The Promise of the Child

by Tom Toner

  “Ha! I am quite sure.” Elatine sat opposite Sotiris, leg stretched out, one great toe engaged in massaging his pet. A broad grin had begun to split his face. “By what new conditions can you give the brat away? Assassins have tried, and failed, to bring him to me many times already.”

  Sotiris shrugged. “I have a little bird in my employ, one that sings more sweetly than any other. Now that he is caged, the Lyonothamnine Court won’t resist gathering to see.” He sat back, looking at Elatine.

  In truth he had no guarantee that the famously slippery and constantly moving royalty of the First would assemble to see Lycaste, but it was all Sotiris had. The Melius’s beauty—obvious when Sotiris had first set eyes upon him—was indeed extraordinary, even from the perspective of another species, but that did not guarantee him an audience with the sovereign Lyonothamnus, let alone the First Court. Sotiris hoped in the meantime that Lycaste would be safe, whatever happened, but could not even be certain of that.

  “What does he do?” asked Elatine, his smile vanished. “Perform tricks?”

  “Just know that they will be there,” Sotiris replied, “in the Sarine Palace, from the middle of the Octrate Moon. Vanquish the Second, as is your destiny, and I shall see that your entry into the noble First lands goes unhindered.”

  “The Octrate is almost upon us. Mistakes are made by rushing in, Immortal,” Elatine said. He grunted humourlessly. “Besides, what certainty have you? Why should I trust my forces to the word of one, even one such as you?”

  “Because I have arranged it, Lord Commander.” Sotiris brought the smile back into his eyes. “The Firstling Royal Court will be there—you have my word.”

  Elatine’s great concave ears flattened slightly as he regarded him, his hand toying with the razor. “I’m no fool, Amaranthine,” he said slowly. “There is more going on at the Sarine Palace than you let on. I know—the Skylings have described it to me. Someone has dared to challenge the Firmament, someone powerful, and you wish to brandish my legions against him—is that not the truth?”

  Sotiris did his best to hide his surprise as the warlord looked at him accusingly. In the Asiatic tongue, the Skylings were creatures from myths and fables, dwellers from the worlds above. Aside from merely capturing lone Prism, Elatine also appeared to be in communion with one or more of their kingdoms.

  “You see, the simple tactician knows more than you realise,” Ela-tine continued, staring earnestly at him as he stood. “Perhaps I’ll retreat to my new capital at Vanadzor to watch your heavens crumble. How would you like that?”

  Sotiris smiled wearily, looking up at the looming Melius. “By all means, enjoy your successes. But know that greatness will ever elude you if you do.” A butterfly caught in Sotiris’s stomach as he heard the echo of Aaron’s own words to him.

  Elatine continued to stand above him, his face grave. Suddenly his trollish features softened in a surprisingly gentle laugh. “Never fear, Amaranthine. I may still hear your terms, but give me time to think on it. My emissaries say Goniolimon Berenzargol, the Secondling Prince, waits for me at Elblag Second, upriver—I can only think he wishes to prove his loyalty to King Lyonothamnus and his court.” He shook his huge head with a smile. “They say the boy-king still cares more for toys than conversation, let alone remembering individuals from the simpering masses who must crowd him each day.” He sat back down, still shaking his head. “When I was that age I worked the fields with my brothers. I knew nothing of luxury.”

  Sotiris indicated the room, his good humour returning. “Nor do you now.”

  Elatine snorted approvingly. “I was pleased, when I reached the Second, to see that my spies had not exaggerated. Each aristocratic family owns their own galleon. Every one.” He smirked, turning up the corners of his wide lips. “It is always a welcome sight to see such wastefulness in one’s enemy.” He regarded the Amaranthine, pointing a thick, many-jointed finger. “They are waiting because they think themselves too noble to suffer. Provincial conventions decree that I must spare their lives, taking only the wealth I find and disseminating it, let alone stop at the borders of the First. Think of it—men who would have shot at me only the day before, and we’re supposed to sit down and dine together, discussing the weather, passing salt. Well, I tell you, Immortal, they’re in for a shock.”

