Yet the Guide held Thomas prisoner in his own body. Perhaps that was the greatest torture of all, to sit behind Karthenor, smelling the scent of the man’s dark robes, while Thomas imagined how he could unclasp his hands, reach up, and throttle Karthenor.
Thomas struggled to control one hand; he needed but squeeze with two fingers. He concentrated till sweat poured from his brow, and his whole body trembled. All during the two-hour trip to the world gate, he fought, then wrestled even harder as the airbikes carried them through the portal between worlds.
Thomas did not understand the gates. He knew that for a moment he became incorporeal. The tiniest fragments of his body were somehow tossed through a hole in time and space, so they landed on a far world.
Thomas hoped that in that moment of travel, he would be free, he would be able to lift his hands and strangle Karthenor. Or perhaps he would stick his hand in Karthenor's robe and draw the weapon this evil lord had secreted there. Thomas knew little about guns but he had no doubt that the bulge he felt in Karthenor' s chest holster carried something deadly.
Still, when they passed between worlds, Thomas could not move.
On Tremonthin they zipped over hills green with a stubby growth of grass, a dismal land of rain and clouds. Oak trees sat in groves in the distance, until at last Karthenor found some muddy roads, rutted from carriage tracks.
Karthenor and his cohorts seemed pleased by this discovery, and they followed the course of the road, whipping past carriages and oxcarts. The locals were much like people from Thomas's home--plain folks in simple cloth of their own making, many wearing swords. They passed stone houses with thatched roofs, screamed through the narrow streets of towns.
For hours their journey dragged, as daylight waned.
The locals were shocked at the sight of the airbikes, and many shouted and pointed.
It was not the ignorant wailing of those who believed they saw demons--as would have accompanied their appearance on Thomas's own home world. Instead, the airbikes caused outrage. By riding them, Thomas's captors proved then were criminals, and many shouted, "Out, get out of here with those things!"
Some locals tossed rocks as Karthenor passed, and late in the evening, when a rock finally connected lightly with Karthenor's shoulder, the Lord spun his airbike around and confronted the man, a simple farmer with long yellow hair who'd been herding a flock of sheep down a narrow mountain road. Up above them, a tiny stone home sat, smoke coming up from its chimney.
The man stood his ground, holding a shepherd's crook up as if it were a quarterstaff. “Off with you, man!" the shepherd yelled, but fear showed in his eyes. “Look what you’ve done! Your damned machines have scattered my sheep!” Indeed, a dozen muddy ewes leapt up the hillside, running even now.
Karthenor offered no word of apology. Instead, he simply breathed angrily, “You hit me!”
The shepherd looked away guiltily. "Sorry," came a lame apology.
"Indeed, you shall be,” Karthenor raged, his voice suddenly loud. He reached into his robe, pulled his gun. Thomas could not stop him. As Karthenor drew his weapon and aimed, Thomas struggled to move his hand, to unclasp his fingers and spoil the man's aim. But Karthenor had ordered Thomas to hold on earlier in the day. The Guide allowed nothing more.
As Karthenor took aim, the shepherd's mouth opened in an O of surprise, and his eyes grew wide. Perhaps he was too frightened to run, for he merely stood.
Thomas trembled with the effort to unlock his fingers. His chest heaved, and his breath came ragged.
Almost, Thomas imagined he was able to unlock his fingers: almost he thought he'd managed to open them.
Then the weapon discharged. It made an odd plunking noise, like a stone dropping cleanly into water, and the shepherd's right leg collapsed. Thomas saw no blood, heard no cracking of bones. Yet it seemed obvious the bones of the shepherd's legs had shattered in a dozen places, for when the shepherd fell, the leg twisted grotesquely.
The shepherd cried out in pain and dropped faceup in the muddy road. Karthenor whispered to Thomas, “Let go of me. I have a matter to attend.”
Thomas released his grip, sat astride the airbike. By now, Karthenor's cronies, who had fallen behind, suddenly rounded a bend a quarter mile back.
Up a couple hundred yards ahead, at the little farmhouse, . a young woman opened the door, stood looking down the hill, a wailing child in her arms. She bounced the toddler on one hip, gazing down at Karthenor curiously.
