The Nobleman’s head fell. By the time it passed his chest it had become a ball of water devoid of eyes and a nose, and before it hit the ground it had fallen to droplets.
“What the—” Gianne exclaimed, pulling tight on the reins as the Nobleman’s body also turned to water and gushed toward her.
D was immersed in the weird water up to the waist, though it quickly receded again.
“That was easy, wasn’t it?” Gianne said, but her expression was stiff. It was too easy. There was no way defeating him should’ve been so simple.
D went back to the wagon. He wanted to check that the pair under the tarp were okay.
Meeker gave him a weak thumbs-up.
“D,” Gianne called out.
His left hand told him why. “We got company!”
From the way D looked up, it was clear he’d been aware of thatas well.
A stubby aircraft descended without a sound from the same sky that continued pelting them with rain, coming to rest on the ground a scant twenty yards away. In the sunlight, it would probably have appeared silver. D watched as part of the craft opened and three shadowy figures appeared.
The one in the fore glanced up. He stood well above the others as they walked toward the Hunter. Lightning flashed. A face appeared from the shadows.
“Count Langlan,” Gianne murmured in a tone that carried fear.
II
Viscount Kraken had been turned to water, and now, amid howling wind and rain and flashes of light, Count Langlan, the last of the Nobles in question, had appeared. In the sun, his golden cape would’ve undoubtedly called to mind waves of light. Now its hue was subdued, and whipping in the wind, it was reminiscent of the spreading of dark, thick blood.
D climbed down from the wagon. Straight ahead of him, the group halted about ten feet away. This time it was D’s face illuminated by the lightning.
“My word—the stories don’t begin to do you justice,” the tall Nobleman declared in a tone of obvious admiration. “I imagine you have already learned as much from the archeress, but I am Count Langlan.”
“D.”
Flashes of light illuminated the two figures by turns.
“I watched you battling that bastard Kraken from above. You did well to dispatch that monster.”
“He’ll be back soon.”
D’s reply drew a surprised reaction from the count. He groaned at the precision of the Hunter’s assessment.
“Before he does, I should like you to accompany us to my castle. You have my oath that you shall come to no harm. I think it most unwise to wait for Kraken in this rain. But I would ask that you not awaken the girl in the wagon. What I wish to know will be more easily discovered in her present condition.”
“It’s you that she’s after.”
“I realize as much. And once I learn what it is I wish to know, I shall be only too happy to let her attack me.”
“And you won’t go back on that, will you?”
“I saw her from above. How she has grown. And her years are a measure of my sin.”
“Very well.”
“You will be so good as to accompany us?” The count commanded the guards to either side of him, “Prepare our guest for the journey.”
“No need for that,” D said, turning his back to them. Until the Hunter entered the aircraft carrying Iriya and Meeker, the count remained there as still as a statue.
†
“It looks like we’ve arrived,” the left hand informed the Hunter less than ten minutes after they took off.
Beyond the door that now opened, a vast castle loomed.
“If you would be so good as to proceed to my research center.”
As the count led the group down a corridor, D said to him, “It’ll be daybreak soon.”
The time when Nobles must sleep was coming. Even when shielded from sunlight, Nobles as a rule fell into a kind of coma from daybreak to sunset. It was this major failing that made the humans’ resistance to their rule possible.
“Even during the daytime I am able to move about freely. I do require the aid of the darkness, however.”
“So, you’ve modified yourself, eh? And here I thought the Nobility were so full of themselves they didn’t make any progress.”
Perhaps the count was perfectly aware of the nature of the hoarse voice, because he didn’t show any confusion as he replied, “Actually, that is precisely the case. My research is not born of doubt and denial of the Noble condition. It is the result of purely academic pursuit.”
The group walked down a long corridor, boarded a linear elevator, and then walked some more before entering a room where old-fashioned lab equipment sat side by side with the very latest technology.
“I would have them wait in a back room until preparations are complete—through that door.”
Once D had set Iriya and Meeker down on sofas in a room resembling a salon, Gianne—who’d followed him—said, “Lovely girl, isn’t she?”
As she gazed at the sleeping Iriya, the archeress wore the expression of an ordinary woman. Hunters couldn’t really be human. But there were times when this ironclad rule was broken. There, beside the one who’d made her lower her guard, Gianne set down her bow and quivers and leaned back against the wall facing the doorway.
“D,” she called over to the Hunter, “I don’t think the girl’s cut out for this.”
“How can you tell?”
“There’s no better way to read a person’s true character than to look at their face while they’re asleep. She’s too peaceful.”
She got no reply. Without another word, Gianne hit the wall with her hand.
D was standing on a sunlit plain. The winds that riffled the grass made his hair flutter.
“Off in the distance are silvery mountain peaks and a lake like a bright blue jewel,” the hoarse voice commented. “Such childish imaginings.”
“How romantic. How sentimental. How humanistic. Is this the true nature of the Nobility? Do they really just wanna be human?”
That harsh tone caused D to return his gaze to the archeress.
