The Promise of the Child

by Tom Toner

  Ghaldezuel returned his attention to the Immortal carrying the body. At a word from the Amaranthine, the Lacaille soldiers heaved the Shell onto its side, the embroidered gold tapestry falling away with a thump. Aaron watched intently, stepping around the action to get a better view, his clothes floating like a spot of oil dropped in water. Ghaldezuel finally noticed the man’s shadow and felt his skin crawl.

  Candles were being lit at the end of the chapel as darkness fell beyond the windows. The procession of the corpse did not take any heed of them, and Ghaldezuel observed the huge Melius standing to watch. Among them, nothing but a spectral face in the gloom, he spotted the boy king surrounded by his entourage, totally ignored by the Amaranthine. It had grown too late for anything else to matter, apparently.

  The fat Perennial took the body to the Shell, its tufted tail trailing and arms dangling, and turned, waiting. The Long-Life nodded slowly.

  In the candlelight the Shell gleamed like a polished musical instrument, all coils and tubes, the body nothing but a limp husk of shadow cradled almost tenderly in the Perennial’s arms. They watched him consult the thin Amaranthine before fitting the creature into an enlarged hollow in the machine’s belly, pushing it delicately until it was in an upright position. The other Amaranthine shook his head and pointed, and the two stood there before it, their shadows long in the candlelight. Ghaldezuel managed one last smirk at their weakness, their indecision. It was a trait they hid from the Prism at all times, but he had bought himself a seat at the table now and they cared not for his opinion. At last they saw how it was done, the Long-Life pacing around them like a caged animal, his shadow appearing to take on different forms. As soon as Ghaldezuel noticed it changing, he averted his eyes, not wanting to see. Some things were just too odd to be glimpsed, and he planned to leave this place with a clear head. The others’ faces brought his eyes back, however, and he was startled to observe that beneath the man’s dark robes the silhouette of a shaggy-coated wolf paced, its tongue lolling. It seemed to look up for a moment, and Ghaldezuel raised his eyes to find the man observing him.

  The body was apparently correctly inserted, though Ghaldezuel could barely see. In the vast space, only the candles on the far side of the chapel had been lit and everything that faced him was in darkness. He had seen enough to know that the creature’s jaws had been distended and placed over a tubular orifice somewhere at the machine’s centre, as if to blow up a huge balloon.

  He was thinking of Corphuso, and where in the world—or elsewhere—he might have vanished to, when the rustle of every Perennial stepping back filled his ears. Aaron the Long-Life was standing very still, head tilted to the ceiling, his eyes apparently closed.

  The change began with his clothing, which lightened and withered to a tight-fitting gown of some ancient fashion. The body beneath was at first slender, too narrow for the man’s jowly head, then suddenly portly. In an eyeblink the clothing changed again, dappling with stripes, spots, cravats. Jewels and chains grew and died, the stones popping like sores across his chest and belly. Each caught the meagre light, totally real in their twinkling reflections. They disappeared beneath the swelling of collars and lapels, then ruffs, fur and dark, greasy armour. The serene expression on the man’s face never changed, even while a hurricane of movement crawled across his body. A cape flapped and twisted about him, dissolving immediately into wisps of colour. It was replaced by a larger hooded robe, which again wrinkled and fell away. Ghald-ezuel began to see now that the clothing was becoming simpler and less ornate, the textures rougher. Buttons erupted and healed while the colours settled into an earthy blur.

  Finally the process stalled, strobing, at a coarse wollen cloak, loose and hooded. Aaron opened his eyes to look calmly down at the shadowed block of the Shell, and disappeared.

  They watched, and they waited.

  The Shell stood alone, the body somewhere inside it, its shadow trailing almost to his feet. Something twinkled on the floor under the scintillating candlelight, but it was only the melted, hardening globules of Corphuso’s weapon.

  A noise, like the scratching of a tree-branch on a windowpane, began somewhere within the shadows. It stopped just as Ghaldezuel was replaying what Corphuso had been saying in his head, trying to make sense of it all. When it began again it was louder, interspersed with a shallow moaning like a cold, lonely wind. As the chapel grew blacker and the noises resumed, Ghaldezuel felt the hairs all over his pale skin rising. A shiver rippled through him beneath his new Voidsuit.

