Pathfinder Tales: The Redemption Engine
Page 11
Salim was on the verge of clarifying when his ears answered the question for him. Salim's own boots rang loudly on the stone in this quiet place, and the Caulborn's padding feet, hidden and muffled by their robes, provided a soft counterpoint.
But only one. The creatures stepped in unison, and as Salim glanced back and forth between them, he saw that their arms swung in the same lazy arcs as they walked. Not the similarity of three creatures with similar heights and builds—the mirror-perfect mimicry of three puppets on the same string.
Realization came crashing in. Like a single person with a thousand bodies—hadn't Ceyanan said that? "You're the same," he said, still reflexively speaking to the first Caulborn. "You're all one creature."
It wasn't an entirely alien idea. Hive minds occurred occasionally—Salim knew some of the insect people of Axis had near-perfect telepathy, allowing them to synchronize their work. Yet even those still had some sense of the individual. Unless he was missing something, this was a single consciousness spread out into different bodies. But if that were true...
"Why are we going to the palace?" he asked. "If you're all the same, why can't you answer my questions right now?"
Better and better. Salim decided to set questions aside for a time, and the procession continued on in silence.
Several times as they walked, other groups of Caulborn emerged from buildings or branchings of the bridge and joined them, filing into the back of the line. Once or twice, Salim caught glimpses of more recognizable shapes, or things whose forms weren't humanoid at all, but all of these quickly removed themselves from the elevated roadway and slipped into the shadows before he could identify them. By the time their makeshift parade curved onto a long ramp and descended to the floor of the cavern, the procession had grown to thirty of the eyeless creatures.
They slowed and stopped. Before them, a colonnaded building of white stone glowed in a soft light that seemed to radiate from everywhere and nowhere, showing its details without casting shadows. In contrast to the rest of the darkened city, it seemed almost absurdly bright. Though nowhere near as tall as the Tower of Night, the place's thick pillars still stretched high to a triangular lintel dozens of feet overhead, their sides smooth and unadorned.
Salim couldn't see any obvious signs of quivering. To him, the thing looked utterly solid, and old as time—its stark walls and hard lines made it seem more temple than palace. But he wasn't about to question the naming conventions of a race with no names themselves.
Sensing that something was required of him, he nodded. "I'm ready."
The Caulborn resumed their lockstep procession, and he moved with them, up the steps and between the titanic columns.
The columns were deceptive—not a row but a forest, carefully offset and spaced so that anyone looking from the outside would be unable to get a clear line of sight to the interior. Salim's escort wound through two rows, then three, then a fourth and a fifth before emerging into the building's heart.
It was a single immense chamber. Three sides were enclosed by the grove of pillars, with only the far wall showing solid stone broken by human-sized archways.
In the center sat a mound of flesh, a wet and bulging sac rising almost to the ceiling. In many ways it was like a grub or larva, yet without even those grotesque creatures' simple structures. It was boneless and featureless, thousands of pounds of green, curdled whorls floating in fluid, its currents visible through thin membranes or the pulsing of tumorous protuberances. A cross between a giant's brain and some horrific afterbirth.
The monstrosity shuddered, a ripple passing smoothly across its surface in a gelatinous wave, and Salim suddenly understood the temple's name.
Around the flesh-mountain buzzed a cloud of Caulborn attendants. Some had buckets and rags on long poles, which they used to moisten the twitching creature. Others held vials to different parts of its shapeless body or rubbed gray paste into its folds. A few stood still with their faces pressed flat against it. None paused in their motions or otherwise acknowledged the approaching party.
Salim's procession closed half the distance and then stopped. Again, Salim took what he presumed to be his cue and stepped forward several paces, close enough that the organ-thing loomed over him, its membranes looking ready to burst at any moment and carry him away in an amniotic flood. For lack of anything better to say, he stated the obvious.
"You're Anamnesis. The One That Watches."
The words hit Salim like a hammer, and he staggered half a step before regaining his balance. It wasn't that they were loud, precisely. But where the words of the Caulborn had shifted and overlapped, echoing in his head, Anamnesis was a stentorian choir speaking in unison. His head rang like a church at high hymns.
The flesh closest to Salim shifted color, becoming a sunburst of red that swept backward in a shock wave before disappearing. Salim felt the touch of the brain-sac's amusement.