Thomas realized that front her vantage, she could not see the farmer lying in the road. A small slope obscured her view.
Karthenor stood, stretched his muscles, looked about. This was a lonely stretch of road, miles from the nearest town. The sun was nearly down, and shadows crept along the hillside.
"Madam, could we trouble you for some hospitality, tonight?" Karthenor called up the hill. “We need a place to sleep.”
The woman was obviously frightened. Her face paled, and she looked about. “l-l suppose l could get you some food. There's room in the shed outback. Have you seen my husband? I thought I heard him yell.”
Karthenor pointed over the ridge. "Your husband is chasing sheep. Seems they got away.”
She nodded uncertainly. She had full breasts, a narrow waist. Her thin yellow cotton dress was worn from too much use. The child screamed and twisted in her arms, leaning his head back to nurse.
Karthenor studied her approvingly, licked his lips, then he and his men advanced.
***
Thomas was not shocked at what happened next. Dismayed, yes, but not shocked. It was to be expected from men like Karthenor.
Thomas had heard of such evils in his lifetime.
Karthenor showed him nothing new.
Yet afterward, Thomas was horrified to the core of his soul. He was not horrified by what Karthenor did, but by the way that Karthenor used him--Thomas--used his hands to do his dirty work.
When Karthenor and his men raped the young mother, Karthenor ordered Thomas first to hold her down. She submitted to the indignities Karthenor heaped upon her, biding her time, hoping her husband would save her.
But just as the first of Karthenor's men nearly finished, the woman's wounded husband began to scratch at the door and call for help. He must have regained consciousness, dragged himself up hill on his elbows.
Karthenor opened the door, pulled the shepherd in, and propped him in a corner. The fellow's face was a mask of pain and horror, scratched by briars, smeared with grime. He lay, breathing shallowly, unable to move or fight, and his mind retreated from the scene before him, till sometime in the night, he died.
That was the worst of it, how a husband paid for his meager attack by watching Karthenor's men rape his wife. Thomas wished to God that Karthenor would just kill the man quickly. Thomas could do nothing to help these people. He struggled to cry out, to run. The Guide would not let him.
As Karthenor's men came back to finish raping the woman, she decided to struggle. She now knew her husband could not save her; perhaps she believed Karthenor would kill her in any event.
Thomas had been holding her wrists, and he tussled with her. Her hands were thin, but strong from hard labor, and Thomas had been weakened by sitting imprisoned so long. She broke free for a moment, scratched at the eyes of her rapist, and Karthenor's man responded with a vicious uppercut to the jaw, bouncing the back of her head against the floor, hard.
At the far side of the room, Karthenor sat near the fireplace holding the woman's child in his lap. The babe was oblivious to the struggle and the scene of horror going on around him, and instead seemed fascinated by Karthenor's golden mask. The lad kept touching Karthenor's chin and laughing.
Karthenor had not seen the woman go limp. He said softly, "If she will not give it to you, just take it. Thomas, strangle her for me."
All day, Thomas had worked to free his fingers, had wanted to strangle Karthenor. Now, despite his. deepest hopes, the fingers seemed to work with a will of their own.
&nbs
p; When the woman went limp in his hands, Thomas could not release her neck. Karthenor had ordered him to strangle her, and the Guide forced Thomas to continue the work until ordered to stop.
Karthenor came and sat beside Thomas at that moment, sat down, holding the, babe, who in the silence, in the warmth of the fire, simply lay back and studied Karthenor's glowing face, like a pale moon in the darkness.
Karthenor watched Thomas, with a furrowed brow. "Do you know why I hate you, why I make you do these things?" Karthenor said at last.
"No," Thomas answered, surprised his Guide left him free enough to speak. Perhaps the Guide considered the question to be more than rhetorical.
"I hate you… because you are Maggie's uncle, and she has undone me. I was a powerful man under the Dronon's rule, one of their most trusted servants. They made me wealthy and came to my call. But Maggie tried to take that from me when she killed the Lords of the Sixth Swarm.
"Now I am a hunted man."