  Sotiris watched the lionhound stretch luxuriously, his thoughts returning for a moment to the swirling flurry of snow and that colossal, misted interior. The bellow of fury and terror he’d heard still seemed to echo somewhere, as if locked away in the paper walls. He wondered if the vision of the man that confronted him each time he slept watched his every action, too—if he was here in this origami chamber with them at this moment.

  Elatine had been observing him sink into daydreams. “Am I boring you, Amaranthine?”

  He shook himself internally, forcing some speed into his thoughts. “So we are agreed? You will not slow your advance?”

  “I will follow your lead,” Elatine replied, “if everything is as you say, and if my funds are improved somewhat for the trouble.”

  “Of course.”

  The warlord looked at Sotiris like a man about to bargain once more. The Amaranthine knew the look well. “You could sweeten our deal with a miracle, if it pleases you. I haven’t seen one since my very first meeting with your kind.”

  Elatine meant the Amaranthine Scrophularia, a locally famous madman in his home Province, who had cast off his skin in a rainbow flutter and declared himself immortal, an aboriginal man of the Old World, come to recruit Elatine to save the people of the Twenty-Second. Scrophularia, or Francesco Di Paolo as Sotiris had once known him, was now safely tucked away in a Utopia on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, totally unaware that the war he’d started still raged.

  “What would you like?” Sotiris asked warily.

  “Anything. Something to amaze me.”

  Sotiris glanced around, standing from the cushions. “You say the material of this camp is indestructible?”

  Elatine nodded.

  The Amaranthine took a breath and swept his gaze across the wall, looking down and mentally dividing the ground between himself and the waking lionhound. He stepped away.

  A line of black began to form at once in the laminate, bubbling and spitting, the substance separating like a gangrenous wound. The hound jumped up, barking ferociously at the hissing floor.

  Elatine yelped with delight, clapping his gigantic hands and prancing away from the damage. “Enough! Stop!” He laughed, dropping to a chair while the lionhound paced, growling at the sizzling floor. “How? You must tell me, how can you do this? How is it done?”

  “Did you become frustrated with magic shows as a boy?”

  “Ah, but this isn’t magic, I know that much.”

  “It is very hard to explain.” In truth it wasn’t, but Sotiris had no wish to tell the Melius he would never live long enough even to begin to see the changes in his body that would lead to such abilities.

  Elatine shooed the aggravated lionhound out of the way to look at the cooling floor. “Can you heal? That is something I’ve always wanted to know.”

  Sotiris shook his head. “I have limited control. Building requires more skill than destruction, as I’m sure you of all people understand, Commander.”

  The warlord nodded impatiently. “But you grow more powerful, more potent, as you age?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you are truly very old? Many thousands of years?”

  “Almost too many to recall.”

  Elatine touched a hand to his rump. “I have this problem, you see. It has plagued me since I left the Seventeenth. Acid, scalding bowel movements, pain when I sit down. Don’t suppose you experience such things, do you? You Immortals cannot feel anything, I hear.”

  Sotiris sat again. The man could talk to himself all day. “It’s your diet, I expect.”

  “My what?”

  “Eat softer, more fibrous foods.”

  Elatine laughed. “Fine,
you joke, I was wrong to ask. My fleshdoctors agree it is troubled thoughts, the pressure of command. I will listen to their advice, I think.”

  Sotiris put a hand to his brow.

  “Anyway,” the Melius continued, his wide eyes gleaming from the fits of laughter, “it is a curse, is it not?”

  Sotiris looked up. “Immortality? Oh, yes.” He knew precisely where Elatine was going with his questions.

  Elatine paused, looking to the window almost casually. “But how did you become this way?”

  Sotiris wished he could have some water for his mouth. “I was part of something a long time ago. There were hundreds of thousands of us. Now only a few remain.”

  The warlord paced to the bedchamber, choosing his words. “Is it attainable? Be honest with me, Amaranthine, I must have honesty.”

  There. They always asked. “Anything is attainable,” he replied.

  “Be careful,” Elatine said, smiling, his vast grinning jaws gummy and shark-like, “I could take some hope from that, were it suggested to me by any normal person.”

  Sotiris glanced up at the horrific parody of a man staring down at him. He knew Elatine would gladly kill him for the gift of Immortality, were that the way to gain it, and reflected on what a poor choice of title it was. The Firmament was woven of jealousy, an envy that burned in every hominid race, even on the Old World. “I told you, it’s a curse.”

