A World Without Heroes (53 page)

J
ason spent the next couple of days becoming familiar with the castle. He roamed the grounds, discovering an aviary, a menagerie, an archery range, a kennel full of big boarhounds and mastiffs, two swimming pools, and a large area of closely mown grass for playing a game that seemed a hybrid between soccer and croquet. Inside the castle he found game rooms featuring billiards, darts, duckpin bowling, strategic board games, gambling, and an enclosure where animals were pitted against one another in mortal combat. He came across an area for fencing, a music room full of instruments, and an intimate, elegant theater.

Importantly, on the first day exploring, Jason also found a bathhouse. Inside, men waded and bathed in scented pools of varying depth and temperature. He went by several times after discovering it but had not yet seen Kimp.

Although subsequent meals did not display varieties as extravagant as Jason’s feast of welcoming, they retained sufficient quality to delight the most discriminating critic. Beverages and snacks could be obtained all day and night from various locations.

On the evening of his second day exploring, Jason located a
strange room deep belowground where castle guests, lounging on divans and futons, munched on small, individual pies. Pungent incense permeated the air, and in one corner musicians tapped at marimbas and plucked peculiar stringed instruments. Several of the reclining diners were people Jason had seen at his welcoming feast. Others were emaciated wretches, with waxy skin and greasy hair.

The flat-featured guest with long black hair who had joked about the wizatch relaxed on a nearby divan. He used his fork to motion Jason over.

As Jason approached, the man swallowed a bite of his pie. “Have you ever experienced lumba berry pie?” he asked quietly, dabbing his lips with a fabric napkin.

“No,” Jason replied.

The man offered his fork. Jason declined. “I can get my own.” He could see two attendants carrying trays of pies around the room.

“My name is Drake.”

“Jason.”

Drake took another bite. “One mustn’t overindulge in lumba berries,” he confided, eyes rolling with pleasure. “Their more common name is hunger berries. No other food tastes more divine, or leaves the diner more satisfied. But a person who regularly consumes the berries rarely lasts long.”

“Why?”

“Lumba berries do not truly nourish. In fact they rob your body of nutrients. When consumed in significant quantities, they destroy your appetite for any other food. Soon only lumba berries will satisfy, and you blissfully devour them until you starve to death.”

Jason glanced around the room, paying more attention to the diners who looked unhealthily skinny. “Do you limit yourself?”

“Sometimes. It can be hard to resist such a pleasurable poison. Lumba berry pies have killed me three times.”

Jason scowled. “What brought you back?”

Drake grinned, showing a gold tooth. “I am something of an oddity. I have the dubious distinction of being the only member of the Amar Kabal to accept an invitation to Harthenham.”

An attendant approached a neighboring patron, an obese man wearing a silk robe. Using pinchers the attendant held out a pie. The man considered for a moment, then held up a hand, stood, and walked away.

“You’re a seed person,” Jason said.

Drake nodded. “You strike me as an oddity yourself. I kept an eye on you at the feast. Proud. Vigilant. Pensive. Not characteristics of a young man who has turned his back on the world and surrendered.”

“Maybe.”

“You’re clearly here with an agenda. Others have started out that way. If I noticed, Conrad noticed. He doesn’t miss much.”

Jason didn’t like how much Drake was guessing. “What brought you here?”

Drake stretched. “Boredom. Weariness. My people lead an austere existence, treasuring simplicity and avoiding addictive indulgences. After enduring many lifetimes I no longer found joy in living. I tried devotion to various causes; I tried love; I tried conformity; I tried creative endeavors; I tried solitude. I contemplated destroying my amar by fire. Then I received an invitation to the feast. I had never fully explored reckless self-indulgence. So I came here to conduct a final experiment.”

“Any conclusions?”

Drake smirked. He took a small bite of pie. “My people are right. Indulgence is emptiness. I have probed the limits with food
and frivolity. There is no real fulfillment in meaningless rushes of pleasure. You try to conceal the emptiness with more extravagance, only to find the thrills becoming less satisfying and more fleeting. Most pleasures are best as a seasoning, not the main course.” He held up the pie. “However you try to disguise it, you end up feeding without being nourished.”

“So why stay?”

Drake studied Jason. “Empty or not, the lifestyle is addictive. It breeds fear of real life. By abstaining for a season, I can restore some of the thrill to certain delights. Outside these walls I am an embarrassment to my people, an enemy to an emperor, and much less able to bury my shame in excess.”

One of the nearby cadaverous pie-eaters began to cough violently. Thin muscles stood out on her neck. Nobody in the room paid her any mind.

“Should somebody help her?” Jason asked.

Drake regarded the coughing fit. “She is in the final stages of starvation. Nobody can help her now. All she can do is keep ingesting hunger berries to distract her from her condition.”

Drake took another bite.

“What a waste,” Jason murmured.

“Eating lumba pie is a dangerous game,” Drake acknowledged. “Sampled in small quantities on occasion, the pie can be a harmless and delightsome diversion. But the more one eats, the more one craves the berries, and the deeper they seem to satisfy.”

“I get it,” Jason said. “I think I’ll skip the pie. How many lives have you spent at Harthenham?”

Drake took another bite, holding the food in his mouth, his eyes closed, savoring it before finally swallowing. “Six. Some were quite brief. None were long. But this is the last.”

