The Atomic Sea: Volume Ten: Into the Dark Lands

by Jack Conner

  The Duke went to each prisoner in turn, touching them on the head, then moving on, and at the end of each contact the prisoner would fall and twitch. After a few moments, Avery caught the distinct odor of excrement. Dear gods, what has he done to them?

  At last the Duke stood still, basking in something, perhaps whatever he had taken from the prisoners. Then he said, “Now, lord doctor, I have something to show you.”

  “I ...”

  The Duke gestured, and the guards pulled Avery toward the jelly, where the Magistrate was retaking his seat with the help of one of his underlings. Another assisted Avery onto the top of the creature, and he clung tightly to the Duke’s throne, if that’s what it was, as the jelly, with no visible command to prompt it, lifted off from the tower. The motion shocked Avery, and he nearly fell to his knees, but he gripped the back of the throne tighter, accidently touching what was now the loathsome form of the Duke as he did so. Leshillibn merely chuckled and raised his scepter to bid his thralls ado. Below, the guards remained bowing for a few moments, then began to collect the stricken inmates and place them on litters—Avery hadn’t even noticed them till now—and carry them back inside.

  “What ... ?” Avery said. “I don’t ...”

  The Duke turned his face up to catch the starlight. Two of the moons had come out, and his face shone, fat and full, like a sated vampire. His eyes veritably burned with a dark fire.

  “All questions will be answered,” he said. “For now, silence.”

  Avery bit his lip as the jelly ascended through the air, up the black sides of the rocky pinnacle the fortress was built against and toward its summit. Wind shrieked around him, against him, and its coldness numbed his cheeks and misted his already-smarting eyes. At least it removed the reek of the jellyfish. Its squirming flesh undulated below him, constantly causing him to reshift his balance. It was as if he perched on the back of an organic balloon.

  At last the creature reached a lip of rock near the top of the mountainous spire and deposited them on a relatively level shelf before another, shorter ascent, speckled here and there with more exotic outlines. Structures stood here, Avery realized. Some sort of ruins?

  The Duke climbed down from his seat—the material was organic, Avery saw, and of the same substance as the jelly’s flesh—and beckoned for Avery to follow. Reluctantly, but not too reluctantly—he was eager to be off the damned thing—Avery obliged. Together they picked their way through rocks and shadows, with the summit of the mount rearing above them. Without the moonslight, Avery didn’t think he would be able to see well enough to maneuver, and the Duke had brought along no torch or alchemical globe to light the way for them. Does he command the stars and moon, too?

  As the two moved forward, a nearby structure became apparent, and Avery gasped. The thing was like a jewel, all winking facets and ridiculous beauty, and yet in some way he could see that it was alive, or had been, not something built but grown. The building was set into the mountain, and the light was too faint for him to see it in detail, but even so he knew this was no artifact built by man or any of the pre-human races he was familiar with—except one. The Black Dome in the Crothegra had not looked too dissimilar.

  “It was crafted by the Makers,” Duke Leshillibn said, as if reading his mind. “Theirs was a great and glorious civilization of gods or proto-gods that existed many millennia ago. None know where they came from, or where they went, but one thing is certain. Men worshipped them and served them, and the ruling families of the kingdoms that did so were ... changed. Made into beings almost god-like in their power. Beings, well, like me.”

  Avery gathered his resolve. “What ... did you do to those men?”

  By the scant light, it was hard to tell, but Avery thought the Duke looked pained. “The Makers molded the rulers into powerful beings as a reward for their service, as well as a symbol to the rulers’ flocks, proof of the might of the Makers, and, if that was not enough, to ensure that the rulers could keep order. But the Makers did not make the rulers powerful and self-sustaining. They did not make us true gods. No, the only way the rulers could stay strong, and grow their abilities, was to take something from others. Our powers are mental, and to bolster them we must take energy from the minds of our, for lack of a better word, victims. Some of us do this in secret. Some abstain and grow weak. For myself, I have command of a whole prison of inmates no one will miss, and I did not come by that by accident.”