The Nobility’s virtual reality technology could create original scenes or duplicate sights they’d actually seen. Which was this?
The scenery changed.
It was evening in a valley. The river’s flow reflected the color of the dusky sky, and by its banks lights glowed in a lone log cabin. The smoke from a cooking supper rose from its chimney.
Watching in silence, Gianne suddenly pulled away from the wall and turned toward the house. Without hesitating, she stepped into the river, waded across undiscouraged by its rapid flow, and approached the log cabin.
D heard a number of people laughing.
Gianne halted at the front door; then, after a moment or two, she went over to a window and peered in. Light spilled out. Her expression was peaceful.
Someone began singing to the accompaniment of a strummed tune. A young woman.
“Nice pipes,” the hoarse voice said. “She’s even got the darkness bewitched. I wouldn’t mind spending the rest of my life in this godforsaken valley if it meant I could listen to that.”
In D’s field of view Gianne had remained motionless for quite some time, but she quietly backed away from the window and returned to him.
“Make you homesick?” the voice from his left hand teased.
“Such a big family,” Gianne replied, going back to her original position by the wall. In a little while, dry lips that never saw lipstick slowly began to hum a melody.
“That’s the same song,” the hoarse voice said.
Just then, the scene changed three times. No sooner had the room returned to its original state than the count’s voice announced, “I shall begin now. If you would be so good as to step inside.”
D walked over to Iriya without a pause.
Putting the still-sleeping girl into an examination pod, the count tapped lightly on the container’s light-green surface.
“Three millennia of accumulated
trial and error—this should be nearly perfect, though I cannot say that with complete confidence.”
He was unable to conceal his pride or his apprehension, but then, as if he’d just remembered something, the count glanced at Gianne standing by the door and said, “It would seem a mass murder was perpetrated in a village the girl passed through. More than forty people were killed. Did you not notice?”
“When was this?” asked D. With that he turned his gaze to Gianne, then returned it to the pod, saying, “Get started.”
The count’s right hand pressed something, and while the silence remained unchanged, it began to alternate between darkness and light. The longswords and spears decorating the walls sank into darkness, then appeared again. Visible through the pod’s window, Iriya’s face was bathed in the same steady blue light.
On the wall in front of D and Gianne, innumerable glowing characters began to flash. The characters were unlike those of any human language in style or structure.
“Those are what they call ‘Noble characters,’ ” the left hand explained.
A different light tinged the room red.
“Unusual developments beneath branch three,” a fluid mechanical voice informed them. “Everything is turning into water. I repeat: everything is turning into water.”
“Come, have you, Kraken?” Count Langlan grumbled, his whole body trembling.
Turning to the ceiling, he commanded, “There is no need to counterattack. Ignore him.”
Then he put his hand inside his cape and pulled out what appeared to be a gold bar. Beckoning to Gianne, he took her hands and closed them around the bar.
“Here is your compensation. I hope it will be sufficient for you to reclaim your memory.”
Gianne looked over at the pod, then at the door that led to the corridor.
“Five thousand Noble dalas—that’s three times what we agreed on! I’ll have to throw in a little extra effort.”
“You are to do no such thing. Take the child and flee this place,” the count said, eyes on the door to the back of the room.
The child in question was Meeker.
Staring at him coldly, Gianne said, “There’s nothing a huntsman hates more than having his game snatched away from him. If that lousy sea monster makes off with the girl, it’ll leave me in a bad mood for the rest of my days.”
Her lithe form zipped away.
“So long, D,” she called back casually, as if she were just going to hop in the bath.
“Gianne.”
The count’s words met only the back of the solitary figure.
D said nothing.
The door opened, swallowing the girl with the quiver on her back when it closed again. Not once had she turned around.
The count went back to the characters on the wall.
“That’s the opening of The Noble Declaration,” the hoarse voice declared after a cursory reading of the characters, and the count confirmed it.
“That is correct. But why would this be encoded into the DNA of a lowly human . . . ?”
“It’s a safeguard,” said the hoarse voice.
The count nodded weakly. “Their number is infinite. Let us approach from a different angle.”
The speed of the shifts between darkness and light increased.
The Noble characters warped, their positions shifting, taking on weird new structures and arrangements.
“But these are . . . ?”
The count became a stone statue. Only his lips moved.
“These symbols—I saw a recording of them in the Capital, at the House of Peers Library. They—”
“They’re Sacred Ancestor characters.”
Stunned, the count turned to face the speaker.
Said to be used solely by the Sacred Ancestor and his family, these characters had become the stuff of legend even among the Nobility, yet now they filled his wall.
“Initiate translation,” the count commanded as he kept his eyes riveted on D.
He immediately received an answer: “Translation impossible. Translation impossible. Persons capable of deciphering said characters: only one at present.”
“D!” the count called out. “Can you read this? You can read it, can’t you? I will not ask you how—but please tell me. What is the secret to being bitten by a Noble but not becoming a Noble? Also, is there any more to it—special abilities, or side effects?”
