by M. C. Planck
“Look at me not caring,” Christopher said. “I can pay,” he told Krellyan. “This is more than enough for your standard rate, several times over. Will you deny me this?”
“If you gave the tael to Nordland, then perhaps we could appease him.” Faren explained the options. “If you claim it, as I think legally you can, then he might claim your head, as I think legally he can.”
“I understood that the first time. It changes nothing.”
“There will still be much left over for Nordland,” Krellyan said. “Even after the King takes his tax.” The King got a quarter of the tael taken out of the Wild. That was what made him King.
“Perhaps not,” Christopher said. “Many of my men need regeneration. They are missing too many parts to fight. And some of my men need more than just revival. I brought one home in a sack. A small sack. If it is possible to revive him, I will, even if it costs every grain of tael in my possession.
“Is it possible?” he asked Krellyan point-blank, knowing the man could not dissemble here, not even a little.
“It is possible,” Krellyan said, “but only for me. None else can do this.”
“Well, then,” Christopher said. “After you get done charging me for that unique service, and all of the preservation spells, and resupplying my army, Nordland can have whatever crumbs of profit are left. I’ll not make a fuss.”
Faren grinned, in spite of everything. “We might make a priest of you yet.”
“I will revive your men,” Krellyan said. “But you must understand, not all of them will return. We do not compel them, only invite them back. There are always a few that harbored secret shame or despair, and they do not return.”
“They will come back,” Steuben said. “For a commander like the Pater, they will return. They did not desert him in the field, they will not desert him now.”
Christopher thought of his act in extremis, the young man he had shot. He could only hope for the best.
“Again you expose yourself to the world, to save those we would have abandoned,” Krellyan said. “But what if we need you? Can you risk yourself so freely now?”
“You don’t need me,” Christopher said sadly. “Jhom can make the guns. Fae can make the powder. And Karl can lead the army.”
“You underestimate yourself,” Faren said. “Stop it. It’s stupid and weak.”
“For now, you may rest here in the Cathedral,” Krellyan said. “But when the King calls you to account for your actions, as surely he will, you will go naked before him. We will save your men, but you must save yourself.”
“I do not hold a grudge against Nordland,” Christopher said, and surprisingly, it was true. “I will make whatever peace he allows. I just want my men back.”
“This time you will kneel before rank?” Faren asked, his eyes crinkling.
“Yes,” Christopher said. “I will positively grovel. I’ve learned my lesson.”
They gave him three days before a small troop of armed men appeared at the Cathedral, bearing a warrant. It wasn’t for his arrest, but only for questioning. There might be hope.
He bathed again and had his beard trimmed. He had no armor or fancy clothes, but his uniform was fresh and neat, mended by magic in the Cathedral. He would have worn it regardless of what else he owned, anyway. And of course he wore his sword, awkwardly brushing it out of the way as he climbed into the carriage.
It wasn’t a very nice carriage, which was not reassuring. Still, he was a first rank, so he didn’t deserve much. He still had hope, even when he entered through a side gate, for all the dark corridors and iron doors he passed, even down into the stone bowels of the great fortress of Kingsrock. He had hope right up until the black waves of the sleep spell laid him out on the floor.
When he awoke, naked and bound, gagged and blinded by tough leather, his hands confined in iron gloves, he discovered that hope had departed sometime in the night.
After an interminable period, hands lifted and carried him roughly. The echoes of their footsteps told him when they entered a larger chamber and tossed him onto a hard surface. His nose, enhanced by the deprivation of his other senses, detected foul and rank odors, the stench of blood on metal, and worse.
“Do you know why you are here?” a voice said, unpleasant and oily. “No, it is not on account of that witless coward Nordland. He hates you, yes, but in a completely ineffective and futile way. No, you are here for something far more serious.
“You have been accused of consorting with the enemy. Your fanciful tale fools only credulous priests who believe in miracles. But the men who must actually run the Kingdom are not so easily deceived. We loyal servants of the King protect his interests, even when he is not aware of the danger.
“No first rank could have come home from such overwhelming odds. No commoners could have defeated such foes. There is only one explanation. You made a deal with the enemy. They let you go to work some further wickedness.”
Christopher struggled to speak but could not make any comprehensible sound through the gag. Then he realized he did not have to. They could almost certainly read his mind.
“You are clever, Pater. We can indeed. And you cannot lie to us. You will tell us everything. We are skilled at ferreting out secrets.”
I am innocent, he pounded out with his brain. You already know that, you can see that. You can see how we won. Demand demonstrations, interrogate other men.
His thoughts were interrupted by blinding fire. They had struck him with something, perhaps a whip. Before he could frame a new thought, they struck him again and again.
“We are not interested in your innocence,” the voice said, in a lull in the violence. “We want your secrets. We know you have them. You must tell us.”
The pain worked against them, though. It made it easy for him to focus on something else. But that was a bad thought, because now they beat him with sticks.
In a very short amount of time they exhausted his tael, and his body felt the pain without any filter. He screamed now. He begged and pleaded with garbled ravings, demanding justice, reason, sense. But no voice answered him, and his incoherent howls merely bounced off the stony chamber before creeping into the void.
