Ruler of Naught, page 59
part #2 of Exordium Series
He squeezed past the statue, following the widening corridor towards the light, and stepped into the Dreamtime.
o0o
The hull of the courier ship pinged and crackled as it cooled, the underside sizzling and emitting jets of steam as it sank into the muck of the ruined wheat field. A last rattle of hail struck spitefully at the little ship as the storm moved on, trailing hollow thunder as the sun struck wanly through thick clouds in a sky the color of a bruise.
Brandon jumped out of the lock. His glossy boots sank deep into the half-grown wheat and mud that the storm had left behind. Nearby a road emerged from a forest, stretching toward the setting sun. There, silhouetted on a distant rise of land, rose a castle, battlements jutting like teeth against the sunset light.
Brandon squelched towards the road, and set off towards the castle. He passed an orchard, the fruit and leaves stripped from bare branches by the hail that still lay in thick drifts upon the ground, crunching mushily underfoot. From time to time he passed people working in the fields, their motions listless with abandoned hope as they hacked wearily at the sterile mud.
He called out, “Where am I?”
The people watched him with dull, incurious eyes, unresponsive to his call. He trudged on in silence.
The bright peal of trumpets greeted him as he approached the castle. Surprised—looking around for who the welcome was really intended—he passed inside.
Lights blazed up against the encroaching night. A crowd clad in finery welcomed him and he forgot the misery outside the walls. A young, cheerful page brought a silver ewer to him, and with cool water he washed the dust of travel and the grime of long confinement from his face.
And then, as they ushered him towards the hall whence the sounds of merriment beckoned, he spied a tall figure silhouetted against the golden light spilling out between the opened doors. He couldn't see the face, but as the figure moved with familiar lanky grace down the steps towards him joy banished all questions and he rushed forward.
“Markham!” Words failed him as they embraced.
But words never failed Markham. “Brandy! You made it after all.” He laughed. “I wondered, watching that landing. Didn't I tell you, never argue with a thunderstorm?” He stepped back with his hands on Brandon’s shoulders, his swashbuckling grin both merry and tender. “Come on,” he said, taking his arm in a warm, strong grip, “let me show you to our host.”
They moved into the hall, and as Markham continued talking with the old, familiar ease, Brandon's tongue thawed. Soon they were laughing together, trading rapid-fire jokes and insults back and forth, moving at the center of a constellation of brightly garbed young Douloi, some dressed like them, others in fashions favored a hundred years ago, five hundred years ago, older, but all these young people moved in orbit round the double star of Arkad and L'Ranja.
In the banquet hall Markham led him past tables laden with food and drink from a hundred worlds, threading easily through the crowd of revelers, but as they approached the high table at the end the noise gradually fell away, and Brandon was aware of an expectant hush. Even Markham spoke rarely, finally silent as he halted before the throne-like chair at the head of the hall.
The man who sat there wore the aspect of vigorous middle-age, but his stern, high-browed face was marked with pain, lined with the memory of many sleepless nights. Withal, his eyes were steady and intelligent, his countenance solemn, yet hinting at a humor undefeated by long-borne pain. Brandon bowed; shock thrilled through his nerves as his lowered gaze descried bright blood, seeping slowly, marring the clothing of his host. What was this untended wound—and why?
Brandon controlled his reaction as he straightened up.
“Be welcome, Brandon of Arthelion,” said the man, his resonant voice courteous. “I am Jaspar. If there is aught you lack, only ask.”
“Thank you, my liege.”
Jaspar motioned them to seats on either side, and the night progressed in delicacies, fine wine, and finer conversation—history, philosophy, music, art, all the range of human endeavor passed under review, discoursed with ease and grace by the guests of all ages who were gathered there. At the head of the table the host was given to long silences, but these did not impose a stricture on the observations of others. He seemed content to strike a spark from time to time with a few well-chosen words and then sit back and listen. Occasionally he shifted carefully in his seat, his face betraying nothing of the discomfort of his wound.