The room rocked uneasily. The walls, ceiling, floor, and everything else were losing their firmness, becoming pliable.
“Come, have you, Kraken?”
The count raised his right hand. Lightning shot from it, halting the transformation into water. No, only slowing it slightly.
Purple waves of electromagnetism coursed around the pod, the lid of which opened wide.
“No!”
The count was just about to move away when a figure slowly rose before him—Iriya. It was unclear whether this had been the invader’s intent, or whether it was purely coincidental.
Ripples ran across the surface of the door leading out to the corridor, and then what should appear but a dim shape that took human form and passed through the door. Though he was dressed in the ornate raiment of a Noble, he had a face and build so youthful it would’ve been difficult to even call him a young man.
“Chulos.”
Both the count and D heard Iriya’s voice. The Huntress was out of the pod.
“So nice of you to come, Sis.”
The last member of the family that’d once lived peacefully in a valley—her younger brother Chulos—sadly greeted his sister.
III
“But you’re too late.”
Tears glistened in the boy’s eyes. Glittering, they slid down his cheeks, stopping at the jaw before falling to the floor.
“I wanted to go home. Back to our little cabin in the valley. I wanted to go home to Mom and Dad, to Yan and Pol and Maggie. To work in the garden with everyone, hunt beasts, sit down to dinner together . . . I wanted to hear Gia’s songs, too . . . But now it’s too late!”
Deep in Chulos’s eyes, a dull red glow began to shine.
“At the very least . . . You could join me, Sis . . . Become like me . . . It’s not really true that you went around killing all the others, is it? Don’t kill me, at least . . .”
“Chulos . . .”
Tears rolled from Iriya’s eyes, too.
The letters on the wall changed. The workings of the girl’s mind were having an effect on the mysteries encoded in her DNA.
“Forgive me, Chulos . . . I have to . . . You need to . . .”
“Please don’t kill me, Sis . . . If you do . . . I’ll . . .”
The boy grinned evilly.
“Chulos . . .”
The Sacred Ancestor characters looked as if they were about to change again.
“I’ll do this!”
Chulos snapped his mouth open wide.
Iriya’s eyes were drawn to the Noble’s fangs, a sight to make even the most indomitable human look away.
“Forgive me,” Iriya said, all emotion vanishing from her face.
The boy sailed into the air. Like a shooting star freed from gravity’s bonds, he zipped straight toward Iriya’s face.
Iriya’s right hand came up. There was no sword in it for a counterattack.
Sister and brother became one, melting together. Not as family—but as human and Noble. A flash of silver fluttered through the air.
The world stopped. So that the boy, who’d circled around behind Iriya, could show his intentions of burying his fangs in his sister’s pale throat.
When movement returned, the boy thudded to the floor. His little head left his body, and bright blood shot out.
“Chulos.”
Iriya stooped down and picked up her brother’s head. The eyes opened. Sad and weak, they were the eyes of a human.
“I’m sorry, Sis,” he said, moving lips covered in blood. “But . . . your throat . . . My teeth marks . . . aren’t on it. I’m glad . . . Sis . . .
You didn’t . . . end up like me.”
Darkness and light tinged his face, and in one of those stark flashes the boy breathed his last. Iriya didn’t hold the head close but rather set it down on the floor by her feet, then folded her hands together and recited what seemed to be a sadly perfunctory prayer.
The letters on the wall had stopped. They’d ended when she’d decapitated her younger brother.
“You must tell me, D,” the count insisted. “You should understand . . . You of all people.”
D was gazing at Iriya.
The hoarse voice murmured, “Are there gonna be side effects?”
Heaven and earth shook violently—and before they knew it, everything was sinking into the floor. No, into the water! Laughter echoed from beneath the gray floor, and as D, the count, and Iriya watched, the floor rose up like a mountain. From a spray of water that rivaled a waterfall—no, not water, but a spray of the floor—the enormous form of the mighty Viscount Kraken came into view.
“Is that what it takes to master water, Kraken?” Count Langlan bellowed, and his disappointment was understandable.
The skin on the giant’s face and hands was as swollen and purple as a drowning victim’s, while his enormous form wobbled like a sack full of water. A thin covering of mold grew on his skin, and those dead fish eyes of his contained not a single spark of vitality.
So, this was a Noble who lived in the water? This was another shape for the Nobles who danced their splendid waltzes in the moonlight, lent their ears to minstrels’ tales, and whistled tunes up and down highways of indestructible metal that ran all the way to the moon?
“Even the sight of you is revolting. Die, Kraken!”
From all over the ceiling red beams of light converged on the titanic figure. These were no ordinary lasers or heat rays. They were bizarre beams of scalding heat that evaporated water alone.
Swirling with steam, the water boiled. Viscount Kraken’s colossal form was rapidly changing shape.
“Be the water you so love, become steam, and spread across the entire planet. Life comes from water. Kraken, it is you who—”
Iriya the Berserker Page 14