Jason raised his eyebrows. “You’re going to destroy your seed?”

Drake shook his head slowly, setting the remains of his pie aside. “That choice has been taken from me. After my last rebirth my amar did not form properly. Occasionally this defect occurs among my people. Perhaps the reckless living caught up with me.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Most of my seed already fell off. There is no question. This will be the last of my many lives.”

“I’m sorry.”

His eyelids drooped. “If anything I should feel sorry for you and your kind. You only live once. Most of the guests here are drowning in gluttony having hardly lived. Shed no tears for me. I have experienced plenty. I brought this doom on myself, poisoning my system through pleasurable excess. I do not ascribe my condition to chance.”

Jason watched as Drake settled back on the divan. “Don’t you want to make something of your last life?”

“Let’s not dwell on me. Look to yourself. What are you doing here? Spying? Fishing for information? Planning to redeem some forgotten hero? A word of caution. If you do not mean to stay, you need to leave now, and you need to leave quietly. Whatever your intentions might be, this place will get a hold of you.”

“I won’t be here long.”

Drake smirked. “Nearly every person here but me has told themselves the same thing. Be careful what you eat. Lumba berries are not the only perilous delicacies here. Many of the foods and seasonings are deliberately addictive, including wizatch livers.”

Jason nodded. “I know another seed person.”

“Who would that be?”

“His name is Jasher.”

For the first time Drake looked truly interested. “I know him mostly by reputation. I traveled with his brother for a time.”

“His brother is dead.”

“Radolso?”

“Yeah, that was his name.”

“In the ground, you mean?”

“His seed was destroyed.”

Drake leaned forward, distressed. “How?”

“I don’t know details. But Maldor did it.”

“Are the Amar Kabal seeking vengeance?”

“There was no hard evidence. Maldor claimed the killer was acting alone, and he delivered some displacer to them. A source who Jasher trusts knew the killer was acting under orders, but his people wouldn’t believe him. Your people have a treaty with Maldor. Jasher chose exile, and he’s out for revenge on his own.”

Drake leaned back and closed his eyes. His voice became mellow again. “The things one misses when one wallows in ecstasy. Are you working with Jasher now?”

“I better not say.”

“Understood, understood. Pleased to meet you. I need to sleep.”

“Have a good nap.”

Drake smiled faintly.

Jason suddenly recalled a detail Rachel had related about her visit to the middle of Whitelake. “Wait a minute. Drake. Did you know a displacer named Malar?”

Drake raised his eyebrows, but his eyes remained closed. “Sure, sure, the traitor, I knew him.” His voice was dreamy and distant. “Found him, did you? Clever lad. A regular Dinsrel. I need to rest.” His head sagged, and his breathing became regular.

Jason left the room feeling disgusted.

The next morning, after a light breakfast followed by a delicious massage, Jason headed for the bathhouse, determined to stay there
until Kimp showed up. He had confirmed by talking to other guests that the large man seated near Duke Conrad at the welcoming feast had indeed been Kimp. Jason carried some fruit in a basket in preparation for his stakeout.

On his way to the facility he noticed Tark sitting on a stone bench beside a row of blossoming rosebushes. It was the first time Jason had seen Tark since the musician had walked out of the welcoming feast.

“Hello, Tark,” Jason said, coming alongside the bench.

Tark glanced at him with bloodshot eyes. He grunted a greeting.

“Mind if I sit here?” Jason asked.

The short, stocky man shrugged indifferently, then bowed his head, placing his face in his meaty hands.

“When did you get invited here?” Jason asked.

Tark looked up. “I suppose I need to face this,” he grumbled in his raspy voice. “I arrived just over a week ago. The temptation overcame me. I figured that since I had caused enough harm to Maldor to get invited to Harthenham, I would quit fighting and spend the rest of my miserable life surrounded by other deserters. Better to die a gluttonous failure than a hungry one. I almost believed the lies I told myself. Then you showed up. I know a sign when I see one. Once again I have betrayed my friends. Just like before, I started off right and then quit when the opportunity arose.”

He returned his face to his hands and shook with ragged sobs.

Jason waited politely.

Finally Tark lifted his tear-streaked face. “You must have been up to some mischief to get in here.” He wiped his leaking nostrils with the back of his hairy-knuckled hand.

“I do what I can.”

“Tell me.”

“I became chancellor of Trensicourt. I also helped kill a bunch of conscriptors, manglers, and a displacer.”

“I never got a displacer,” Tark said in admiration, sniffling. “Good work.”

“How did you end up here?”

Tark brightened a bit. “It all started the day I left you. I felt really good, full of resolve, ready for my penance. As it happened, on my way up the road out of town I was stopped by a conscriptor. He had questions about a fellow who fit your description, and a girl who sounded like Rachel. I acted very compliant, and then I put my knife through his back. His mangler friend came at me, blades whirling, and I was sure I had arrived at the brink of my waterfall, if you take my meaning. But I flung the knife, and it found a weak spot, slaying the monstrosity. I could hardly believe it.

“I retrieved my knife and raced off into the woods, leaving behind the corpses and the horse. From that day onward I have waged a private war against the minions of Maldor. I sank a barge, burned down some warehouses, even undermined a bridge. In a pass east of here I buried a whole column of conscriptors and manglers in a landslide. I’d wager that stunt was what finally earned me an invitation to the feast.”