  Like the man his legions were marching to confront, there were plenty of things the full extent of which Elatine didn’t need to know. The truth Sotiris chose to hide from him was simply that the more you lived, the more you needed to keep doing it. Enlightenment came to Sotiris as simple pleasures—a tug of wind, the slant of evening light, a deep breath in cold, clear air. The alternative to such a convivial state became increasingly unthinkable with each passing year. Immortality didn’t drive you mad, as people had once assumed—not for a while, anyway—and the loneliness did not become unbearable every year you lost a friend. Not one person (at least not among those he’d known) had chosen suicide after their first turbulent five hundred years or so, when the idea is still fresh that you’re doing something unnatural, that you’ve made a mistake. Passing that milestone, the thoughts in your head slowing, all lusts and hungers receding, tended to make one realise that Life, pronounced in a firm upper case, had more to show anyone intrepid enough to keep sailing across its waters. Sotiris’s Greek roots helped him relate to the metaphor, his own life passing from tiny island-speckled seas into deep, cold oceans that appeared to stretch forever. And they did go on forever, or near enough to it—that was guaranteed; it was one’s own state, however, one’s body, the little ramshackle boat you used to sail through the storms, that would let you down in the end.

  “I understand now why some people say it is hard work carrying on a conversation with an Immortal,” said Elatine, stepping closer to inspect him. “You haven’t chosen this moment to die on me, have you, Amaranthine?”

  “I’m sorry—were you saying something?”

  “I was asking where you will go now.”

  “Oh, here and there. Perhaps I’ll see you at your coronation, Commander.”

  “I’m sure you will,” Elatine replied with a wry smile. They both watched the lionhound as it began licking itself with wet slurping noises. Its testicles would shine with a mirror finish by the time it was done with them.

  Elatine went back to scratching his hound. It rolled over in anticipation, one leg trembling, a large brown eye lolling in their direction.

  “Why not stay a while, Amaranthine? I like your company, and we could use you here at the front.”

  “You hardly need my help, Elatine. Besides, there are things I must do.”

  “What sort of business does an Immortal get up to? Do you have friends to visit?”

  Sotiris shrugged, standing again. “Something like that.”

  The city by the lake was a column of darkness some miles across, the smoke torn and slanted towards the mountains by the fresh wind. Lines of fleeing Secondlings swamped the far roads, some mounted, others pulling clanking wheeled houses as fast as they could. Inside the city seething armies fought, the small pops of detonations still coming from somewhere inside the walls as messenger birds wheeled and dipped against the cream sky. Sotiris was thinking of Zigadenus, the anointed poster boy of the First and Elatine’s old nemesis, as he made his way along the hilltop to the distant road that spanned the tea-coloured water into Elblag Second. He’d heard nothing but praise for the dead man, from both sides of the war. Lenient and merciful, he apparently had an eye for beauty both great and modest. He would have let the city be.

  The dream he’d had in the Utopia was to be the last of their strange meetings, he felt sure of it, even though the offer still went unanswered. In the darkness that came with each blink, Sotiris saw the cathedral-space with its blood-red walls, the snow melting as it drifted inside from the strange, timeless night. Now he could feel Aaron waiting for him just beyond those mountains: a presence almost as tangible as if they were walking side by side. He thought of Tussilago, the Melius servant who’d rowed him across the small, buoyant sea, and his warning that Sotiris might not return.

  Sotiris pulled off his helmet and dropped it in the weeds by the roadside. Bilocation was not possible this far from the Old World’s magnetic poles, and attempting it might well ruin his mind before its time. He would have to settle for a fast stroll, perhaps climbing aboard a moving convoy should any take his road. As he walked, he tried to come up with something he could whistle to buoy his spirits on the walk ahead of him, but couldn’t think of a single song. His mind was blank for a moment, totally empty, even his name a passing mystery.

  As the emptiness left him, he reflected it was not the first time that had happened today.