“Will you have more to eat?” he said to Brandon. “You have come a very long way.”
Brandon replied politely, his mind on the long flight—and a double awareness flickered through his mind like lightning, present and past overlaid.
He turned to Markham, trying to retain both images: though he didn't quite have them, a sense of urgency possessed him. “I tried to join you at Dis,” he said. And as he spoke, memory flooded back. The urgency metamorphosed to grief. “But I was too late, and you had—died.”
Markham leaned across to smile at him, the torchlight twin flames in his eyes. “Why did you wait so long?” he asked.
Brandon wanted to protest that it was impossible to escape before that, but he did not utter the words: they were not completely true. It was not the possibility of escape, but the rightness of it that had kept him vacillating for three years.
And he still felt ambivalent. He had abandoned the world established by Jaspar himself. His gaze returned to his host, who smiled at his guests enjoying themselves.
Brandon turned back to Markham, who breathed and smiled again, impossibly alive. “I've got so much to ask you.” The exclamation was wrung out of him.
Markham's twisted grin was a blend of affection and challenge. “You have the answers, Brandy. You have everything I had. Take them and—” He gestured, slashing one hand through the air.
“Take everything,” Brandon repeated, “and run?”
Markham laughed soundlessly.
“Wherever I run,” Brandon went on, “people fall down dead.”
“Not flight.” Markham snapped his fingers. “Fight.” He jabbed his forefinger in the air.
The solemn stroke of a brazen chime rang through the hall and the merriment diminished to a quiet murmur that died away, yielding to the silence of expectation. All heads turned.
A door that Brandon hadn't noticed opened and a young ensign walked into the hall, carrying before him the double-handed burden of a glittering mace. Its facets cast back the radiance within the hall in spots of light that danced across the faces of the guests therein assembled. He walked solemnly across the room; somehow no table, chair, or gathering of diners obstructed his slow straight progress.
Shock again, again controlled rigidly, as Brandon saw the fresh bright blood welling from the mace, running down the ensign's arm from wrist to elbow in a slow crimson braid that traced his path across the shining marble floor.
The chime resounded once again as the young man left the chamber with his burden, and the conversations once again resumed. Brandon glanced at his host, now bent in conversation with an old woman dressed entirely in black.
Markham gazed into the depths of his cup, silent and abstracted. Distant. After a time the sound of young voices rose above the genteel tumult in the hall, and silence fell once more. From the same door there issued forth a band of maids and youths, singing wordlessly, finely clothed, bearing a variety of vessels; but Brandon's gaze was captured by the burden of the first. She bore a sphere of silver, wrought so fine and polished such that the eye could grasp it not at all, except as a distortion of the forms around it. She placed it on the table before their host and then withdrew.
Jaspar leaned forward. “This is the Stone of Exile,” he said to Brandon, “fallen from the grasp of those whose pride destroyed them, in a battle fought long before we left the womb of Earth now lost.”
He placed his hand upon the sphere. “It is a thing of power, Brandon of Arthelion. It will grant you your heart's desire.”
Brandon stared into the polished surface. It pulled his gaze deeper, he lost the hall and all within it, and then...
He opened his eyes to an empty hall in the cold light of dawn, his body cold and stiff with seated sleep.
Brandon jumped to his feet. “Markham!” he shouted, looking wildly around.
The great room threw his voice back in a mocking echo. It was not only empty, but long abandoned, spun with the tattered webs of spiders long departed for more rewarding hunting grounds. The furnishings were crazed and crumbling with age, and dust arose in strangling puffs from underfoot as he ran out to the courtyard, now choked with brambles under a flaring sun in a sky the color of heated brass.
He ran through the gates of the castle, coughing as heat seared at his throat. The land lay dead around him, bones whitening in the fields still clutching useless tools. All was silent save the wind and the dry scratching of the dead brambles, stirred to a mockery of life behind him.
A faint rumble fell from the sky. He looked up; a single contrail etched the sky and vanished.
“Coward!”