  Suddenly a scream like nothing he had ever heard ripped across the chapel floor from the dark interior of the Shell. The instrument shook as the bawl of pain grew louder, and a few Perennials stepped forward uncertainly.

  “Most Venerable?” the fat Amaranthine asked in an unsteady voice, hurrying to the side of the Shell. Ghaldezuel saw a clawed shadow whip from the depths of the dark block and strike out at the Perennial. He gasped and retreated a few steps.

  The screaming of a voice never before heard by hominid ears dwindled and finally stopped altogether. Muffled grunts and groans suggested the thing was trying to extricate itself from the chambers of the machine, but the Amaranthine remained at their positions, fearful of the thing’s talons.

  Ghaldezuel had had enough of this. He snatched a candle from its table at the corner of the chapel and lit it, making his way slowly towards the dark block of shadow. Nobody tried to stop him.

  The light touched the Shell as he held the candle high, dancing reflections back into his eyes. It was empty.

  He bent, suddenly very glad of his costly Voidsuit, and peered into the hollows. The trembling light from his candle illuminated a cave of dark, shining blood. It must have come from the thing as it awoke, from some unmended old wound. His eyes went to the bronze floor, examining the thin trails of darkness that wove around to the other side of the Shell, the marks already smeared with his bootprints.

  A rasping breath tickled his ear.

  Ghaldezuel swung around, the flame flickering and snuffing out. Red, reflective eyes glimmered at him in the gloom.

  “Of all the strange things …” he muttered, staring into the darkness at the horizontal slits.

  “Come away now, Lacaille,” said Von Schiller, moving to stand beside him. “You did well.”

  “What happens now?” asked Ghaldezuel, first to Von Schiller, and then into the darkness. “Am I to be released?”

  “Released?” said a high, chuckling voice. The eyes came closer, something brushing against him in the darkness. He looked down to see a shadowy clawed finger touching the metal of his Voidsuit. “Not just yet.” The creature’s speech was like a blade dragged across metal.

  “Why not?” he managed, his hands slippery within his gauntlets. “What could you possibly want with me?”

  The thing—Aaron, he supposed it was still Aaron—pushed past Von Schiller, a gnarled shadow. It hobbled towards the Amaranthine carrying the suit, pausing to cough and retch violently, one thin arm bracing itself on the bronze floor. Ghaldezuel saw the black silhouette of its stomach straining, the ancient muscles tightening, only their contours touched by the candlelight. But nothing was coming up. If what Corphuso said was true, the ghostly form Aaron had once been had never experienced physical processes, and all this would be new to him. To it.

  Ghaldezuel looked on in wonder, his own circumstances forgotten.

  It lurched closer to the light. The scars that striped its back and flanks were deep, unhealed, the shiny glue obvious where the edges of the greyish skin had been pushed back together. One had reopened and dripped wherever the creature walked.

  Dilasor, he thought, trying to recall the pictures of what they were thought to look like. Part of him realised the thing that coughed and spluttered before them was no more a Dilasor than if Aaron had chosen to inhabit Ghaldezuel’s body and then call himself a Lacaille. It was nothing but a corpse, suitably formed to accommodate the artificial being that inhabited it. He stepped a little closer to see wh
at it was doing.

  Aaron’s new form had taken the exotic Voidsuit from the Amarathine, who shrank back into the group to watch. It examined the folds of cream material, pulling and prodding until the fronds that dangled from the suit began to stir. It raised a leg awkwardly, as if in incredible pain, and stepped in. The suit closed around the leg with a sucking sound, searching and rising over Aaron’s new clothing of wrinkled flesh. As it spread to reach the head it became engorged, like a giant maggot trying to swallow something far too large for it, until all they could see was a struggling white blob.

  Ghaldezuel and Von Schiller glanced at each other.

  The suit crumpled back in on itself, vacuum-forming around the beast’s contours while it stood there, still visibly coughing and gagging. Extra limbs, alien in their structure and digits, sprouted to either side of the arms and the head bulged with blisters.

  The form became still. Two black eyes emerged in a moving churn of some kind of surface ink, widening and appearing to register the people around them. Aaron straightened his long back, stretching his four arms and clacking the claw-like extensions with obvious relish, his crippling pain apparently gone. With a flourish of his white tail, he turned back to Ghaldezuel, the black discs on his face suddenly huge.