  “What will happen to those men? Your victims?”

  “They are essentially brain-dead, I’m afraid. I could have only taken a little, from a greater number of victims, but left them functional, yet then they would have survived to spread the rumor of what went on here. Bad enough that rumor has leaked out anyway. None of the prisoners know, but they suspect, and they whisper of black deeds in the dark, and all fear to be called away by the Magistrate in the night. I am their boogeyman, I’m afraid, and they are right to see me as such. If they do not behave well, they go on my list.”

  “But why? Why did you ... drain them, if that’s the word?” They ARE vampires, Avery realized. Psychic vampires. He shuddered. Is that what Ani is, too? And Mari, was she one of them as well? Gods, but he felt sick.

  Duke Leshillibn waved his hand at the blank face of the jewel-like ruin before them, and where a previously empty wall had been a portal appeared. The wall seemed to fold away, almost instantly, and crystal glints shone in the hallway behind, a hallway that, like the door, stretched to giant, inhuman proportions.

  “The Makers had many cities, or communities, and we humans served them at several, including here. Most of the structures they left behind, at least in the Salanth area, are under the harbor at the moment. The land has shifted over time. The ruins are almost all that are left of them now, save one last remnant of their race who has been asleep, or so it is said, and unavailable for countless years. He resides in another structure, a great one, in the city proper. There are various ruins scattered throughout Salanth that we pray at, but that is the holy of holies, and no ruin at all. Few are granted access to it. We nobles still worship and serve the Makers and pray for their return, and to do so we must access their ruins. But they built their cities only to be entered by themselves and their highest servants.”

  Avery thought he understood. “You can’t enter the buildings without your powers, and you aren’t powerful enough without draining someone.”

  The Duke’s large head inclined in a nod. “After you depart, I will return here. I will venture down that hallway you see and kneel in a great chamber aglow with alien light, and I will cast my mind out, as I’ve been taught, and commune with the spheres. I will try to find some echo of the Makers’ will and divine their intentions, and then I will know what I must do.”

  “What must you do? My friends and I, we’re on a very important—”

  Duke Leshillibn cut him off with a gesture. “I know what you’re about, or enough of it. Before you arrived, I received some visitors, and with them a most curious offer.”

  The fat man moved away from the ruin, his cape trailing along the rocky ground. Avery cast one last look down the shining hall, then followed. After the brightness of the ruin, the way before him seemed doubly dark. The Duke brought him to a high ledge and swept an arm at the panorama of Salanth which lay, shining eerily, across the black harbor.

  “There is my city,” the Duke said, “or it should be. When my brother died last year, I should have become ruler next. His son, his only heir, is too young to inhabit the throne, and his shrew of a wife too weak. She rejected my offer of marriage and tries to play Empress-Regent to the Empire, to rule until her son comes of age. I might let that be, but in the seven years until that can happen the world will change. The signs of the Return are already upon us. Terrible storms and portents of change. The prophesied times have come, lord doctor, and in my communings I have determined that I am one of the chief agents of change.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  The Duke wrapp
ed an arm around his shoulders, and Avery had to fight the urge to shrink away. “You see,” said the Duke, “long ago the last Maker to exist in this world put himself to sleep, and so we call him the Sleeper. He lies there—” the Duke pointed to the middle of Salanth, where a profusion of strange towers rose up, all fashioned of crystal—“in the Necropolis. Within that structure is the Tomb of the Sleeper.”

  “Is that why you call it a necropolis?”

  “We gave it that name to frighten peasants into leaving it alone. The thought of alien dead lying in those crystal halls has kept them well clear of it—not that they could enter the Necropolis in any case. Still, it pays to be sure. There we serve the Sleeper even in his pseudo-death. Before he put himself under, he prophesied that he would return, and that his return would signal a change in the world. He gave us signs, portents, of that Return, and we nobles have awaited them ever since. The rest of the populace, the common folk, they worship their own gods, the Shell Lords, the Three Sisters ... we don’t care. We nobles only await the Return. That time is now. This decade, this year, this month. Now. And I will make it happen. The Empress-Whore is too afraid to do what must be done. A pilgrimage into the heart of the Necropolis must be undertaken, the Sleeper’s tomb found and the Sleeper awakened, and if we cannot awaken him we can wait till he wakes himself and be there to greet him when his eyes fall once more upon our world, and he initiates the Change.”

