Messenger of Fear

by Grant,Michael

  “There’s one thing missing from my memories,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “I need to see it.”

  The beach faded as the mist flowed from the water, from the sky, from the sand beneath my feet.

  I was alone. I had been alone. Back when the mist had first come for me.

  “What the . . . Is this fog? What is—” I had stopped talking then when I glimpsed a figure coming toward me from that sickly yellow mist. I had squinted to see clearly, to discern first the shape and then the detail of that gaunt, pale face framed by long black hair.

  I had noted the coat, the shirt, the boots, the buttons of death’s heads. The rings on his hands, one a symbol of life, the other a representation of agony.

  I had looked into the blue eyes, searching for an explanation. And he had said to me, “I am the Messenger of Fear. I offer you a game.”

  He had explained my very limited options to me. I could choose to play the game, and if I won, I would go free. And if I lost, I would be punished for my deeds. I would be scourged for the death of Samantha Early. I would endure my worst fear.

  I had chosen to play the game. It had been grueling, all but impossible. I had been made to cross a desert wasteland and tasked to collect seven objects that would be visible, but just barely.

  Seven objects, scattered on sun-blasted rocks and barely peeking out from rattlesnake holes.

  A pen.

  A pad of paper.

  A combination lock.

  A folded flag.

  A gun.

  A skull.

  A tattered brown teddy bear.

  There had been no time limit set, except that hunger and thirst applied their own unique pressures. It had taken me many hours, or at least I had experienced them as hours. Hours of wandering beneath a blistering sky, denying as I walked that I understood the significance of the objects.

  But when I was done, when I held all seven objects in weary fingers, I knew.

  Memory faded away and I once again beheld the beautiful Pacific, the waves gentling now as the sun turned all the world pink and orange and gold.

  “I won the game,” I said.

  “Yes,” Messenger said. “You were free to go. You did not.”

  I shook my head, recalling that last as well, but Messenger told it to me as if it was a story I had never heard.

  “I told you that you had won. That you were free to go on. And you said, ‘No.’ That you did not deserve to walk free. That you deserved to be punished.”

  “Daniel was there,” I said.

  Messenger displayed one of his rare, fractional, fleeting smiles that never quite became a smile. “Daniel generally is.”

  “He said he had a way. He said it was not a punishment he could impose, but rather one I could choose to accept. But once I accepted . . .”

  “You would be bound. You would be bound until your penance had been completed.”

  I nodded. I wondered if Messenger had come to this same duty by a similar path. I believed he had. I doubted he would ever tell me the how and the why of it, but in that I proved to be mistaken. It would be a long time coming, but in the end I would know all.

  “I am to be the Messenger of Fear,” I said, and my voice no longer quavered as I spoke, though this terrible truth would have left me whimpering before.

  “When you have learned,” Messenger said. “When you are ready.”

  I suppose I should have been accustomed to sudden changes of venue, but it still came as a surprise when I blinked, opened my eyes, and saw that I was in a place like no place I had ever known or imagined.

  It was both an open and a closed space, at once vast and intimate. I felt myself to be at the bottom of a well, a cylinder driven deep into the earth. Hundreds of feet, maybe even thousands. Looking straight up, I could make out a flattened circle of stars, and even the melancholy lights of a passenger jet miles above.

  The sides of this well were lined with dull golden rectangles, each perhaps ten feet tall and half as wide. All that I could see—and most were too far above me to be seen clearly—seemed to have been inscribed in careful, ornate calligraphy.

  There was no other visible source of light that I could see, no lamps or sconces or torches. But there was a glow greater than could possibly have come from the cold stars, and of far warmer hues. It seemed almost that the gold itself was glowing softly.

  The nearest of these tablets ended just above my head, and peering through the gloom at this, I read names. Some were easily recognized: Tom, Harley, Diana. Others were more exotic: Akim, Shadan, Caratacus. Some were in Western script; others appeared to be Chinese or Japanese, Arabic or Hebrew. There must have been thousands of names. Maybe tens of thousands.

  While the well was basically circular, one wall was flattened, and on this wall no golden tablets glowed. Instead there was a hugely tall painting, or perhaps what is called a fresco—paint saturated into fresh plaster. I could see only the bottom of it clearly but still had the impression of three distinct sections.

