Banner of Souls

by Liz Williams

  “Very precise,” the Matriarch answered. “There will be no damage. And we will honor our bargain.”

  “If I find that you have not,” Yskatarina said, “then you will find that the haunt-tech that I have given you will turn upon you. I have factored in safeguards that only I can activate.”

  The Matriarch’s mouth curled in what Yskatarina initially thought to be her habitual sneer. It was only a moment later that she realized it was approval.

  “Are you ready?”

  “Very well.” Yskatarina gritted her teeth, helpless as a worm in a vise. From the corner of her eye, she saw the doctor run a hand across the generating tubes of the blacklight matrix. The room sparkled and filled with unnatural sound. Yskatarina blinked. The Matriarch was no longer there. The draft from the Animus’s wings drifted across her face—soft as snowfall, she thought, and wondered where the thought had come from. And then she was the Animus, a whisper in his head, looking down on her own bound form. She saw the blacklight matrix sweep across her, outlining first sinew and vein, then bone, then nerve and neuron. Her brain pulsed with neon fire. She plunged downward, boring into her own skull. It was like entering the Chain.

  Images flashed by. Yskatarina saw herself in a garden filled with glowing leaves, skeins of tangled vines that pulsed with lights, a tower made of glass and water, ebbing and flowing like the tide. She saw the long ragged edge of the Animus’s wing, curling through stormy air. She tasted salt. She saw a girl with luminous gray eyes and long red hair blowing in a wind from the sea.

  She knew that it was here somewhere, though she could not have said what it was that she sought.

  The landscape changed from the lands of life. She traveled down canyons of meat, over bloody rivers, across bridges made of sharpened bone and tough neural fiber, withered as old whips. Beneath, there was a boil of fire: an inner, private hell. Things clung to the cliffs like ghosts, winged yet spectral. They were horribly familiar, and as one of them looked up, Yskatarina saw its shadowy head change. Her own face looked back at her, and then it was the visage of the Animus, then both at the same time. Something within her shrieked in protest.

  Shuddering, she let the vision pass by and glided on. And at last she saw Elaki sitting on a crag with her feet tucked up beneath her. Yskatarina slipped down to stand beside her aunt.

  Elaki showed no sign that she saw Yskatarina. Under the tapering cowl her face was at first withered and old, and then it smoothed out into fetal vacuity.

  “Aunt?” Yskatarina said. “What is wrong?”

  But Elaki only muttered and mumbled, tearing with toothless gums at a long bloody shred.

  “Is that my love for you?” Yskatarina asked. She reached out and snatched at the shred, but Elaki shrieked and tore it away. She held it at arm’s length, then clutched it to her. Her eyes were wild; she roared with panic.

  “Give it to me!” Yskatarina cried, and reaching out she struck her aunt in the face. Elaki’s cheek tore open, revealing a shadowy hollow behind a fountain of stinking blood.

  “Give it to me! You took my limbs. You would take my Animus! I owe you nothing.”

  Elaki’s arms flailed. Yskatarina grasped the shred and pulled. It lengthened with unnatural elasticity, until Elaki and Yskatarina stood in a tug-of-war on either side of the crag. The recesses of Yskatarina’s imagination gaped below, the caverns and oceans of the unconscious mind. She did not like the things that she saw within; they disgusted her.

  Once more she glimpsed the beings that clung to the sides of the cliff, but now the fire was gone and the place in her vision was bleak and cold and dark. It looked like Nightshade, the region known as the Sunken Plain. The creatures howled and cried and she felt their attention turn toward her: hungry and desperate, a bitter yearning for life and blood and flesh. Their need reeled her in, she understood what it was like to be thus disembodied. She felt herself begin to shiver and melt.

  Then a black-winged shape with a scorpion’s tail slid out of the abyss, its eyes glowing with trust. With the last of her strength, Yskatarina ripped at the shred and tore it from Elaki’s grasp. Elaki withered into a twist of smoke and blew away, but Yskatarina felt herself falling backward into pain, which opened with nauseating willingness to let her in.

  CHAPTER 2

  Earth

  We have made the arrangements,” the Grandmothers informed Dreams-of-War. “You will leave as soon as can be arranged, by junk.”