  The Change. Avery thought of the monastery of the Ygrith and of the terrible weapons to be found there. Yes indeed, there will be a change.

  “And where does that leave you?” he said.

  The Duke tapped a pudgy finger against one of his chins. “That leaves me with fulfilling the prophecy despite the fear of a certain empress-regent. I have sent assassins to end her, but she is cunning, and lucky.”

  “You’ve tried to kill her?”

  The Duke chuckled. “As she has tried to kill me. Don’t be so shocked. It is the way of things in my family.”

  “What were you saying about a visitor?”

  “Ah. Yes, they came to me several days ago, two days before you did. One of my ships went missing, so I sent more out to find it. They too vanished. Then one returned, but it was empty. It drifted in to the prison, and my men brought it back to dock. That night four people came to me in my room, slipping past layers and layers of security, and told me certain things that set my bowels aquiver. I won’t go into it all, but suffice it to say they too have an interest in the Sleeper.”

  “Did they tell you their motives?”

  The Duke frowned. “I asked, and they gave me a vague story about paying homage to the Sleeper and being present to serve him when he wakes.”

  “Don't believe them.”

  “I believe no one. However, these new potential friends of mine are willing to grant me certain tools I can use to achieve my ends, if only I cooperate with them.”

  “They’ll help you overthrow the Empress, you mean.”

  “Empress-Regent. And yes. It's a very tempting offer. Perhaps too tempting. Just the same, I'd rather not deal with them. To be perfectly honest, they frighten me. That is where you come in, lord doctor.”

  “Me? I can’t fight them.”

  “Yet I think it no coincidence that you arrive from the same direction they did only two days after they did, and also about some secret errand. No, don’t tell me what it is. I would just get another lie. My powers are not strong enough to perceive the shine from the shit. What I want is another tool. If you give me one that is powerful enough, I won’t have to accept theirs.”

  “I’m afraid I have no such tool, and I’m not inclined to help you overthrow the Empress anyway.”

  The Duke turned to him. His face looked serious. “I’ve done checking up on you, lord doctor. I know who you are.”

  “Well, good, then—”

  “You’re the father of Anissa May Avery.”

  “Well, obviously—”

  “—who is poised, with a little prompting, to be the heir of King Idris, lord of Ghenisa.”

  “Heir?” Avery blinked rapidly.

  “Lord Id has no issue, and so he is forced to pick an heir from among his family. Someone higher up in the various branches, but not old or wily enough to pose a threat to him. Ani is perfect. She will be Queen when he dies.”

  “He’s said this?”

  “No, but I have agents in place in Ghenisa. If I whisper in the right ears, I could lean him in that direction. Ysstral money funds much of his platform. Anissa will be princess now, then Queen.”

  “How does that help you?”

  The Duke smiled. “Why, I could marry her, obviously. A union between me and the future monarch of Ghenisa would put me over the top among the royal family here. They’ve been divided over who to support, me or the Empress-Regent. The slim majority backs her, if only because of the letter of the law, but I have many followers, and if I were situated to become King of Ghenisa ...”

  “You could overthrow the Empress.”

  “The Empress-Regent.” The Duke was sounding a little testy. He calmed himself. “At any rate, you are Anissa’s father, and it is your legal permission I would need.”

  “She is nine.”

  The Duke made impatient noises. “It would be a paper wedding, you fool. It would never be consummated. Not till she was of age.”

  Avery studied the obscene bulk of the duke and shuddered. In a thick voice, he said, “No.”