  One was a sort of group portrait, seven strong and proud people in flowing robes, their heads wreathed in a yellow mist, almost like a halo.

  The second was a single female figure. She was tall, dressed in armor, with a leather skirt and greaves on the legs and arms. She held a short sword in one hand and hefted a shield with the other. She did not look as if she were pretending to be a warrior. She looked like she’d been born a warrior.

  “You gaze upon the picture of Isthil, goddess of justice and wickedness.”

  “I thought it might be,” I said. “This is old.”

  “This place was old before the first pyramids,” Messenger said.

  “Isthil is one of the seven in the other portrait,” I said.

  “Yes. The Heptarchy, seven gods given dominion over the affairs of man, in service to the Source. Estrark, goddess of harvest and hunger. Gabril, god of flesh and spirit. Ash, god of peace and war. Yusil, goddess of creation and destruction. Ottan-ka, god of pain and joy.”

  “Isthil makes six,” I pointed out. “Who is the seventh? The beautiful . . . well, I can’t tell if it’s male or female.”

  “That is Malech. Malech is neither male nor female, for Malech is the god of pleasure and denial. Malech . . . well, you must understand that there is no peace between the gods. Some have retreated from the world, no longer necessary. Some are true to their calling. But Malech, and Ash, too, have turned against man.”

  “Oriax,” I said, realizing it even as I said it. “She’s Malech’s messenger. As you are Isthil’s.”

  Messenger didn’t speak, leaving my statement to stand as truth.

  “The last picture. I can’t even . . . It’s just a sort of sun, or star, or . . .” I frowned. The picture of the Heptarchy and the portrait of Isthil were both realistic pictures within the limits of an earlier artistic sensibility. This last was abstract—symbolic, perhaps.

  “The Source,” Messenger said.

  “And what is the Source?”

  “The ultimate balance, more important than any other. Each of the gods maintains a balance between ends of a spectrum. Harvest and hunger. Creation and destruction. But the essential balance that transcends every other is between existence and nonexistence. Existence is not a simple thing. It takes work. It takes balance. In our small way, we labor to maintain the balance.”

  This was without doubt the most words Messenger had ever spoken to me. I understood that his willingness to answer questions was because an important lesson was being taught. This was school. I was determined to get all from him that I could.

  “Where are we?” I asked Messenger. “This place.”

  “This is the Shamanvold. Here on these gold tablets are written the names of all the Messengers who have served Isthil and the balance She maintains.”

  I tore my attention from this overpowering display to look at Messenger. He gazed up with an expression of profoundest respect. But that respect was not simple awe. This was n
ot worship. Rather he seemed moved and determined, but also terribly sad.

  They had buried my father at Arlington National Cemetery. It is a sacred place with its row upon row of stark-white marble markers, each testifying to a man or woman who has died in service. Everyone there had been sad and reverent and respectful as they lowered the casket into the ground. But I had looked past our own funeral, past my mother and my relatives, and I had focused on the face of a very old man, an old soldier who was no part of our ceremony. He was a man who was not just seeing but remembering, knowing in his bones and to the depths of his soul what the place represented. Such sadness. But pride, too.

  I was looking at that old soldier as the honor guard fired their rifles for my father. He had looked up then, seen me watching him, and raised a feeble hand in salute.

  I saw now a reflection of that same sadness and pride on Messenger’s much younger face. Messenger wasn’t a visitor to this place—he was part of it, part of whatever it represented. He understood in a way that I did not, what we both were seeing.

  “One day, when my service is done, my name will be inscribed here. And yours,” Messenger said. “Then we will each face a choice.” He didn’t elaborate, and I could see his briefly open expression closing down.

  “I don’t understand it all,” I admitted.

  A sound came from him then that I would not have thought possible: he laughed. “Nor should you, yet. As I said, not everything can be taught. Many things must be lived.” He cocked his head, looked at me appraisingly, maybe even with a glimmer of affection, and said, “Enough for now. Pain is balanced with joy, and it is time you learned something about that. There are small joys and compensations in this duty we perform.”

  “Joys?” I was incredulous. If there were joys to be found in this doom I had chosen, I failed to guess what they might be.

  “Come,” Messenger said.