  “What, on a public ship?”

  “Of course not. We have hired someone loyal to Memnos, you will be relieved to hear. But the ship is up-coast at present, and must return. We do not yet know when.”

  “I am, indeed, relieved,” Dreams-of-War said. “I should not trust an Earth-owned ship, given the presence of the Kami here.”

  The Grandmothers snorted. “You are arrogant, like all Martians. You are like cats—you all consider yourselves superior, and with even less justification. In the matter of the Kami, you know nothing and are doubtless mistaken in what you think you know. Now go. Make sure that you keep a close eye on the girl.”

  Dreams-of-War left, seething.

  Once inside her own chamber, she stood looking out across the early morning harbor, grinding one armored fist into the palm of the other. She had not known that it would be like this when she had joined the upper echelons of the warriors of Memnos. She had been so proud. It had been the culmination of her youthful military career, and yet it wound down to this: a series of petty slights and insults from two twisted old women. If it had not been for the ensuing humiliation, Dreams-of-War would have resigned her commission and returned to Mars.

  But then, there was also Lunae. Dreams-of-War remembered the conversation that had taken place after her emotional modification.

  “You have no choice,” the Matriarch had told her as they sat together in the highest tower of Memnos, looking out across the white-and-russet winter plain. “You will need it for her protection.”

  “But I’ve never loved anyone,” Dreams-of-War protested. “Only human remnants who remember the days when they were bloodbirthers feel such natural love for their children.” Love was a contaminant, utterly apart from the purities of sisterhood, battle, and duty. She found a strong repugnance for the feeling, but the Matriarch had been right.

  Dreams-of-War recalled standing beside the kappa in the growing-chamber, trying not to get too close to this stout toad-woman who seemed to have little sense of personal distance and who was continually attempting to pat Dreams-of-War in misplaced reassurance. She remembered watching the growing-bag in revulsion as it bulged and writhed. It reminded her of her own birth, and Dreams-of-War found that distasteful.

  As soon as the squirming, grublike thing had been released from its pod in a shower of fluid, however, the small sore place within her had clicked like a switch of pain, and she knew immediately that she would die to protect the infant. It was most vexing, and she resented it with a passion, but there it was. It got in the way of all manner of things; it made her life a worry and a misery, and for the first time she was conscious of a real fear with which she had no adequate means of dealing. As soon as her duties were discharged, she told herself, she would return to Memnos, go back beneath the blacklight matrix, and have the whole package of inconvenient emotions surgically changed.

  Now she turned her back on the city and sat down on the metal bed. The cinnabar walls of the room reminded her of Mars, as though she might glance through the window and see the Crater Plain stretching before her, Olympus towering on the horizon. The sudden longing-for-place was yet another feeling to be despised. In a fit of irritation, Dreams-of-War said aloud, “I need to talk to you! Separately.”

  Slowly, gliding across her skin, the armor left her body and crept across the floor like a serpent. When the gleaming tongue reached a shaft of sunlight, it began to rise upward, hardening, reassembling itself piece by piece. Clad only in the rubbery black underharness, Dreams-of-War watched until the armor stood before her, waiti
ng.

  Dreams-of-War hesitated. Of all the aspects of her marvelous armor, this one was the most disquieting to her. And it was so because the armor incorporated something that was unnatural, alien, something that had originated with the Kami. Haunt-tech.

  It was difficult to separate a warrior from her ghost-armor, for armor became the warrior. Both formed part of a fighting machine. If one died or malfunctioned, the other had a tendency to follow. Yet if the wearer were knocked unconscious, the armor would take over. Dreams-of-War had once woken to find herself pounding across a Martian plain, the legs of the armor pumping while she dangled useless within it. Dreams-of-War knew that she had become overdependent on the armor, and despite its comforts, she did not like the realization. It had been easier when she had relied on nothing but the underharness and a gutting knife, hand-fighting men-remnants in the heights.

  “What, then?” the armor said, echoing through the chamber.