Stop it, he cried out in his mind. I will tell you everything. How to make guns. How to make gunpowder. Part of his mind recoiled at this surrender. He could not give in to these brutes. They were in the wrong, and sooner or later the Saint would rescue him.
“You shouldn’t have thought that,” the voice said, and to prove their absolute power, to demonstrate that they did not care what happened after, they drove nails through the blindfold and into his eyes.
“You see,” the voice said, “or you would if you didn’t have nails in your eyes, we know you have a secret. The fact that you won’t tell us your secret means it is traitorous. So once you do tell us, and you will tell us, this I can assure you, then we will execute you for treason, and traitors are not revived. The only door out of here leads to a grave. We will make you crawl to that door, but we will not let you pass through it until you give us your secret.”
If one does not care what one breaks permanently, and one is not worried about the victim dying, one can easily inflict an astonishing amount of pain. They did not bother with refinements like drilling teeth or bamboo shoots under the fingernails but simply smashed his legs with hammers, cracking ankles, shins, knees, and thighs as they worked up his body. Then they healed him before he bled to death, and did it again.
There was no respite while they asked questions. They never asked questions. Instead, they waited for his mind to reveal itself. But when he began to disassociate, and visions of home and family beckoned him into the deep recesses of his mind, where nothing but memory could reach him, they dismissed it as incoherent delusion. So they healed him again, brought him back to the present, and started over.
Finally they dumped him in his cell, raw and broken and bleeding. He would never walk again. His legs were fused from random healings into odd and useless shapes. His ey
es itched horribly, the itch worse than the dull and pounding pain, but he was bound into immobility and could not scratch. Every time his eyelids tried to blink the nails twinged his nerves and made him scream. And the pain made his eyelids twitch.
He lay in the dark and tried to die.
Later, though time had hardly any meaning anymore, someone came into the room with him. His gag was removed.
“Stop,” he sobbed, though they had not done anything yet. “I’ll tell you anything.”
“No, I want to tell you a secret, Pater,” said a different voice, a female voice. “I don’t care if you talk. I just want you to scream.”
His mouth was forced open, some metal device holding it wide. With a pair of pliers she reached in and crushed one of his teeth.
“Don’t drown,” she said, as he shrieked and wretched on blood and shattered bone. “Not yet. I’ve paid too high a price for this.
“You do know who I am, yes?” Her banter was cruel mockery in the dull echoes of his tiny cell. He tried to guess what she wanted to hear. The truth no longer mattered to him, only the avoidance of pain.
“No, this is important,” she said. “You have to know who I am. We have much history together, you and I. You cut me first, you know.” She drew something sharp across his stomach, blood welling in its wake. “I came to relieve you of a sword you were not fit to wield. I came so many times, and each time, I offered you your life.
“I gulled the boy and cut his throat, then waited while my men went into your chapel. If you had fought less, they would have taken the blade, your Saint would have revived you, and neither of us would be here now. But you killed my men and made me flee in shame.
“I met you on the road and repaid you in kind, shooting your man. Had you given me the blade, your Saint would have revived him, and neither of us would be here now.
“I sent a sweet young woman to test her skill against you. Had you followed her to her shack and drunk her drugged wine, she would have taken the sword and spared you. True, I would have killed you anyway, out of revenge, but again, your Saint would have revived you. And we would not be here now.
“I raised an army, and allied with a lord, an act detestable to me, but you would not cooperate. True enough, he would not have let you live again, but by then my goodwill was exhausted.
“I scoured the land for every enemy you had made and brought all of them together to your chapel in the dead of night and opened your door to them. Against even this you prevailed. And I began to wonder.
“Bart feared you, not as a foe but as a rival. The pacifist Saint welcomed you and your sword like a brother. When Black and White both took you to their bosom, how was I not to wonder? There are Powers who live in the Deep Dark and disturb even the gods’ dreams. And sometimes they walk among us as men.
“So I put my suspicion to the test. Do you know how easy it was to get your allies to turn back, to fail to meet your rendezvous? A bit of paper, a blob of wax, and around they went.
“And yet you lived. Then I understood you were more than you seemed. I spoke of my fears, and my proofs, in places where I knew those who even I fear would hear. And they, proving wise, put you to the question.
“And now here you are, caught out at last, the trap sprung by my hand. Their tests have proven your body human, which means you were only ever a mere instrument, not a Power in your own right. But that will not spare you. The Powers of Darkness do not succor failure, and the King’s torturers do not succor. But even this is not enough to condemn you utterly. That, you did on your own.
“Poor thing, you don’t even know how. Because it will pain you, I will tell you. Because I hate you, I will tell you only the truth.
“Your King is wroth. You took out two hundred cattle, and instead of bringing home tael, you spent it. What kind of harvest is that? For yes, it was the harvest, though you mooing cows comprehend it not.
“Do you see the arrangement, clever priest? The monsters give us tael. But where do they get it from? Why, from us. The nobles feed our young men into the sausage grinder and reap the bounty. The monsters’ nobles, for I assume they have them too—nowhere on this wretched plane can one escape nobles and their filthy habits—the monsters’ nobles do the same. They feed each other the harvest.”