Salim shook his head, half in negation, half to clear the ringing out of his mental ears. "Not well enough, apparently."
"Yeah, well." He struggled to get his thoughts together. "Anamnesis, are you the lord of Xavorax?"
Again the brilliant red laugh-burst.
The words came with a barrage of images, brief flashes of scenes. He saw vampires kneeling before Caulborn as Lorilen had, the eyeless creatures using their long fingers to draw forth thin, opalescent threads from their servants' bowed heads. Interspersed with these were rougher scenes—screaming slaves with their heads cradled in the Caulborn's split jaws, gossamer torrents rushing from their eyes and mouths. Again and again, he saw these same Caulborn in the Quivering Palace, faces pressed to Anamnesis's sides in silent communion, regurgitating what they had stolen.
Salim felt sick. "You eat thoughts."
"Small comfort to those you steal them from," Salim shot back.
The image of the screaming slave continued to play behind Salim's eyes. He gritted his teeth. "Do you know why I'm here?"
"Sure, fine. I come on the business of the Lady of Graves herself. I've been told that you can help me discover who's stealing souls in Kaer Maga—the City Above."
There was a slight pause, a pensive blue shift to the brain-thing's flesh. It didn't ripple so much as mottle and cloud.
Despite the horror of the situation, Salim felt his spirits lift. "How?"
In response, he was flooded with another series of images. In the blood-red light of the Tower of Night, vampires reclined in orderly rows of cupped chair-beds. Tubes of dark fluid ran to their mouths, and smoked goggles shaded their eyes. Above them, directly in their fields of vision, hung square, shimmering portals a few feet across. Where the rest of the room was red and black, these blazed with white light—daylight. Through the portals, Salim could just make out images of a city: busy streets, people fighting or conducting business, a couple making love in a sunlit parlor. Every scene was different, yet each vampire watched only the one directly in front of it. Behind the beds, in the sha
dows, stood the gaunt shapes of Caulborn.
Something Kian had said earlier tickled Salim's memory. "The windows. You use magic to scry on Kaer Maga."
"Of course. But you'll tell me what you know of the soul-stealing?"
Where the last negation had been like a door slamming, this one was softer—an invitation. Salim could feel the weight of Anamnesis just beyond his perception, waiting for something.
He squared his shoulders. "On behalf of Pharasma, Goddess of Death and Mistress of the Spire, I—"
Salim paused, thoughts whirling. His hand went to the amulet around his neck, the black stone engraved with Pharasma's spiral. "I have—"
The last words overlapped, coming at him from all angles. In a way he could never articulate, Salim felt them like tentacles slapping against a clear plane of glass, fetching up hard against the barrier of his mind-shielding spell. The thought of letting this thing run loose in his head was bowel-loosening.
Yet what choice did he have? He might be able to take on several of Anamnesis's servants at once, maybe even take the brain-thing hostage, but could he trust the information of a prisoner? Would the threat of death even scare them? For all he knew, the Caulborn might have no particular attachment to a given body, their shared mind distributed among them, surviving as long as any remained.
"If I release my spell—"
Endmaker. Salim had heard Pharasma called many things, but that was a new one. At least it implied that there was something the subterranean monstrosities feared.
It would have to be enough. Taking a deep breath, Salim concentrated and broke the weave, letting the shroud of the goddess's magic drop away.
Anamnesis's flesh flared sunflower yellow in—pleasure? Interest? The emotion that washed over Salim was difficult to pin down. He felt those tentacles sliding across the surface of his mind, exploring, probing. Yet for all that, they were gentle.
Salim closed his eyes and clenched his jaw. This was not a violation, he reminded himself. Violation required some level of ownership, of personal sovereignty. He'd given both away long ago.
After a time that could have been seconds or half an hour, the illusory tentacles seemed to withdraw. There was a wash of pleasant emotion like a cerebral breeze.
"Ceyanan said that you might ask for it back, but that its service is regretfully still required by the Boneyard." Ceyanan had been firm on that point. Salim tried to remember exactly what the angel had said, but found he couldn't bring the words to mind.
"Thank you for understanding," Salim said. "Now that you've seen who I am and why I'm here—will you tell me what I need to know?"