Karthenor stared at the dead woman's face. A bit of spittle had escaped her lips--Thomas was still choking her--and Karthenor wiped it off with his finger. "She was such a sweet girl. Her husband shouldn't have angered me. I have no patience with such.
"May I tell you secret, Thomas?"
Thomas did not answer. His Guide saw no need for it.
"This woman, this child, this man," --Karthenor waved expansively, the folds of his dark robe billowing out as if he wore priest's garb--"they don't matter. They don't matter in the least. And the worst of it is, they have chosen not to matter.”
He waited, as if for Thomas to argue, but the Guide would not let Thomas speak.
"You see," Karthenor said, "this man and woman are what we call Backwards. They have rejected technology. They're doubling back on the path of evolution. They live here in this ... house of stone and twigs, and they've chosen to do nothing with their lives. In two hundred years, no one will remember their names. They have taken their free agency, and they've chosen oblivion. It makes no difference whether they live or die. So, I've chosen to kill them. But this child--this sweet child shall live. In the morning, when we leave, I'll take it with us, and we'll dispose of it on some other world; where its life might take on meaning.
"You can let the woman go now, Thomas. She's quite dead.”
Thomas released the woman's neck, and she fell back to the dirt floor of her home. Thomas wanted to beg her forgiveness, tell her he was sorry. But it would not matter.
“Let me see your hands," Karthenor whispered. Thomas held them up for inspection.
"Would you look at that? Months of incarceration, and still you have calluses on your fingers. You must be quite the musician, Thomas Flynn. Did you see the lute hanging from the rafters? Do you know how to play it?"
Thomas looked up. Indeed, he hadn't seen it. "No. Yes," he answered both questions in turn, as his Guide demanded.
"Calluses," Karthenor whispered. "You see, Thomas, that's why I like you so much better than I like them." The barest nod indicated the dead shepherd and his wife. "You are a man who works, who strives to attain. I've heard you singing. You've a fine voice, a great talent. The universe is a better place because you are here.
“You could have stayed in your own world. You could have lived happily in Tihrglas. A talented man like you could have retired in some style. But you chose to leave that all behind, to grasp for something more. I like that in you, Thomas."
Thomas wanted to spit in Karthenor's face. The applause of this monster was an outrage.
"I see by your grimace that you do not care for me," Karthenor said. "It does not matter. You and I are not so unalike, regardless of what you think. After all, I have questioned you under the influence of my Guide. I know your secret heart. You are a man who uses people, then discards them. You care nothing for your fellowmen. You hold them in low regard. Perhaps not to the degree that I do, but you are not much better.
"Still, you make the unimportant ones serve you. You're smart enough to do that, at least, but I fear, Thomas, that you lack vision.
"So I'll teach you what the Dronon have taught me. You see... this farmer, his wife--they served no purpose. But you and I are people who matter. We are the dreamers, the achievers, those who grasp. And by letting them serve us"--he waved at the corpse of the dead woman--“in however small a manner, we suddenly have given meaning to their meaningless existence."
Karthenor looked into Thomas's eyes and said, "Tell me all that you are thinking. Speak the truth, Thomas."
"You're a monster! You're a monster to use such cold logic against me!"
“Yes?" Karthenor said.
Then, against every inclination Thomas had toward decency, he confessed, for his Guide uttered words he would never dare, "And yet, and yet, in one thing--you are right. We are much alike. Both of us take what we want from the world, in an effort to live our dreams. I debauch women and leave them alive to face their guilt. Perhaps, once, because of my callousness, I left a woman to die.” Even with the Guide on, Thomas could speak no more.
"Often farmers will plow a field, then leave it fallow after," Karthenor said. "To leave behind the women you have debauched makes sense, for one might always return and gain more service from them.
"But let me enlarge your vision," Karthenor said. "You are a simple man, from a backward planet, so I will try to speak in analogies you can comprehend: when a man owns a pig on your world, does he not use the whole creature? It is true that he feeds it, and cleans its pens, and gives it water--so that the casual bystander might be led to believe that he is a servant to his hog.