  Duke Leshillibn seemed to swell. Something tickled the back of Avery’s mind. The world turned gray, then black. Strangely, the Duke only grew bigger, and brighter. Eclipsing all else. Pain filled Avery, and he cried out and collapsed to his knees.

  “Give me Ani’s hand.” The titanic roar crashed resoundingly in his skull.

  Avery clutched toward the duke.

  “No ...”

  The wave of pain overwhelmed him, and he knew no more.

  Chapter 5

  “Work faster, you lazy bastards!” shouted the overseer, and Avery flinched as the man walked by, cracking his whip. Avery had been shocked to discover that prison guards could actually mete out physical punishment here, a thing that would have been unthinkable in Ghenisa. Fortunately, the guards showed at least some forbearance, and Avery, while new to the processing plant, had only been struck once so far, though that had been enough. Then again, the guards weren’t such fools as to murder someone before they could even be shown how to operate their stations—otherwise how would anything get done?

  Avery shoved his filter down tighter over his mouth as he poured the liquid compound through a massive industrial funnel into the chugging machine that occupied the space before him.

  “Quit shaking,” snarled the inmate to his right, working at his own station. “The ‘seer’ll have your hide for a whip if you spill that stuff.”

  With some effort, Avery made his hand steadier, and the fellow went back to manning his machine, operating some sort of steaming press with flaring pistons and gouts of yellow gas shooting out of it. Avery didn’t know what it did. He didn’t know what the compound he was administering did, though it certainly stank badly enough and the fumes it gave off were lethal. The mysteries of cleansing the taint from seafood had always been impenetrable to him, and being forced to work in the prison’s cleansing plant had not clarified things particularly. The machine he worked at was one of a series of mechanisms whose products purified the food that passed through the actual guts of the process deeper in the facility; Avery’s mechanism existed on the periphery.

  As the section’s overseer came back again, cracking his rawhide, Avery fought the urge to fling the contents of his funnel at him, but of course the gesture would have been useless. The guards of the plant had long prepared against such actions, and all wore full length leather armor coated in alchemically-treated wax. Even their heads were covered, their eyes masked by smoked glass. Old stains, some of them surely caused by blood, stood out on their leather-covered torsos and arms, a
nd so they were grim specters indeed striding about, wreathed in steam and toxic vapors, all in blood-spattered leather, eyes hidden, cracking their brutal whips. Avery’s back still stung where one had found him yesterday, and when he moved in certain positions the rough fabric of his uniform scraped the wound. The sweat seeping into it only made it sting worse. He moved stiffly and awkwardly, and his muscles were so sore he could barely function, yet the thought of the whip striking him again kept his attention on his task.

  The overseer walked on, through the range of smoking, reeking, chugging mechanisms that filled the chamber. Scores of prisoners tended to them, all like Avery shackled to the floor near theirs. In case one needed to urinate or evacuate their bowels, a covered bowl was provided, and at various times throughout the shift a guard would give them a cup of water. Those were the only concessions to humanity that Avery could determine. Otherwise they were treated like slaves, or possibly like damned souls as described by various religions.

  A whistle sounded, and Avery nearly collapsed with relief. Some of the prisoners who still had the energy to cheer did so. The shift was over.

  One by one, and with strict supervision, they (after they were unlocked, of course) secured their various chemicals and alchemical compounds and returned them to the nearest lock room, where they were sealed behind thick iron doors, then were marched back through the noxious, boiling halls toward the showers. There Avery undressed, self-conscious and nervous, and shuffled with the others into one of the oily, graffiti-covered shower chambers. Thank the gods, he thought. After this was lunch, and after that time in the yard.

  Turning a handle, hot water scalded him. He screamed, hopped out, and gave himself time to recover while the prisoner to his left laughed. Avery tried to hold back tears, as some of the spray had found the gash down his back. When he could, he adjusted the knobs and reentered the spray. Better. As he reached for the mashed sliver of soap left in the tray—it served as both soap and shampoo, regrettably—the prisoner on his right snatched it away.