Heights of the Depths (4 page)

“How long before I can move as of old?” said Eutok.

“A day. Two. Your body needs time to fully recover.”

“I’m not going to keep lying here, exposed to the elements or potential enemies,” he said.

To Karsen’s surprise, Eutok forced himself to a sitting position. Karsen was about to caution him to take it easy. Then he decided that it really wasn’t his place to worry or his problem to worry about. He had other, far greater, concerns. “All right, then. I’ve fulfilled my part of the bargain. Tell me which way the draquons went.”

“How would I be doing you any favors?” said Eutok. “She is a human. You’re a Laocoon. Consorting with her will bring you to no good end.”

“Your opinion would mean a great deal to me had I asked after it. Again: which way—”

“I heard you the first time. Again, how do I know you did not poison me?”

Karsen’s eyes widened with incredulity. “You’re still alive, aren’t you?”

“For now, yes. But Laocoon are crafty, and Bottom Feeders have no scruples. You are both and thus doubly a threat. You could have given me something slow acting that temporarily energizes me but, after a time, kills me.”

“I have no knowledge of a drug that would accomplish such a thing, much less how to prepare it.”

“So you say.” Slowly he hauled himself to his feet. He swayed as he did so, gasping for air at the exertion.

“We had a bargain, Trull!”

“Yes, we did, and I intend to stand by it. I will take you in the direction I saw them go.”

“You cannot be serious! You can barely move!”

“I become stronger with each passing moment.”

“I am hemorrhaging time, Eutok! I keep falling further and further behind!”

“You are on hoof while the Travelers are astride flying draquons. If you seriously thought you ever had any chance of overtaking them, then you are completely delusional. And what did you think would have happened even if you had managed to sprout wings and catch up with them? Eh?”

“I would have found a way,” he said, but he sounded less than convincing, even to his own ears.

“You would have found a way to oblivion, is what you would have found,” said Eutok with a sneer. “You must know that your only chance was to pursue them to their destination, wherever that may be, and then try to rescue the girl from them at that point.”

Karsen hated to admit that what Eutok was saying made sense. Unfortunately, it did. “All right,” he said reluctantly. “Let’s admit that is the case.”

“Then time is not of the essence.”

“They could be bringing her to some place for the purpose of killing her!”

“Don’t be ridiculous. If that was their intent, they would have already disposed of her. She’s a Mort. A human. Why ride away with her if they didn’t have some use for her?”

“I don’t want to give them time to put her to that use, whatever it might be.”

“Well, you’re not really going to have a choice about it. The only choice you’re going to have is whether you are going to have the chance to catch up with her, and that opportunity in turn is going to rest on me. I will bring you to her. In return, if my health lapses, you will be able to attend to it. I want to remain in a position where you need me alive and well.”

“That is unacceptable to me.”

“And undesirable to me. Yet here we both are. What do you intend, then, to do about it?”

“I—”

His voice trailed off as he realized he really didn’t have any choice.

“Very well. But this business goes two ways, Trull. If I see any flagging in your cooperation…if I believe even for a minute that you are endeavoring to trick me or prolong our association beyond the point of necessity…then the last thing you see will be my back as I walk away from you while you’re in your death throes. Do we understand each other?”

“I believe we understand each other better than you think we do,” said Eutok.

Karsen considered that. “I have no idea what that means.”

“Worry not. You will.”

the spires

I.

Nicrominus had genuinely no idea
what to expect from the Overseer when he had put forward his admittedly radical theories.

The aged and wise Firedraque—arguably the finest mind of his people—had been taken forcibly from Firedraque Hall in Perriz and relocated here to the towering city simply referred to as the Spires. A lesser Firedraque would have been overwhelmed by the scope, the architecture, the sheer magnificent achievement of the Mort population in constructing this admittedly awe-inspiring city. But Nicrominus was who he was, one of the greatest and most senior Firedraques in the history of his people. There was very little that he was unable to take in stride.

However, even for all his experience and wisdom, Nicrominus had found himself in a situation that went far beyond anything he had ever known.

The Travelers, the right arms of the Overseer himself—the ultimate power in the Damned World—had come to him and given him a mission. They had demanded that he come up with a theory to explain why the hotstars, the primary power source of the Banished—not to mention of the Elserealms from which they had been banished—appeared ,to be slowly diminishing in power. Eventually, after much research—not to mention some notions put forward by his gifted albeit fainthearted disciple, Xeri—Nicrominus had developed a working theory. At that point he had been whisked away via Zeffers to the Spires, and had found himself addressing none other than the Overseer himself.

