscles of his jaws.

  ‘The First Minister provided me with some Milk. Still I sit in this damned chair, too weak to stand.’

  By all accounts this man had led the Khosian army at Chey-Wes against the invading imperial forces, attacking them at night even though they were outnumbered and out-gunned. Somehow he had managed to kill the Holy Matriarch herself, buying the city much needed time as the Imperial Expeditionary Force stalled around Tume in civil war.

  It hardly sounded like the same person sitting before her now.

  Has he been poisoned? The Milk itself perhaps?

  But no. It wasn’t possible to poison Royal Milk. Something else then, a failing in the security measures around him, poison slipped into his food? It happened all the time to enemies of the Empire.

  ‘Shard, what do you make of it?’

  She had a feeling she knew what this was.

  ‘Tell me,’ she asked of Creed. ‘Did your health worsen after the arrival of Mokabi?’

  ‘Are you implying something?’ he asked, glowering.

  ‘Just following a hunch. Is it true?’

  He didn’t wish to answer, and Shard charged her voice a little, loading it with intent.

  ‘Tell me. It’s important that I know.’

  Staring out over the balustrade, his voice lowered to a hush, Creed answered her flatly. ‘Just before Mokabi arrived, I awoke and everything I looked at was red.’

  ‘And you’re still seeing red?’

  ‘Yes. In everything.’

  ‘Let me have a look at you.’

  He tensed when she placed a hand upon his own, cool and clammy. Shard closed her eyes and tried her best to run her profiling glyph, seeing a concentration of flowing dashes and lines of bindee where he sat. Poor definition though, and when she saw nothing out of the ordinary it hardly reassured her. If Tabor Seech was responsible, he would have made cer
tain to hide his tracks well.

  She squeezed her eyes shut even tighter with effort, and called up a series of tagged vigils, which she lay about General Creed and then hid with the best camouflage she could manage; vigils that would alert her to Seech’s presence around Creed. Then she opened her eyes and swayed with dizziness.

  ‘Shard?’

  ‘I’m not certain yet. Give me time and I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Time, she asks for,’ grumbled the Lord Protector, and his hand was squeezing itself white around the arm of his chair, while his other shook the piece of paper above his lap like something soiled. ‘She asks for time while the bastard’s right at my door!’

  Coya bent to pluck the paper from the general’s fingers before he could protest. ‘You’re joking,’ he exclaimed, frowning down at it. ‘Mokabi sent you a letter?’

  Coya held it aloft so he could read it aloud.

  ‘“Marsalas. Wonderful to be here in your neck of the woods again. They tell me you are recovering poorly from your recent bout of illness. Please let me know if there is anything I can do. It would be shame to have you on your knees for our final reckoning.

  ‘“When I was a boy in the order of Mann, we were often instructed in the ways of tactics through the use of models and war games. My favourite was always the Shield of Bar-Khos. So impressive to look at it with a boy’s imagination! Even back then, I grew obsessed with the idea of taking those walls. These walls. It has ever remained a lifelong passion.

  ‘“Marsalas, it is my destiny to be your downfall.

  ‘“Good fortune in how you meet your end in this. I will show your corpse the fullest respect it deserves.”’

  Coya whistled, and lowered the letter to stare at the general’s hand, now wrenching at the arm of his chair. With a sudden pop the arm came loose, and Creed tossed it into the corner of the balcony with a clatter of disgust.

  Startled, a bird lifted off from the nearest window ledge. It was a thunderhawk, and as it wheeled away across the summit of the hill it cried out as though to Shard alone, then flew southwards to join a pair of its companions circling high over the smoke of the fallen wall.