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  SOMETHING WAS ODD ABOUT THE HOUSE. FOR one thing, it was distinctly southwestern in flavor, with thick adobe walls of a soft ochre color. The floors were dark hardwood, the lights soft, and then I realized why it struck me as so strange. The walls were not, in fact, thick adobe; on closer examination, they were glass panels and the ochre look was a projection. A very convincing projection that came from no source I could discover.

  We passed into a dining room, where a family sat. Two children, both girls, sisters by their features but at the same time charmingly different. One had red hair and a pale but sunburned complexion. The other was Latina, I imagined, for her coloration was right at home in this decor. The first girl was four or maybe five, the other a tween.

  They were eating pizza, and I am ashamed to admit that the sight of the pepperoni caused a hunger pang in my neglected belly.

  It was easy to see how the girls had come by their different appearance, for their parents, a mother and father, were older images of that same dichotomy, one pale, one dark.

  The father said, “Did we not get red pepper flakes? I don’t like it unless it’s spicy.”

  The older girl flicked a package to him, which landed on his plate. He chided her, but everyone laughed.

  The mother said, “Yes?” It was the “Yes” you use to answer a phone, although if there was a phone, it was so small as to be invisible. Then, with a resigned sigh, she said, “Twenty minutes.”

  “Oh, come on,” the father moaned. “You have to go?”

  “I’m indispensable,” the mother joked as she stood up. “Girls, don’t drive your father crazy—I have to go to work.”

  There was something familiar in her voice, then in her face, and then it fell into place.

  “Is that . . .”

  “Liam and Emma. In twenty years,” Messenger said.

  “Where is she going?”

  “She’s on call,” he said. “She’s a doctor. A veterinary surgeon.”

  I smiled, and then my smile faded as I remembered another poor penitent. “And what about Derek in twenty years?”

  Messenger was silent for a long time. At last he said, “Take what joys come, Mara. They will be few.”

  “Where is he, Messenger? Where is the boy whose mind we broke?”

  “He is at the Shoals.”

  “And what is that?”

  He shrugged. “A prison. A hospital. A sanctuary. It is what its residents make of it. A last chance to find his way back to sanity.”

  “Just tell me one thing, Messenger,” I said. “Just tell me that you know it was too harsh. Tell me that you know that we did wrong while trying to do right.” He was silent, so I tried one last time. “Tell me that you will cry for Derek.”

  He said nothing. He didn’t even look at me. But I saw tears in his eyes. He clenched one hand into a fist and pressed it against his heart, and nodded so slightly that I could have doubted I’d seen it.

  But I did not doubt.

  “One more question and I will leave off. You created the illusion of Kayla. You created a face to conceal my own. Whose face was it, Messenger?”

  He didn’t answer, and I didn’t really need him to. The color of the hair was different, but he had used the face of his beloved Ariadne.

  Small joys and compensations.

  We stood there, unseen, watching as Liam and Emma’s family argued over who would get the last slice. Then Messenger said, “It’s time to go.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “To do our duty.”

  We left the house and were somewhere very different, ready to witness, ready to offer, ready to punish, to keep the balance of the world.

  To be the Messengers of Fear.

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  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Every book is a collaboration. I’m lucky because my collaborator-in-chief, Katherine Tegen, is also my smarter, wiser friend. Through her I am incredibly fortunate to have the help of Kelsey Horton, Kathryn Silsand, and Jennifer Strada, Joel Tippie and Amy Ryan, Raymond Colon and Lauren Flower and Casey McIntyre. We had fun creating this book. We all hope you had fun reading it. More are coming.

  I’m on Twitter as @TheFayz. I can’t answer every tweet, but I read them all, and I love hearing from you, because you are the final element of this collaboration. Once I’m done writing it, the story is yours.

  Thanks.

  —Michael Grant

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MICHAEL GRANT is the author of the Gone series and the Magnificent Twelve series. You can visit him online at www.themichaelgrant.com and follow him on Twitter @thefayz.

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  COPYRIGHT

  Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

  MESSENGER OF FEAR. Copyright © 2014 by Michael Grant. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or here in after invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  [tk]

  ISBN 978-0-06-220740-1

  EPub Edition April 2014 ISBN 9780062341273
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