The cry spun him around in startlement and gladness for a human voice, but its owner had no comfort for him. She was tall, as tall as he, strong-shouldered, dark of skin and eyes, and the ends of her night-black hair brushed against her thighs.
She strode towards him, the hem of her battle-tattered garment dragging in the dust. “Coward!” she cried again.
“Why do you say that?” he demanded, falling back. “I've done nothing to warrant it.”
“You've done nothing.” Her white teeth bared. “You could have healed him.”
“How?” Brandon raised his arms. “I haven't the power to heal anyone!”
She advanced on him. “Now Jaspar's peace is the peace of death.”
“But I can't—”
She grasped him by the throat, raised him effortlessly off the ground, then threw him across the courtyard, to lie tangled in the thorns.
“The dishonor is yours,” she cried. “For as long as death.”
He struggled to get up, but the thorns tore at him and pulled him farther into their dry tangle, gray bones of a spring that would never come again. Hatred distorted the woman’s face, and then she vanished.
Brandon tried to shout, but the brambles clamped themselves around his throat and choked him to a whimper.
“Markham,” he said with his last breath, and then opened his eyes to the calm consideration of Eloatri, with Jaim at her side, as the last light died out of the great windows in the west wall of the transept and night came to New Glastonbury.
o0o
Solarch Vahn stretched his aching neck and exhaled slowly. The Aerenarch had stood a long time before the cathedral altar watching Ivard, then he’d moved to this side room, the “north transept” the Numen had called it, contemplating the statues in wall niches as if he were going to buy one.
Vahn followed, checking his surroundings. He knew all the exits, so he fell back, giving the Aerenarch more space. Bored, his mind still buzzing from the Augment session, he looked back into the nave of the cathedral. No one was visible save Roget, walking towards the Omilovs, who were watching the parricide approach them, apparently on his way back to the ship.
He shrugged. His responsibility was the Aerenarch; the captain had made it plain that if only one person returned from Desrien, it must be Brandon vlith-Arkad. Roget would take care of the rest.
He turned back. Terror gripped him: the west windows were dark, lights kindled far above, and the transept was empty. He ran forward, but there was no sign of the last Arkad heir. He slapped his boswell.
(Roget! I’ve lost the Aerenarch!)
He heard her footsteps clattering in the distance. But Brandon vlith-Arkad was there after all, his face sweat-sheened and his eyes wide and shocked. Before him stood the High Phanist and the tall Serapisti, Jaim.
(Cancel that. It’s the light in here.)
Roget acknowledged via boswell with some irritation, and he heard her pace slow, but Vahn didn’t take his eyes off the Aerenarch as he approached, tightening his grip on his weapon. It wasn’t the light; more now than ever he didn’t trust anything about Desrien. Nothing would take him from the Aerenarch’s side, from now until liftoff.
“Highness.” The High Phanist’s hands brushed her long robes as she bowed. “I crave a boon.” It was said in a grand manner, but not at all disrespectfully.
The Aerenarch gestured for her to speak, his fingers were tense.
“For my own peace of mind,” the High Phanist went on. “I feel I owe it to your esteemed father.”
This time Brandon seemed to find speech. “What can I do?” The light voice was almost lost in the huge room.
“You can stay alive.” The High Phanist made a grand gesture, almost theatrical as she presented Jaim. “And I propose to offer you this fine young man to see that you do.”
Brandon’s gaze shifted from Eloatri to Jaim, his expression uncomprehending.
Vahn felt a flash of annoyance. That was his job.
The High Phanist turned his way. “Your place is at the official functions.” She turned back to Brandon. “But there is a need for someone within your own walls.”
The humor was gone now, and Vahn got the impression that two conversations were going on, one whose meaning was opaque to him.
The Aerenarch looked past the woman. “Jaim?” The question was directed at the Serapisti.
“My life,” Jaim said, “for yours.”
Brandon winced. He said in a hurried undertone, “But my life is—”
He did not finish. With unprecedented rudeness, the High Phanist cut in, still in that odd tone blending humor and formality: “I must be assured that every precaution will be heeded before I let you be taken to Ares.”
