Far Called Trilogy 01 - In Dark Service (69 page)

‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘Then you might as well tell me you will stay. It is a curious turn of events. My cousin, whose family owes everything to my house and my rise in the empire – who would be nothing but backwater traders without me – has chosen Circae’s faction. Yet you opt to stand with me. With such insanity, saying you will remain will create some small semblance of balance in the world.’

He gazed at Cassandra. She seemed so peaceful at sleep. ‘That’s not why I saved her. For my freedom, I mean.’

‘I realise that. By rights you should be dead.’ Helrena snorted. ‘Facing murdisto with a loose cable? Send me lucky generals over sensible ones – which emperor was it who said that?’

‘Doctor Horvak will know.’

‘I am sure he will. He knows almost everything else.’

‘You should free the doctor, too.’

‘I would gladly send him to have his slave tattoo removed, but he might return to his country. I could allow that, but Apolleon most certainly would not.’

‘He’s not…
right
. Nothing good will come from dealing with that man. Not for you, your house or Cassandra.’

‘Be careful you don’t notice
too
much,’ said Helrena. ‘There are many things you don’t understand about what my house is planning; and you will sleep better and safer for your ignorance. Besides, I don’t have so many allies at court that I can afford to be selective. And the only thing worse than calling the head of the secret police your partner is calling him your enemy.’

‘He’s evil. Can’t you sense it?’

‘Let us say that he does bad things for a good cause. Better he is that way, than the reverse.’ She brushed Cassandra’s hair out of her eyes and stood up to go. ‘Let me know your intention after your sister arrives and you have talked matters over with her. For my daughter’s sake, I hope you will find that Duncan of
Vandia
has a better ring to it than your barbarian backwater.’

‘And for your sake?’

‘There are things I cannot say or promise anyone,’ said Helrena. ‘That is how matters are and how they must be, whether you are a slave or a citizen. You are younger than I, but you are an adult. You understand this.’

‘And if I was a prince of the imperium?’

‘Then one of us would probably end up getting killed,’ Helrena sighed. ‘That is the way matters usually end.’ She shut the door to the medical bay, leaving Duncan alone with his thoughts. He had a world more to think about than when she’d come in.

Jacob and the other expedition members halted, their gad hosts indicating they had reached the place that they had been travelling towards; a thick stand of trees on the prairie the only landmark aside from the ubiquitous tall dry grass. Jacob wasn’t sure what to expect. The great diviner Narlrem had told him the travellers were to be rewarded for their help in ushering in the gads’ long prophesied new age. Jacob had hoped that meant Hangel’s new rulers had paid for air passage south on a merchant carrier. But this was too far away from the plateau’s airfields for anything but a forced landing in the grass. Now Jacob suspected this was merely another ceremony where they would be honoured with crowns of dried flowers and fine words. He should have guessed from the number of shamans and tribal chiefs accompanying their parade out of the city gates and into the wilds. He tried not to let his disappointment show. He was itching to be in the air again, closing the distance between him and Carter.

‘This way,’ said Zanasi. He led the four travellers towards the trees. ‘If you leave here,’ said Zanasi, talking directly to Jacob. ‘What will you do?’

Jacob didn’t like the way the war leader had intoned
if
. ‘You know what I’ll do. Find my son.’
You’ll do whatever it takes
, said the voice within him.
Kill anyone and everyone who gets in your way
. He reached inside his duster. The pistols were both there; and the travel pack’s weight on his back, too. Maybe the expedition would be better off heading away right now, and let the gads sing to the sky.

‘And what if you find more than that?’

‘My son. The rest of my people taken in the raid if I can. That’s all that matters to me.’
You’re a liar. You’re going to kill them all. Everyone who played a part in Mary’s death.

‘We shall see,’ said Zanasi.

‘We’re all still friends, aren’t we?’

‘In this life, twice-born.’

‘That’s good, because any other way at least one of us would have cause to regret it.’

As they got closer, Jacob saw the glade had grown up around another of the stone circles, dark stones brooding under the leafy canopy’s shade. Jacob felt the same sense of foreboding he had back in Weyland when coming across these ancient structures. Vines circled the trees, surrounding them as thick as coiled rope, but none dared touch any of these menhirs laid long before the memories of man. The stones stood untouched, remote and alien, beyond the reach of entropy.