"But such a bystander would be shortsighted, wouldn't he? No, the farmer has a greater goal. As the pig matures, he uses its dung to enrich his fields. He might let it root in stony ground, so that later it is easier to plant in that field. And when the pig is ready to slaughter, the farmer takes its flesh to eat, its skin to wear, its intestines to make casings for his sausage. He will eat the pig's stomach, heart, liver, kidneys, brain, ears, blood. He will boil the bones to make soap, and feed scraps of the hog to his dogs. Those parts he does not find a use for, he will bury in the ground to fertilize his fields. Nothing is wasted. Do you understand? Nothing!"
Thomas nodded in answer to the question. "Now, the Dronon are wise in this respect. They use their own people, use them as efficiently as we use hogs. They put them to work, demanding their time, talent, and effort. No Dronon life is wasted, no moment left unaccounted for. And because of this, this great secret, the Dronon as a species shall out-match mankind. We are ephemeral. We are fog that they shall pass through on their way to glory. So, unless you wish to be destroyed, this is the lesson you must learn from the Dronon: the proper use of mankind!"
Even had Thomas been able to respond, he would have been unable to speak. Karthenor's cold wisdom astonished and horrified him. It was not the ruthlessness of his logic: it was the honesty of it, the simplicity. He had never considered mankind in such a light, and Karthenor's vision seemed to pierce a veil of darkness in Thomas's mind. Yes, he almost wanted to say, yes, that is how it should be. A life should not be wasted. Yes, I want to live in a world where life has meaning.
Yet he could not. He could not look down upon man as such an ignoble thing. Karthenor clapped Thomas on the shoulder and smiled: "I shall make a Dronon of you yet, Mr. Flynn!
"Now, Thomas, I want you to sing for me, and for the boy here,” Karthenor ordered, getting up, removing the lute strap from a peg. He handed the instrument to Thomas an admirable piece with a front of fir and a sound box of rosewood. It had been tuned by someone with a fine ear. Somehow, Thomas could not imagine the shepherd having so fine a touch with an instrument. It had to have been the wife, with her delicate bones and her long, sensitive fingers.
And all the clear arguments that he'd just heard issue from Karthenor's lips suddenly collapsed in on themselves. This woman they had murdered played the lute. This woman had played the lute, and for all Thomas knew, she might have been the greatest co
mposer who had ever lived.
Karthenor had abused her, treating her worse than Thomas had ever treated any whore who might give it to him cheap, standing against the wall in some waterfront fishing village.
If Karthenor had really believed what he said about understanding the proper use of mankind, he would have found better use for this woman. The truth was that he took from her only what he wanted.
Thomas felt surprised at himself. For one moment, he had almost been deceived into believing that he and Karthenor shared an insight, belonged to some great fraternity of "Those who matter." It was an alluring lie. As Thomas tested the instrument, plucking the lute strings so the clear notes reverberated over the room, Karthenor amended his commandment, "Sing for me tonight, Thomas. Sing songs that are sweet, so the child will sleep well. Sing the most beautiful tune you know, and sing it better than you ever have before."
So Thomas sang the ballad of Tara Gwynn, a love song for the first girl he'd ever loved, the one he loved the best. She'd died giving birth to his child. It was a piece he'd been working on in secret for many years, and he'd hoped that when he'd honed its rough edges, it would gain him some notoriety. It was to be his masterwork.
But as he sang, he did not sing for his lost love. Instead, he sang for the woman who lay dead at his feet. He sang of his loss for her, so that tears filled his eyes.
Perhaps it was not the most beautiful piece in Thomas's repertoire, though it was close, but it was the one he felt most deeply now. It shamed him to the core of his soul that on this night, of all nights, as the colored moons of Tremonthin crept out over the pine trees, shining through the windows of the cabin like ornamental lanterns, and the owls hooted in the spring woods, and Thomas had just killed a woman-it-shamed him that the Guide made Thomas obey Karthenor's order.
He sang the sweetest song he knew, and he sang it more hauntingly than he ever had sung it before, better even than he believed he could have sung it.
Then he vowed never to sing it again. So what if his masterwork went unappreciated? This shall be my sacrifice, he told himself, to atone for my conceit.
Lords of the Seventh Swarm, Book 3 of the Golden Queen Series Page 10