Salim felt himself changing color as well, cheeks flushing. "I let you—"
"Fine." Salim's mood, admittedly rarely cheerful at the best of times, was rapidly darkening. If finishing his mission meant trading this brain-sac some of the Spire's secrets, he'd be more than happy to oblige. "What do you want?"
The word stuck in Salim's head, quivering like an arrow. He scrabbled for a response.
The anger that had been building inside Salim flared, breaking through any attempt to contain it. "Keep dreaming, you voyeuristic bastard."
"Lucky me." Every muscle in Salim's body cried out for him to draw steel, to spin and slash among the Caulborn attendants until the brain-thing was surrounded by a tide of viscera and severed limbs, then puncture membrane after membrane until it told him what he wanted to know. Barring that, he imagined grabbing his amulet and shifting away to somewhere else, or pulling the lintel stone from his pocket and running for the archways at the far end of the chamber. If he could get there first, he could shift back to Kaer Maga, and then—
New images sprang unbidden into his mind. Maedora the psychopomp, looming over him. Ceyanan's smile, as mocking as always. The angel's words: Your pride, Salim.
Salim let go of his sword, both hands going to his head. "Get out!"
The worst part was that the thing was right. Even as he pressed at his temples, vainly hoping to force out the all-encompassing voice, Salim could see the truth of it in the image of Ceyanan's smile. He would not leave this place empty-handed. Not after what he'd already been through.
Besides, what good had his own memories ever done him? Hadn't he spent years hoping to forget?
But he'd been offered that option before, and he'd passed it up. His past was his burden, and he would carry it for as long as the Lady demanded.
To hell with it.
"Fine," he said again. "But I don't want you removing anything the way you did with Lorilen. Swear it."
"Swear it!" This time Salim did draw his sword. "Swear, you bloated pile of curd, or I swear by all the stars in the heavens that I'll bleed you till this room is awash in your fluids."
Amusement. Red rings pulsing back in wave upon wave.
Salim's sword still stood out to his side, reflecting the light of the creature's emotions. "Now tell me what I need to know."
Anamnesis was silent for a moment, just long enough for Salim to wonder if he was being goaded. He raised his sword—
"What?"
"Who?" Salim pressed. "Why?"
Images flashed in Salim's head: night views of a large brick house with a tall garden wall. Judging by the contrast with its dingy surroundings, it must be brand new. Though the scenes didn't center on it, from the corner of his mental eye Salim saw a series of bound figures carried through the wall's gates. Then the scene shifted to a river, and a flashing series of hard-looking men and women rolling corpses into a stream. Though it was hard to identify them all from the brief snippets, Salim caught glimpses of several familiar tattoos, and the same shock of unnaturally red gnome hair he'd seen on one of the prisoners.
It wasn't much—a group, a neighborhood, a house. But it was a place to start. Salim sheathed his sword.
Cold sweat broke out beneath Salim's arms, between his toes. But he said o
nly, "Let's get this over with."
Anamnesis itself didn't move, but the amused red changed to a deep satisfied purple that spread like a bruise until it tinged every sac and curd. In eerie unison, five of its Caulborn attendants stopped what they were doing. Arms fell to their sides, and they glided toward Salim as smoothly as ghosts. They took up positions in a circle around him, an arm's length away, and it was all he could do to keep from spinning wildly, animal instincts screaming for him not to let the misshapen creatures get behind him.
Salim jaw tightened. "That's the story of my life."
A flicker of color—was the thing making a joke?
All of Salim's mounting tension let go at once, releasing in a bitter laugh.
"And that's a selling point, is it?" He rolled his head on his shoulders, cracking his neck as if preparing for a fight. "Exactly what I need." He crossed his arms and stared the Caulborn in front of him directly in its eyeless, scabrous face.
"If you're going to do it, do it. I'm a busy man."
The Caulborn around Salim lifted their arms. Overlong index fingers unfurled, their tips brushing his cheek, the back of his head.
The fingers began to glow, ghost-pale, wisps of something ephemeral wrapping like smoke around them.
Inside Salim's head, there was a sudden wrenching, as of something tearing open. Then the horrible sensation of things draining, emptying like a blister, a river jumping its banks and threatening to carry him away.
In the torrent of conflicting thoughts and emotions rushing through him, one briefly surfaced above the others. A sense of vindication; the feeling that he—or maybe someone else?—had been correct about something. But he couldn't for the life of him remember what.
Salim realized he was screaming.