‘This is another one your ceremonies?’ asked Jacob.

‘It is,’ said Zanasi. ‘Although none of our diviners have practised this ritual in living memory.’

‘Prophecies are not rendered tangible every week,’ said Khow. He examined his abacus box, tapping the screen. ‘Most unexpected. It has stopped working.’

Jacob pointed at the cover of the tree. ‘No sun.’

‘I do not understand how its battery can be drained of charge?’ The gask shook his metal device, annoyed.

Natives entered the space and sat down, surrounding the standing stones, forming a larger ring around the glade’s fringes.

‘This ancient place is a map of woe,’ protested Sariel. ‘Why have we come here, noble gads?’

The great diviner Narlrem appeared in the clearing, his people clearing a path for the recently crowned ruler of the land. ‘We promised we would help you, Jok. And for the gads, nothing weighs heavier than a promise given. Ignore your fear. Embrace the stones.’

‘I remember these circles,’ said Sariel, reluctantly laying his hands on the nearest stone’s runes. ‘Such rocks sing to me, sometimes. I do not care for them or their idle chatter.’

‘It is a song you helped to create, Jok,’ said Narlrem. ‘But your mind is so occupied and broken that the part of you that remembers their rhythm lie buried deep.’

‘Do not speak of them! They are very dangerous. They call foul things.’

Sheplar leaned in to Jacob, whispering so that only the pastor could hear. ‘Well, they certainly called us here.’

‘Dangerous they may be,’ said the new ruler of Hangel. Narlrem appeared uncharacteristically grim, his eyes wide and sad. ‘But we are to help you remember the many paths and the infinite maze.’

‘How is this going to assist us?’ asked Jacob, growing impatient.

‘You must hear the song,’ said Narlrem. ‘Sit within the circle. Each of you must lay a hand on a stone. Jok, try and think of who you were before you were destroyed by the Land Mother. Khow of the gask-kind, hold your child inside your mind, focus on his captivity.’

‘And what must I think of during this ritual?’ asked Sheplar.

‘You and the twice-born must clear your minds as best you can. We need to focus solely on Jok and your gask companion.’

‘Return to me my wings and I will happily fly away from these plume-plucked barnacles,’ complained Sariel.

Jacob did as he was bid, sitting inside the stone circle with the expedition members while the council of diviners passed wooden bowls around the gathering. The gads dipped their fingers into the same evil tasting paste that had left his head spinning out on the plains. He laid a hand on the nearest stone. Its surface was cool in the shade of the trees, perhaps colder than it should be. A primordial shiver crept down his spine. Beyond the stones the diviners had joined hands and swayed in unison, the other gads incanting a deep, moaning refrain. If this were a blessing, it couldn’t be counted a joyous one. It sounded like a death dirge to Jacob’s ears. But the gads were a superstitious people, and Jacob needed all the help he could get, however tenuous.

‘Their song will destroy the stones,’ muttered Sariel. ‘It always does.’

Making a lie of his words, the gads’ singing appeared to have a more subtle effect than destruction. Alien runes cut into the stone began to glow gently as though they had been filled with luminescent lichen, reacting to the gads’ lament by pulsing into life in the half-light. Under Jacob’s hand the stone surface tickled his palm, vibrating, an itch growing stronger and stronger. He tried to pull his hand away from the rock but it was as though his skin had melted into the stone – as if he was becoming stone himself. Jacob tried to shout, to protest, but the vibration became too strong, his throat’s dry shout lost to it, stone and skin quaking and trembling, every iota of his being converted into an excited shudder. Outside the circle, the distant chanting joined with the stones’ song. A protective bubble had formed around the stone circle, protecting the gads from the ferocity of the energies being unleashed within it, the victims sealed off. Fire seemed to rotate around them. Jacob moaned in terrible agony, even that noise lost.
A trap after all, then
. That’s what you got for trusting in the kindness of strangers – letting your guard down for a second. Jacob felt as if his head was going to explode, his last thoughts only regrets.
Carter, my son!
All the lost chances passed between them, the mislaid opportunities that had filled Carter’s life and ruined his future. Jacob yearned to travel back to that moment, so long past, on Rake’s Field and take a different path. Make peace between Carter and Duncan Landor; force his son to see sense over Adella and Willow. Pack his family off for a trip to the coast before the slavers struck. So many paths, so many choices, and how few of them ended up
here
. It was as if Jacob walked the paths of the great fractal tree that the gask spoke of. He fell to his knees, his hands fused with the stone. Sariel, Khow, Sheplar, their bodies hummed, shaking so fast they were blurring. Plasma danced off the stones’ surface, coiling fingers of star-stuff, as though the sun itself bled through these rocks. Then a fierce discharge claimed everyone inside the circle. And the very final fragment of the diviners’ visions was at last given truth.
You’re meant to be dead; your body obliterated in an explosion.

