The Promise of the Child

by Tom Toner

  Bonneville looked at the Melius now as they were introduced, his hand suddenly enveloped in the Protector’s gnarled fist. It was ever a courtesy to receive the Amaranthine handshake, but Bonneville hated performing it with these giants. He pulled his hand away as soon as was tactful.

  “You will stay with us, I am told, while we hold the city,” said Filago, his accent almost perfect. He had been educated in the Sarine capital, no doubt familiar with the Amaranthine and their ways since childhood.

  “If you will have me, Protector,” Bonneville replied.

  “I will have you as long as you are prepared to stay.” He smiled, a little sadly. “It will not be an easy victory, but I am confident we shall withstand a siege, should it come to that.”

  Bonneville smiled back.

  “Shall we view the estate’s readiness?” enquired Stone, pressing a hand gently against the Protector’s back and guiding him to the high doorway on the landing. Thirdling servants, gangly and pumpkin-coloured, scrambled to open it.

  They stepped out into the garden, the air heavy and humid after the shower. White birds strutted on the lawns while Vulgar and Secondling troops walked between the enormous cannon and five-legged tanks on loan from the Zelioceti. The tanks, painted in vibrant reds and yellows like everything in the Zelioforce, were being tested on the lawns, churning the grass into troughs of wet soil as they lumbered about, smoke curling from their wide, ungainly rears. Some Vulgar mechanics ceased their tinkering with a tank and stood to attention at the Princeling’s passing.

  “Our allies the Zelioceti are generous beyond measure,” said Elumo, patting Filch—almost a foot taller—on the shoulder. “My kingdom will remember this kindness.”

  The Zelioceti ambassador grunted, inspecting a cannon as they passed. “Stole-Havish need not return the favour immediately.”

  Bonneville could barely understand him, hearing only the tone of sarcasm in his nasal voice.

  They stooped to walk beneath the legs of a stalled tank, the under-hatch hanging open, and came to the garden walls. Bonneville turned briefly to inspect the house, gazing as innocently as he could up at the steepled roof. A Vulgar Voidship, his Voidship, had come to rest between the smoking chimneys, its dark guns aimed out over the city.

  He glanced back over the walls, his gown billowing in the rising air. The majestic city of Vilnius, streamered with the smoke of cooking fires and flocking messenger birds, had become one giant encampment. Tents fluttering with the green banners and sigils of the First occupied the pale streets and rooftops of the citadel all the way down to the ruined bridge at its foundations, where cannon larger than any seen in the last ten grand conflicts stared into the valley. Mounted Melius rode clopping through the arches, parting uneasily around wandering groups of tiny Vulgar and Zelioceti. The city’s huge orchards, its cellars and storerooms and larders, had all been plundered by decree of the First, and soldiers ate in circles around glowing fire-pits as they waited for night to fall. Across the valley, misted with the rising steam of the recent rain, the forests screamed with animals.

  Bonneville stared out at the scene, doubt settling over him. The city was ready, waiting for the fight to reach it. He glanced quickly at Elumo, but the Princeling was moving on with Stone towards the ramparts where Vulgar soldiers nursed spit-roasted weasels over a fire. Above them another Voidship hove into view, extending pale rubber sails as it cut its engines and dropped with a groan towards the grand house at the top of the citadel. They watched the rust-speckled vehicle land on the lawn, the sails bending against a wind that churned the fires in their pits for a moment and caused the soldiers to look up.

  “Where were you born, Amaranthine?” asked Filago suddenly, appearing at Bonneville’s side. He swept back his hair in the wind as they approached the ramparts.

  “Where?” He looked up at the Melius. Nobody had asked him that question in centuries. “Far from here. You would not know the place.”

  “Try me,” the Protector said, his manner friendly. Bonneville could see why he was liked and was suddenly intrigued.

  “An island in what is now the Westerly Provinces.”

  Filago grinned. “I had thought so, from your face. Ingolland? Or Yire?”

  Bonneville laughed, forgetting for a moment the landscape below him. “Between the two. It was then called Wales.”