  Zeliolopos

  By the time they’d realised that the fleet of ships wasn’t after them at all, the Wilemo Maril had already dived right through them, dispatching hundreds of the Prism vessels in silent sparkles among the hanging blooms of mines. The thousands of unknown ships were running scared like Old World schools of fish evading a predator, the storm of glinting, swirling craft parting around the Wilemo Maril to form a glittering metallic tunnel five hundred feet across for the privateer as it spun. It was impossible to work out what class or manufacture of Voidships they were, let alone who owned them in the handful of seconds it took for them all to pass by; Maril could only glimpse flashes of whirling light through the reopened porthole shields, two thousand twinkling shards of glass falling past them in a silent blizzard. The privateer banked sharply away from the sun as it found itself in open vacuum again, light filling the tipping windows, the master-at-arms now upside down and trying to clip himself in the wrong way round as the ship’s gyroscopes feebly found their gravity. He managed at last to regain his seat, offi-ciously brushing himself down and checking his holstered pistol self-consciously as a few stragglers in the shoal of unknown craft blinked across their path in chrome flashes.

  Maril listened carefully to the damage reports still coming in as the rolling decreased. Substantial loss of hull plating, a few broken bones among the crew and an antique cabinet in the scullery lifted and smashed to splinters by the temporary loss of gravity; he tapped the master-at-arms on the shoulder to listen in—that cabinet had been Jospor’s pride and joy, hefted aboard during a raid and varnished once a month thereafter.

  The captain closed his eyes, breathing the fish-scented darkness inside the nested shells of cockpit and padded helmet, considering what precious few choices they had. The last of the mysterious fleet of ships blipped one last time on the radar and disappeared, heading out of the system and back into the Firmament. It would still take the Wilemo Maril five hours to pass the remaining planets of Tau Ceti; five hours of slowed manoeuvring, constant readings and range reports. Lifting above the forest of Zelioceti Kingdoms would lengthen the journey as well as instantly expose them to whatever was on their tail, an encounter he knew they c
ould not survive in open space, and yet negotiating his way through might prove equally perilous. He sat back, thoughtful, ignoring the high-pitched queries on the communications. Encountering that fleeing shoal of ships had been infinitesimally unlikely considering the enormity of the blackness around them, like meeting your best friend in a crowd of trillions. He could only assume, however much he might not wish to, that there were many more shoals like them rushing away from Tau Ceti.

  Away from the Investiture and into the Firmament, he thought, his gloved fingers intertwining.

  The privateer curved on Maril’s command towards the shadow of the system’s first ruddy gas giant, Zeliomoltus, passing its largest moon Anti Zelio-Formis. The hazy magenta globe rose to starboard and grew swiftly in the lateral windows, its pink atmosphere thrown into contrast by the dark brown churning thunder of its parent world’s nightside. He took in the brushed swirl of cloud-tops wrapping the luminous moon for an instant, attempting to recall which Zelioceti Kingdom owned it, before returning his attention to a mewling chime and the whitish-grey sweep of the long-range wave projection.

  Images were a luxuriant expense. The privateer possessed only one optisocket, its ten inch viewing hole cracked and taped. Maril leaned forward in his seat to study the tiny image. A black swirl like a miniature hurricane had pierced the haze in a torrent of eddying sonar read-outs and was closing directly on their position. A mournful cry like wind in a gully preceded it, the rear antennas mapping the shape as best they could while it screamed towards the privateer.

  “Is that—?” He leaned backwards, trying to take it in.

  “Schooner class, Captain,” said the master-at-arms. “Thirteen lengths, tetraluminal, by the looks of it.”

  Maril stared at the dark swirl as it descended upon them, parting the solar winds like spray. “Violent, please, Ribio,” he said to the pilot.

  The Wilemo Maril swung a harsh, engine-crumpling about-turn above the moon, flipping the privateer in a haze of frozen soot and firing off at an angle, the ferocity of the conflicting forces grinding the captain into his seat. As they swung away, a snap of whitish silver burst like a bullet across the horizon; a schooner—as the master-at-arms had predicted—long and cruelly pointed, though some miles off, swooping on where it thought it would find them. The speck of their attacker dwindled in an instant, but the echoing trace of its fabulously rare tetralu-minal motors remained repeated and augmented inside the darkness of Maril’s heated helmet. After a moment, the communications reported in, relaying information Maril had already guessed. It was the Lacaille Nomad they’d encountered on Steerilden’s Land. It had found them by some means after a month of erratic flight and was closing again on their position.