  “I ask Embar Khair to stand before me,” Dreams-of-War said. The armor flowed, glittering, the helm snapping up over the empty neck and taking on the semblance of a face. Half of it was missing; Embar Khair had died in the armor, a chance bolt from a mountain-ghost’s bow striking her in the side of the head.

  “I want to talk to you about the Kami,” Dreams-of-War said to the armor.

  “The spirits-who-ride-within?” Embar Khair’s mutilated metal face managed a frown.

  “The aliens,” Dreams-of-War said patiently. Embar Khair had died only a handful of years after the arrival of the Kami, but her armor had been their gift. “I need to know everything you know.”

  “It is not a long story. We first learned of the Kami through Nightshade, which had sealed itself away for centuries. Then Nightshade sent a ship to Memnos, with news of new technology that had been granted by aliens. They gave us haunt-tech, and the Chain.”

  “And what did the Matriarchy think about these gifts?”

  “They did not trust Nightshade. I remember—” but here, Embar Khair’s form twisted, half-melting.

  “Armor! What is the matter with you?”

  “I cannot recall ... I am half-here.”

  Dreams-of-War rose to her feet and put her face close to the half-visage of the armor. “But you must.”

  “Cannot ...”

  “Wait,” Dream-of-War instructed the armor. “I have an idea. Reduce yourself.”

  The armor did so, melting down into its customary ball. Dreams-of-War picked up the ball and strode swiftly down the hallway, to the chamber that contained the mansion’s blacklight matrix.

  She had never had reason to enter this chamber before, and she hesitated at the door. Leaning forward, she spoke quietly into the oreagraph opening.

  “The Grandmothers. What are they doing?”

  They sleep, the oreagraph replied after a moment.

  “Good. Deactivate the weir-wards to this chamber, then tell me when the Grandmothers wake.” Dreams-of-War leaned closer, so that the oreagraph could scan her soul-engrams through the lenses of her eyes. She blinked, and then the door was opening. Dreams-of-War carried the ball of armor into the blacklight chamber and set it upon the couch.

  “Resume your form.”

  The armor did so.

  “I am going to activate the matrix,” Dreams-of-War said, “to bring your spirit wholly through from the Eldritch Realm. I am unfamiliar with these matters, so you must instruct me. Will this work?”

  “It should.”

  “Then tell me how to turn this thing on.”

  The armor issued instructions, with which Dreams-of-War complied. It was not so very difficult. Within a few moments, the matrix began to glow.

  There was a sound like the echo of a shriek within the chamber. Outside the door, Dreams-of-War heard the rattle of activated weir-wards. She spoke hastily to the oreagraph. “I told you—deactivate!” The sound stopped. The armor stood before her, calm now, and full-faced. Dreams-of-War stared.

  “I am here,” Embar Khair said.

  “Tell me what I need to know.”

  And Embar Khair did so.

  The women stood at the entrance to the ship. Above them, the Memnos Tower shone red in the last of the Martian sun. Frost cracked beneath their boots.

  “I like none of this,” the Matriarch said. Her long head bobbed, balanced on its thin neck like a bead on the end of a wire. She shuffled unhuman limbs beneath the red-and-black robes.

  “No one likes it,” the woman named Essa answered. She put a hand to her head, smoothing the surface of the curled horns at her brow. “It comes from Nightshade, after all. As do Yri and Yra and their ship.” Essa gestured toward the traveling chair that contained the bulky, connected bodies of two women. “They who sought sanctuary with us, and their male with them ...”

  The Matriarch shifted uneasily. “Where is the male?”

  “Confined on the ship.”

  The Matriarch sighed, then drew Embar Khair and Essa to one side. “You’ve made quite sure? There will be no trace of this haunt-ship, or its voyage?”

  Embar Khair nodded. “Yri and Yra say that they have made arrangements. There will be no record of our passage.”

  “I trust none of this,” the Matriarch fretted. “This new technology—this ship, the Chain, the armor that you wear ... None.”

  “Haunt-tech,” Essa murmured.

  “It is a science of superstition. I know too little about it.”

  The warrior grinned, displaying sharpened teeth.

  “Who does know? No one except the lab clans of Nightshade. Like all gifts, it is best treated with caution. And we are doing the right thing, are we not?”