  The Protector mouthed the word thoughtfully. “I do not know that such a land exists now. It would be part of Ingolland, I suppose.”

  Bonneville looked at him a while, remembering himself. “Yes, well, places change. I will never see it again, and do not wish to.” He shook his head and strode out to the edge of the rampart, trying in vain to catch the Princeling’s eye once more. More drops of rain carried on the wind as the day darkened.

  “I think your new king will be pleased, yes?” someone said. Bonneville glanced down irritably. It was the Zelioceti, Filch. He was standing on tiptoes at the wall, his furred gloves behind his back.

  “Yes, I daresay.”

  “We hear things about the Amaranthine king, you know.” The ambassador looked up, his strange eyes staring. “The oddest things. They say he will not touch things, not even if they are clean and placed before him. They say he casts no shadow.”

  Bonneville moved away from the rampart, unsure what the creature was getting at. He pulled out a beautiful timepiece dangling from a chain within his robes and looked at it. “You must not take rumour to heart, Ambassador Filch—please excuse me.”

  As he made his way to the house among the long-legged tanks he glanced back, but the Zelioceti had resumed his stroll of the wall, Filago falling in beside him.

  There was a way—quite a simple method, in fact—to kill a Perennial. The trick, of course, was getting close enough. Bonneville studied the departing group of Prism and Melius as he arrived at the door, wondering if he truly had missed something. Something they’d all missed. The Long-Life would be well guarded in the Sarine Palace, likely the very last place to face the threat of Elatine’s encroaching legions. He might survive, of course, perhaps to be ransomed if the warlord discovered his significance, but such eventualities would by then be beyond Bonneville’s (or Sovereign Reginald Iestyn Bonneville, Potentate of the Vulgar Monarchy of Filgurbirund and Sundry Lands) concern.

  He tapped on the door and waited for the servants to open it, scenting the smoke on the wind. It was a pleasant smell, one of his favourites, and yet so often accompanied battle and death. Once inside, he went up the stairs, following the lines of embedded silk to the Pre-Perennial chambers.

  Within his room, Bonneville exhaled slowly and shakily. His bags, leather-strapped satchels, were in their usual hiding place in the frame of the mustily palatial bed. The dinner was not for a few hours yet, another session of pointless entertainments while he watched the huge people guzzling their way through course after course of mostly living flesh. It seldom occurred to mortals as they went about their necessary processes what a profoundly disgusting sight they were. He would make sure to toast Filago and his painted generals, to wish them well in their defence of the First and all it stood for.

  “Eat heartily,” he said to himself under his breath as he rechecked his bags, his brow creasing with impermanent wrinkles as he heard the first of the cannon roaring into life.

  Long-Life

  Twelve Lacaille soldiers had wheeled in the two huge chests, one buckled and bolted and clearly of Vulgar make, the other golden and gnarled, like a huge metal walnut. Feeling the familiar pang of jealousy, Corphuso watched them unsnapping heavy buckles and locks to reveal the shape that had dominated his life for so long, flapping away the embroidered covering to expose the gleaming bulk of it to the chapel.

  The Long-Life stood some distance away, a shadow in the depths, gazing as if he had waited for this moment his whole life. For all Corphuso knew, he had. He looked again at the bizarre man, thinking him the most interesting Amaranthine he had ever seen. There was something feral in the way he spoke and acted,
and the growing indistinctness of his face and eyes made the Vulgar’s head swim. His pale, veined hands hung limply at his sides, the sleeves of the anonymous gown he wore dangling to the thumbs. It was only then that Corphuso noted that the man’s shadow did not quite match his figure, as if it were merely a cut-out shape arranged to give the impression of solidity. He felt his heart hammer inside him.

  Ghaldezuel appeared to be unperturbed by what was happening, but Corphuso knew better. He had studied the Lacaille knight long enough to recognise the creeping nervousness now descending over his face, though he tried to hide it.

  “Worried, Ghaldezuel?” he whispered, as casually as he could.

  “Worried?” The knight affected surprise. “Why ever should I be worried? I am about to inherit the jewel of the Firmament, Corphuso.”