Her words stabbed like spears, piercing with truth.
“So no one will save you now. Your ultimate crime was surviving. Your crime was exposing the system for what it is, for making clear the unspoken but obvious, for bringing the unconscious pact with darkness into the light of day. No noble can afford to let you live, and your pathetic Church depends on the charity of the nobles.”
Steuben’s words came back to haunt him, the hidden balance the captain had feared disturbing now exposed.
“You will die here, in this dungeon, after long pain, and your body will turn to ash and be forgotten. But I will remember that I once bit the hand of a Power, for no better reason than I could.” In laughing triumph she brought a hammer down on his groin, smashing flesh into jelly. His screams were no longer vocal.
“You ask for healing? I have none, which is a shame. I can torture you but once. Yet perhaps the guard will not tire of the disgusting pleasures I allow him. Then I will return again tomorrow, after the inquisitors have done for the day and left you broken but not dying.”
“I,” he mumbled around the steel gag, “can heal.” He still had spells in his head, for what good they did him. Bound, he could not use them. They were not healing spells, but he could always substitute a healing if he wanted to.
“Of course,” she said, “you are a priest. I will let you heal yourself, because both you and I know I will only break you again.” He felt a bond loosen, and his left hand was freed. The steel in his mouth went away.
One chance to act, instead of being acted on.
He put his hand to his chest, not to the fire in his groin or the spikes in his eyes, but to his own heart, and spoke the ugly word in Celestial, harsh and clanging.
Black energy flowed from his hand, the stench of rotting meat filling the air, although in this place it was merely the smell of home. Pain again, as the organs in his chest ruptured, but the knowledge that it was the last pain he would ever feel robbed it of its power. When his mind could no longer contain words, all that was left was a face, framed in red hair, fading into darkness.
31.
REVIVAL
He lay in the impossibly white room, perfectly still. Everything was white. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, the bedsheets, the chair. Only the man standing in the doorway was not perfectly, incandescently white. But his robes were.
“It is time to go,” Krellyan said, his voice urgent.
Christopher did not feel urgent. He was comfortable, or rather, he wasn’t uncomfortable. More precisely, he didn’t feel anything at all. He thought about that for an indeterminate amount of time.
“Is my wife here?” he asked finally.
“No,” Krellyan admitted, “but the only chance you will ever see her again lies through this door.”
“Okay.”
Christopher got up and walked through the doorway.
32.
RETURN
He lay in the warm brown room, the wooden panels glowing with polish, light-stones flickering from the walls. A man stood beside him in white robes.
“Welcome back,” Krellyan said, his voice gentle.
Christopher did not speak, his body empty and drained. Fury burned in him, but the flames were distant and cast no warmth yet.
“Do not be quick to anger,” Krellyan said. “The King has been generous. His inquisitors could find no crime to charge you with. Thus your death was wrongful, and so he has released you from taxes. This alone will pay for your revival, your lost rank, and your regeneration. Your legs will be healed, your body made whole, your rank restored. The King will admit to no wrong, but he has been generous.”
Christopher turned his face to the wall. Krellyan went on, with the faintest hint
of desperation.
“Do not be foolish. Your enemies are legion, but you have many advantages. Unknown allies aid us; your body was left on our doorstep, when clearly our enemies meant it to burn. Nordland abides by your bargain and makes no claim. You still have at hand enough tael to gain fifth rank, with the prestige and powers it brings. You have tael and gold beyond that, to make you wealthy even by your standards. You have an army behind you, men loyal unto death and beyond. All but two have come back, an astonishing percentage under the best of times. Do not be foolish.”
Christopher closed his eyes.
“What would you have of me?” Krellyan’s voice choked with regret, shame, impotent anger.
Into the empty space between them, Christopher whispered, “The system is corrupt.”
The men waited in silence for a while.
“Yes,” Krellyan agreed, soft and sad. “The system is corrupt.”
Christopher opened his eyes and stared out across the room, into the future.
“I think I know what I am supposed to do now.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This story took three months to write and ten years to tell. Special thanks to my nephews, David, Alex, Dylan, and honorary nephew, Fletcher, for their unflagging enthusiasm; to Josh, for making me rewrite the beginning; to Kristin, for making me rewrite the beginning again; to Julia, for making me look smarter than I am; to Lou, for believing in the book; and always, to Sara, for believing in me.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
M.C. Planck is the author of The Kassa Gambit. After a nearly-transient childhood, he hitchhiked across the country and ran out of money in Arizona. So he stayed there for thirty years, raising dogs, getting a degree in philosophy, and founding a scientific instrument company. Having read virtually everything by the old masters of SF&F, he decided he was ready to write. A decade later, with a little help from the Critters online critique group, he was actually ready. He was relieved to find that writing novels is easier than writing software, as a single punctuation error won’t cause your audience to explode and die. When he ran out of dogs, he moved to Australia to raise his daughter with kangaroos. Visit his website at www.mcplanck.com.