  “I must go to Gliese,” its new, confident voice boomed. “You will take me there.”

  Ghaldezuel hesitated until the white-suited form came to stand before him, the black eyes—formed from thousands of minuscule moving dots, he noticed—gazing steadily into his own.

  “Aid my transcendence, Galdess-uel, and you shall live for ever.”

  Prisoner

  The upper chambers were all bedrooms of a sort, with tousled beds and the remains of a great deal of hasty packing. Rich clothing that could only be of ancient Amaranthine manufacture lay scattered on the floor of one of the rooms, as well as opened satchels, their contents strewn across the floorboards.

  Lycaste and Huerepo paused at the entrance to the chamber, looking at the scene, hearing gunfire raging throughout the lower reaches of the house. Outside, in the grey darkness, the city had reignited and Jalanbulon surely stormed the streets. The Lacaille they had been following had succeeded in locating a hiding enclave of Secondlings. Their cries echoed down the stone hallways.

  “Must be one level up,” said Lycaste, stepping into the room to inspect a sheathed sword leaning against the hearth. Its basket hilt was almost rusted away.

  “That won’t do you much good,” Huerepo muttered, watching Lycaste draw the blade to inspect it. The metal was pre-growth, holed and pitted with rust, likely to snap if he tried to use it for anything. “Here,” the Vulgar said after some thought, passing Lycaste the second of his pistols, “take this.”

  Lycaste looked at the tiny gun, accepting it reluctantly. It was of a sleek, foreign design not used in the Provinces and did not even appear to have anywhere to stow the projectiles. He wished he’d managed to keep Chaemerion’s ring.

  “Where’s the firing latch?”

  Huerepo looked up. “Firing latch?” He took it and held it out in front of him. “Finger here, aim like this.” The Vulgar passed it back, watching Lycaste try to replicate the actions and shaking his head.

  Lycaste returned the gun, pointing at the rifle slung over Huerepo’s shoulder. “How about that one?”

  Huerepo reluctantly handed it over. “This was a gift. Don’t break it.”

  They took the hallway back to the steps, Huerepo walking in front. Lycaste cursed occasionally as he glanced behind them, continually having to shorten his stride for fear of accidentally crushing the small person underfoot. At the foot of the steps leading up to the prison chambers they found a body slumped at the door. From the look of the streaks of blood that marred the coloured walls, it had rolled its way from another floor.

  “Looks like an Amaranthine,” said Huerepo, turning the corpse as much as he could with his boot. The face was youngish, its bloody forehead caved in and split by a colossal blow.

  “Do you think a Jalan did this?” Lycaste asked nervously, staring as far as he could up the spiral stair.

  “A fall, more likely,” whispered the Vulgar, bending to look at some small, shiny objects that had come to rest alongside the body.

  Lycaste saw him pick up and inspect the rings in the weak light that suffused the narrow space. “Look at these,” he said, passing one to Lycaste. “They were made for Vulgar royalty—see the imprinted seals?”

  Lycaste took one and peered at it, far more concerned about the possibility that there was a Jalanbulon on the loose somewhere in the upper reaches of the house. He returned the ring, thinking of the giant old woman, the nanny he’d met on the galleon to the house of Berenzargol. At least they weren’t all bad.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Huerepo said, taking off a glove and slotting all three onto his white fingers to admire them. “Real crimson diamond, red as your skin,” he whispered, eyes suddenly wide. “Check his other pockets.”

  Lycaste looked in disgust at the soldier. “You do it! I’m not touching a dead Amaranthine.”

  “Fine.” Huerepo sighed theatrically, stuffing his pistol into Lycaste’s hand and rummaging through the dead Immortal’s blood-soaked clothes. The Vulgar sniggered suddenly, lifting a handful of soft-looking pink jelly. “Found some of his brains inside his undershirt.”

  Lycaste recoiled, cursing.

  “Maybe they still contain his powers,” Huerepo said thoughtfully, appearing to genuinely consider taking the glob of offal. “Might fetch a pretty price.” He shook his head, glancing at Lycaste and dumping the brains on the stone step. “Don’t look at me like that, Lycaste. But it’s true that they don’t rot—we wouldn’t have had to worry about the smell, at least.”