  “Do you have any idea what’s about to happen?”

  Ghaldezuel stared at him. “Well, they’re … he’s going to—”

  “What is in that other case? You don’t have any idea, do you?”

  Now it was the Lacaille’s turn to smile. “Just wait, Corphuso. Calm that racing intellect of yours and watch. I promise, it shall be quite a show.”

  They watched the Long-Life as he walked slowly over to the machine, stopping to inspect its colossal coils and loops. Unlike everyone else who had inspected the Soul Engine, Corphuso was interested to see that the man made no attempt to touch it, though from the way he was studying the device, it appeared that he might have some inclination of its workings. He looked tremendously, almost deliriously excited for a moment, then glanced directly at Corphuso.

  “Yes, Vulgarii, I see now what you’ve done. I see how it might …” The Long-Life shook his head with apparently genuine wonder, his eyes wide. Suddenly his gaze shot to the second case of Amaranthine make. “The other one, now.”

  The golden Amaranthine-made chest was removed from its wheeled mount after much struggling and positioned on its side by the Lacaille soldiers, who glanced around nervously as more Perennial Amaranthine slowly filtered into the chapel. They stopped to stand in a circle, silent, waiting. Corphuso looked between their eternally young faces, wondering if this was to be his last day alive.

  The Long-Life straightened, his jowly visage contorted with excitement, and went to the case.

  The Lacaille soldiers glanced at Von Schiller, who nodded briskly. The whine of the case’s hinges filled the quiet chapel.

  Corphuso strained to see over the flowing, frosty mist that coiled and rose from whatever goods the case protected. Inside were two separate compartments of burnished, worked gold, each filled with some indescribable object still wreathed in fog. Everyone leaned in to watch, some of the closest Lacaille trying to wave away the mist.

  As soon as they had confirmed the cargo, the Perennials walked forward in unison, each grabbing a Lacaille by the arm and pulling him back. Only the Long-Life and Von Schiller remained standing near the chest.

  “There you are, withered thing,” the Long-Life said to the object in the left compartment, his head tilted down to it, apparently lost in reverie. As he did so, the whiff of the chest’s contents reached Corphuso’s nostrils and he flinched. Ghaldezuel grimaced and put a hand to his nose.

  The indistinct man turned to Von Schiller, who bowed.

  “Do not be offended, Florian, that I did not choose your body as my new vessel.” He gestured at the objects in the case, still seeping vapour. “These were my old masters. My mind, everything I was, was built to their own templates. Why tailor a fresh suit when you have one already?” His expression became slack and vacant as he regarded the case. “Now you shall see, Florian, how it is done.” He looked over, an afterthought. “Vulgarii—you must come and watch.”

  Corphuso was pushed to the front, to Ghaldezuel’s considerable amazement, by one of the Perennials. He found himself standing next to the Long-Life and looking down into the second case, the sharp stink wreathing his body.

  At first he couldn’t understand why they had come so far, endured so much, to bring nothing but the skinned carcass of some kind of animal with them. He bent closer, suddenly forgetting the presences around him as his eyes unravelled the form. A lonely paragraph from his expensively erratic education made itself known at the back of his mind.

  The mist cleared around the twisted form, revealing gangly, taloned arms scattered with wiry blue plumage. Its chest was bony, concave where the ribcage met the stomach, svelte as a racing hound. The hips were distended, the scarred legs and gristly feet quite obviously reconstructed by some surgical procedure. Between them curled a gaudily plumed tail, forked at the end. He looked to the head.

  It was almost alive, the eyes—their pupils horizontal red slits decorated with a corona of marbled white iris—bright with shock and pain. But he knew it was dead. He knew it was dead, because he knew what it was.

  It was a dinosaur.