  “Nightshade must be challenged,” Essa agreed. “There’s too much power there, out on the system’s edge. Whoever took any notice of Nightshade, before the aliens came? It was nothing more than an isolated colony, years distant from the inner systems. And now, suddenly, we must take orders from them if we want the benefits of this haunt-tech.”

  The Matriarch looked up to where the Martian maw of the Chain arched across the heavens. Even at sunset, it was visible: a shadow over the sky. “Look at it,” the Matriarch said. “It dominates the worlds. They say you actually die, you know.” The Matriarch’s head wobbled in distress, weaving from side to side. “It sends you through into the realm of the dead and brings you out the other side, alive once more. I do not trust it. It is unnatural.”

  “I am not afraid of death,” the warrior said softly. She glanced over to the ship, to where the others were waiting. The two women were barely visible in the folded mass of tubing that surrounded the carrying chair. “But I wonder about Yri and Yra.”

  Essa’s hand strayed to the horns, stroking the bony carapace.

  “Nightshade is looking for them throughout the system. Mars won’t be a haven for them any longer, and we have to keep them safe, Embar Khair. I doubt whether any other geneticist has the skill, or the technical knowledge, to do what has to be done. And if this project of theirs fails, then Nightshade triumphs. Your job is to get them to Earth. Hide them for as long as necessary.”

  Embar Khair inclined her armored head. “I will do so.”

  “Then go.”

  Embar Khair strode across to the ship and touched her fingers to its side. A hatch hissed open, responding to the engrams within her armor. The carrying chair, bearing Yri and Yra, glided up into the depths of the ship, which twitched like a startled scorpion as the hatch opened. Embar Khair followed. Moments later, the ship spiraled upward, skimming over the Crater Plain and leaving the Memnos Tower far below. Embar Khair kept her gaze fixed on the growing maw of the Chain, and never once looked back.

  Dreams-of-War stared openmouthed at her armor.

  “You challenged Nightshade?”

  “Yri and Yra, the Grandmothers, fled to Memnos from Nightshade, seeking sanctuary. They had fallen out with the rest of their clan, because they despised the Kami. But Nightshade’s wish eventually prevailed upon Mars. Nightshade disapproved of most of t
he Changed—Mars had bred them long ago for amusement and sport, not ultimate perfection, and the Changed were seen as lesser beings, genetic tinkering, nothing more. Essa was forced to—disappear. The Matriarch was imprisoned some time later in a Memnos coup and Nightshade equipped her replacement with the means to control the scissor-women. I returned to Mars to seek out Essa, and that was when I died.”

  “But what did the Grandmothers come here to do?”

  “The intention of the project was to grow a child, one who would have the ability to challenge Nightshade.”

  Dreams-of-War felt a sudden glow of accomplishment. Here it was, at last.

  “The hito-bashira. What is she?”

  “I do not know,” Embar Khair said. “I was only the bodyguard.”

  Dreams-of-War stepped back in disappointment.

  “You don’t know?”

  “I know only that the undertaking was immensely difficult, requiring years of study and preparation. Yri and Yra were geneticists of great renown. That is all I know.”

  “And what of these new ghosts of the ancient past? Do you remember the gaezelles?” She thought of the ghost herd, their electric demon gaze.

  “I remember,” the armor said.

  “There have been further reports. I have been keeping in touch with Memnos, but I would not have needed to. It is in all the news-views. Over the last months, since we first saw the gaezelles, the sightings of such ghosts have increased. Horned women striding the passages and under-ways of Winterstrike. Flayed warriors in armor made of thorns, manifesting in teahouses in Caud. Women from the Epoch of Cold, whose flesh seems made of amber and ice.”

  They wake, the oreagraph said suddenly.

  “Close the matrix down,” Dreams-of-War said. Blacklight flickered and died. Embar Khair’s spirit screamed as it fled, leaving only the usual residue behind. And now the armor was starting to lose shape, the fierce half-face melting into a gleam of green metal. Dreams-of-War reached out a hand. “Return to me.” The armor did so, enclosing her with hard comfort. Dreams-of-War stood on metal feet and, protected once more, strode from the chamber.