Duncan had expected Willow to cry when she stepped off the helo and onto the landing field. When she saw her brother was still alive… let alone when he gave her the joyous news that she was now a free woman. What Duncan hadn’t expected was her to launch herself at him, swinging at him and nearly knocking him to the tarmac. He had played this moment inside his mind a dozen times, but it had never ended with him falling against the cold steel of the helo’s hull, the surprised pilot walking away, only glancing back as Willow tried to hammer Duncan with her fists.

Duncan grabbed Willow’s arms, pushing her back and trying to hold her still. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

‘What are
you
doing? Dressed here like some imperial lord while our friends are starving and dying in the sky mines? What about Carter and Kerge and Anna and everyone else? So they have to keep swinging a pickaxe at the princess’s enemies, while you and I eat off the gold plates they’re being murdered for?’

‘I can’t help them,’ said Duncan. ‘I can’t help
everyone
.’

‘You’re a Landor, all right,’ said Willow. ‘You’ve helped yourself just fine.’

‘Don’t you understand,’ spluttered Duncan, ‘what a feat it is to be raised from a slave to a citizen? How hard and rare that is? Not just for me, but for
you
. We can stay here; see a whole new world – an empire so large every nation of the league could be squeezed into a single imperial province. Or we can travel home. Back to Weyland.’

‘And how would I ever look our farmers in the eye again, knowing I had left their sons and daughters to rot to death under the whip?’

‘Tell them you escaped,’ said Duncan. ‘Isn’t that the truth? We
have
escaped!’

‘I haven’t escaped! I’ll never escape this foul place, not if I lived to be a hundred as a hermit in the Rodalian mountains. Part of me will always be trapped in the sky mines. You might as well ship me back to the station. I’d sooner take my chances with our people than accept anything from a single dirty Vandian.’

‘That’s not your decision,’ said Duncan. ‘One thing’s the same here. I get to inherit the house, and you get to do what I order.’

‘You can stick it,’ said Willow. ‘Your inheritance and your fine Vandian clothes, both. You’re not free. You’re a greater slave than anyone back in the mines.’

‘For God’s sake,’ said Duncan. He pointed to the woman from the castle that was meant to show Willow to her rooms. ‘Escort her inside until she’s come to her senses.’

Duncan heard Paetro chortle behind him as his sister was led away shouting abuse back to him. ‘It’s not funny. What just happened here?’

‘In a woman’s mind? Who’s to know, lad. But with the best will in the world, it was always going to take her time to adjust to the news.’

‘I thought she’d be grateful – I thought she’d be happy!’

‘She’s out of that hell anchored above the volcano,’ said Paetro. ‘You did the right thing by her, whether she’s grateful for it or not. Whatever your sister feels about freedom, it’s beyond your influence. The best a man can do only is what he knows to be right – how the rest of the world reacts to it is up to them.’

‘I’ll visit her later; after she’s had a chance to calm down,’ said Duncan.

‘One thing I learnt in the legion,’ said Paetro, ‘it’s that everyone around you has to take responsibility for their own fate. You can lead people to battle, get them to the right place at the right time, but you can never make them fight. You contest your own little corner of a campaign and trust everyone else will do what they need to… to survive and win through.’

‘Does Willow really expect me to wave a magic wand and set every slave in the empire free?’

‘Not even the emperor could emancipate the slaves,’ said Paetro. ‘Not with all of the imperial houses relying on them for labour. Old Jaelis Skar would be out on his ear the moment he reached for pen and parchment to sign such a decree.’