  The snout, crooked and sharp like a patrician nose, could not conceal the cruel snaggle-teeth that poked at angles between its fleshy lips. The nostrils were huge and flared. Around its scrawny neck was a mane of iridescent feathering that tapered to the collarbones. He staggered back, at last beginning to understand. In the next compartment of the case was a Voidsuit, or something that appeared to be for the same purpose, but a fantastically advanced and beautiful example of one. An elegant bulge of cream material, it was tufted here and there with protrusions and wisps like the feelers of a moth. It had hinged open in places to display an interior like a sound-proofed chamber, all spears of soft red foam. Running along the surface of the spikes were veins of white machinery as fine and delicate as the membranes of a leaf. He opened his mouth slightly, astonished that such beauty could have swaddled such ugliness, trying to grasp how and why he should be seeing what he was seeing.

  Corphuso noticed Ghaldezuel looking at him as he moved back. The Lacaille had known, but didn’t fully understand. He turned to the Long-Life and gazed up at him in wonder, the man’s vague face framed by the whirls of painted figures on the distant ceiling.

  “You said they built your mind after their own.” His lips trem-ored as he spoke. The Long-Life regarded him silently, his predatory eyes merging in and out of focus. Corphuso composed himself and continued, “They made you. But you are not one of these things. You were—you were once—” He stopped himself mid-stammer, quite sure for a moment that he was about to embarrass himself with his foolish assumptions, but he had to know. “You were a machine, weren’t you? You belonged to these creatures.”

  Von Schiller moved to take Corphuso’s arm but he resisted, staring into the apparition’s eyes. “You’re a ghost. A machine soul. Like Perception, the device made by the Amaranthine.” His eyes widened. “This is why you need my Shell. What happened—how did you die? Were you destroyed, too? Is this all that’s left of you?”

  Another Perennial grabbed him by the wrist but he struggled out of the grip. “What are you planning to do? Why become mortal again?”

  “Corphuso!” Ghaldezuel hissed, trying in vain to step forward. “Calm yourself!”

  But Corphuso could see now the culmination of his mistakes as it lay there on the floor of the chapel. He had caused all of this. His invention had awoken this ancient power from its aeons of slumber. He looked across at his precious, glittering Shell.

  He moved as swiftly as he could, reaching for and grasping the closest Lacaille’s pistol. He ducked, steadying himself as Von Schiller grabbed him, and aimed at the Soul Engine.

  Vilnius

  Sotiris wrenched the zeltabra around with some difficulty. It panted, striped flanks coated with yellow pollen and blue sap, wild eyes straining to turn and glimpse the towering city at Sotiris’s back. The Amaranthine pulled at the reins again, his face suddenly an image of fury, searching out Lycaste as he followed behind.

  “Faster!” he shouted, his voice deep and instantly commanding. Lycaste slapped the harsant’s rump as hard as he could, finally joining the Immortal at the field’s edge.
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br />   Sotiris patted the zeltabra and turned to face Lycaste. His ancient eyes were bright in his grimy face as he extended a gleaming, metalencased arm and pointed.

  Where the forest of bloodfruit ended, the hill dropped towards a river valley wreathed in smoke. The light, fading quickly in the humid afternoon, could only just pick out the rusted bodies of war machines and their riding passengers as they swarmed in the forested valley. A great bridge spanned the river at the valley’s bottom, stretching beneath a colossal gateway set into huge curtain walls already beginning to crumble under the siege. As Lycaste watched, a shell struck a section of the wall, erupting in a huge bulging mushroom of smoke that rose to drift on the wind, the echoing crump of its impact only just reaching his ears. A cheer, glottal and full-throated, rose from among the screams and roars in the dim trees of the valley.

  Lycaste looked up, following the turreted ramparts and streets of the city as they wound to the crest of the canted hill it had been built upon. Clouds glowered over the topmost buildings, appearing to touch the spires.

  “The city of Vilnius,” Sotiris said. “Last outpost of the Second Province.” Lycaste thought he looked worn, a man accepting defeat. He studied the dirty Amaranthine as Sotiris sat astride his mount, even the dainty Firstling armour dangling from him like a boy in adult’s clothing. Lycaste did not want to end up like this: twelve thousand years on and still tired and filthy and scared, leading some idiot descendant around behind him. He looked back to the fury of tiny specks crowding the bridge—Secondlings defending their land—thinking on how many chances the Immortal were given to suffer anew.