  Lycaste handed back the pistol irritably. “Come on, I’ll go first this time.”

  A tangle of dead Amaranthine lay on the decorative floor around one of the cell doors, some with their faces burned away to the bone. As Lycaste watched, a bolt trembled and flew off the door, bouncing across the floor towards him, where dozens of other bolts were scattered. He saw that the whole metal door had been sealed closed with hundreds of rivets across its face. Only a few of them remained now.

  Lycaste and Huerepo raised their weapons as the last three bolts whizzed off, watching the foot-thick, specially coated door crumple and dent and finally shear from its hinges to crash onto the floor. A tall, slender Amaranthine was standing inside the open cell, his thin underclothes pulled around him for warmth. Lycaste took in the hollow cheeks and curved blade of nose; it was how Sotiris said he’d look.

  “Hugo Hassan Maneker?” he asked diffidently, the rifle tipped downward.

  The Amaranthine checked among the bodies, kicking some over to see their faces. He cursed, glancing at Lycaste warily. “What?”

  “I was told to come and find you. I’m a friend of Sotiris’s.”

  The Immortal regarded at him with renewed interest. “Sotiris is here?”

  Lycaste looked at Huerepo. “I don’t know. He said he’d meet us when he could.”

  Maneker pulled a cloak from a victim, shaking it out and draping it around his shoulders. “I must find him.”

  “He told me to take care of you until he met us again.”

  The Amaranthine looked sharply up at Lycaste, then down at the Vulgar. “I don’t think that will be necessary.” He made as if to pass into the hallway, and Lycaste put out a hand.

  Maneker rounded on him, the skin on Lycaste’s chest suddenly smarting as if from an invisible slap. “I do not require a Melius and a Vulgar to assist me!” The air appeared to prickle with extra density between them. “I thank you both for your loyalty to my friend, but you should have left for safety a long time ago.”

  Lycaste rubbed at his sore skin, squaring his shoulders. “He is my friend, too, Sire Maneker, and I will not disobey him.” Huerepo glanced up worriedly.

  The Amaranthine hesitated, the hint of a smile crossing his face. �
�And where would you take me, given the chance?”

  “There is a galleon on the roof,” Lycaste said, astonished at his sudden bravery but determined to hold his nerve. Huerepo shook his head and muttered, stamping into the hallway to check for Lacaille.

  Maneker appeared to think, glancing among the dead at his feet. “I have been in this cell for many months. What has become of Zigadenus? He’s retreated to the First I suppose?”

  Huerepo glanced back, sensing Lycaste’s confusion. “He fell, Amaranthine, at the Battle of Vanadzor. His son has succeeded him, but …” The Vulgar fell silent a moment, regarding the rings on his fingers. “I could barter our way aboard the vessel, if it came to it—this single stone will be worth more than the entire Voidship.”

  Maneker stared at Huerepo, straightening his back. “It is an odd pair you make. I’ll go with you to the roof—to see what there is to be seen, if nothing else.”

  Lycaste turned to Huerepo, his skin still smarting. “Do you want a lift?”

  “A lift?” Huerepo’s face twitched with embarrassment. “Of course I don’t want a bloody lift.”

  “All right,” Lycaste said dubiously, eyeing Maneker. “I don’t expect Sire Amaranthine will wish to slow down for you.”

  The Vulgar glared at Lycaste, his face reddening. “Yes … very well, pick me up.”

  They passed the body of the fallen Amaranthine once more, Maneker pausing only for an instant to look at the man.

  “Did you know him?” Lycaste asked.

  Maneker did not reply, pushing ahead up the spiral stair. His breath, thin and wheezing, laboured as they climbed higher.

  “How was he?” asked Maneker suddenly. “Sotiris, I mean. How did you find him?”

  Lycaste shrugged, though the Amaranthine couldn’t see the gesture as he raced ahead. “He was himself. Strong. He saved me.”

  “Saved you?”

  “I had been … wounded. I was dying. Sotiris healed me.”

  Maneker looked back, into Lycaste’s eyes, but did not stop. “He didn’t say anything about a dream? A recurring dream?”