The Aerenarch’s eyes narrowed. “Ares?”
“You are free to go,” the High Phanist said, smiling. “Whenever you wish. After I have my assurance.”
The Aerenarch bowed, the sovereign granting the petitioner’s boon. The irony in the gesture silenced Jaim and made Vahn hold his breath, but the High Phanist seemed pleased.
“Well, then,” she said, “why don’t you find your companions and see what they wish to do? Of course, you are all free to stay here as long as you desire.”
The Aerenarch’s gaze moved to Vahn’s face, and the Solarch said woodenly, “I’ll have Roget round them up for immediate departure.”
o0o
Jaim had expected the others to have already joined Vi’ya back on Telvarna, but all except the Eya’a were clustered before the great doors of New Glastonbury, now open to the cool night air. They did not exhibit the impatience of people kept waiting; all seemed to have just arrived. Montrose had the sleeping Ivard in his arms. Sebastian Omilov leaned on his son’s arm. Marim’s face was flushed. Lokri was tense, in spite of his lounging pose.
As they left the cathedral, Jaim realized he had no idea how much time had passed since their arrival, whether the remainder of the day, or many days. More oddly still, it didn’t seem to matter. The night sky was clear, the stars seeming more brilliant for the lack of competition from Highdwellings or any other human-made constructs that he could see. Time still seemed curiously suspended, as it had within the stone walls.
He looked about him, his senses heightened to an almost unbearable degree. The scents of loam, of trees and herbs, the sounds of whispering leaves and feet crunching the gravel, all were clear and distinct. Breathing deeply, he relished the dust and the chilly breeze. Each sensation moored him incrementally stronger to this world, veiling that other world with its false shadows and seductive dreams.
The Aerenarch walked alone, contemplating the stars overhead. Jaim knew that his mind had gone ahead to what had to come next: Ares.
Will the nicks help him find his father?
A step beside Jaim made him look away, glad for the distraction. The faint light outlined the familiar bony cheek and jawline of Lokri.
“Do you think they use drugs?” he drawled, pointing lazily back toward the cathedral.
Jaim heard the bravado in Lokri’s voice and guessed at the fear that probably lay just underneath.
“Nothing so simple,” he said.
“I take it you saw—things—too. Is that what they hit everyone with who lands here? No wonder it has a rotten rep.”
“I can’t figure out how they do it,” Lokri said. “I know it can’t be real, though it seemed so. If I had time to look for the holojacs... ”
“You’d never find them in that fussy architecture,” Osri’s acerbic voice broke in on their other side.
“Discussing the medium,” Omilov put in, “is as good a way as any of avoiding the message.”
The conversational dam had broken. Brandon said nothing, but he was smiling slightly. Jaim wondered if he, too, questioned the physical reality of whatever it was he saw within the cathedral. He seemed uninterested in the discussion of whether they’d imagined the whole as a result of some smokedrug slipped into the altar censers, or if they’d stepped through the stone walls into some other dimension.
“The truth is in the experience” is what Reth Silverknife used to say.
The familiar pain gripped him.
Then the Aerenarch spotted Telvarna, and he flexed his hands; whatever was on his mind, he was preparing himself for a confrontation.
And the only one there is Vi’ya.
Osri’s voice splintered his thoughts. “If what I saw was real, then I’ll have to go back to school to relearn navigation.”
Everyone laughed, even Montrose. Jaim hadn’t heard the guarded tone the nick navigator had always used around Telvarna’s crew. He wondered how long that would last.
Montrose frowned, shifting his grip on Ivard as he glanced around. “Where are the Eya’a?” he asked.
“Telltale recorded them back at the ship a good while after the captain went on board,” Roget spoke up. She added in a dry voice that raised another laugh, “We had no orders concerning them.”
When they reached the Telvarna, Jaim heard the soft thump of paws and Lucifur raced past up the ramp, pursued by Trev and Gray, their tongues lolling. Brandon spoke for the first time since they had left Eloatri.