Nicrominus had never before laid eyes upon he who had been placed in charge of the Damned World by their home dimension. He did not, in fact, know anyone who had. Certainly no one aside from the Travelers had done so, or at least lived to tell the story. Yet here had been Nicrominus, finding himself standing in what seemed to be a vast theater, with none other than the Overseer listening in silence. It had always been Nicrominus’s assumption that the Overseer was a member of one of the races who had dispatched the Banished to this enforced planetary prison. But the design and build of his armor was such that it was impossible for Nicrominus to determine which race he belonged to. For that matter, Nicrominus had no reason to conclude that he was in fact faced with a male of any kind. The creature in the encompassing armor could have been male, female, or anything in between.

The Overseer had been lowered from overhead in a massive throne, down to the proscenium at the front of the amphitheater. There he had remained in stony silence as Nicrominus had resolutely ignored his own uncertainties and laid out for him what he felt were the reasons for hotstars slowly losing their effectiveness and puissance.

The idea of responding to a physical problem with a metaphysical solution was preposterous on its face, and yet Nicrominus had put forward a reasoned argument for that very thing.

“To understand our present situation…one has to understand the previous occupants of what has been named the Damned World. I am speaking, of course, about the humans. It is undeniable that humans possessed a spectacular arrogance regarding their own status. According to our studies and their own histories, they took it upon themselves to befoul this world as they saw fit, with pollution and filth. They deforested entire sections, heedlessly slew other life forms into extinction, without caring how such actions would affect the cycle of life, and life interaction. That arrogance carried over into subspecies interaction, as different subspecies believed that they, and only they, were the right and true rulers of the Damned World. They would often endeavor to hunt one another into extinction as well.

“Even more intriguingly,” Nicrominus continued, “the humans had a tendency to be…how best to put this? ‘Human-centric’ in many of their philosophies. At one time they believed that the sun moved around the Damned World, rather than the other way ‘round. Their answer for life on other worlds was to dismiss the notion out of hand since no planetary neighbors had made a point of coming by…as if the universe considered them anything other than one single mote of dirt in a vast universe of similar, undistinguished motes.

“In short, Overseer…humans foolishly believed themselves to be the center of everything in creation.

“The thing is, Overseer…what if the humans were right?”

He had waited for some sort of response and got none. Resolutely he had soldiered on.

“It’s…this way. This realm that we’re residing in right now…
it’s just one of many. Infinite realms there are, infinite dimensions. We know and understand that, even though most humans did not. And each dimension works in different ways, has rules that enable it to function. Rules that were put in place by the gods, blessed be they. Rules that are not handed to us, but instead we are expected to discern as we go.

“Different dimensions align more closely with some than others. As it happened, the Elserealms aligned closely with this one. ‘Neighbors’ is the way that the humans would have put it. When individuals are neighbors, that which happens in one realm can spill through to, or affect, what happens in the other.

“Part of the ‘spill through,’ in our case, are the hotstars. They were rare here, but commonplace in the Elserealms. What we did not realize, I believe, is that the source of their energy was here, in this plane of existence.

“I believe that the source of that energy…was the minds of humans. Which may on the surface of it, sound ludicrous. Then again, I should point out that it is documented fact that humans used, as their own source of energy, the fossilized remains of long-dead animals. So I don’t think that one is intrinsically more ridiculous than the other.

“Say what you will about humans…but they relentlessly used their imagination, their dreams, if you will, to shape this world to their liking. They thought, in their limited way, that this was simply a measure of their ingenuity. But it was more profound, much deeper than that. This plane of existence, for whatever reason—whim of the gods, if nothing else—was, and is, entirely shaped by the conscious and even unconscious desires of human beings.

“They thought that form followed function. They were wrong. The truth was the exact opposite: Function followed form. Humans would develop in their collective, dreaming minds, the sort of world they desired. One that did not exist. This unconscious desire would then sit in a type of ‘between’ state, a ‘limbo’ or transitory condition. And so it would remain until enough humans dreamed the dream, at which point they would then…through bursts of industrialization, or visionary philosophers and leaders, or even wars…bring the unconscious desires to reality. They would think of it as ideas waiting to happen, and in a sense, they were right. They just didn’t understand that there was an actual, metaphysical structure behind it. The concepts would develop a nebulous form, and then the functions would follow to actualize it.

“In any event, Overseer,” Nicrominus had continued, “here is the situation, and the problem. The human race has largely been purged from the Damned World. And if my theory is correct, those humans who do remain are remarkably dangerous. For energy cannot truly be destroyed; it simply changes form or concentrates elsewhere. Which means the pure power of dream and imagination, rather than being diffused over millions of humans, is now concentrated within the minds of a mere handful. Of course, they don’t know it. They know of a time when humans dominated, but accept the status of their environment for what it is. But if they dream of greater things…if they take to imagining things not as they are, but as they could be…it could be disastrous for us. Through means we cannot begin to guess, they could set events into motion—affect probabilities, develop devices—that could spell the end of the Twelve Races.

“But we cannot simply destroy the humans in self-defense, because therein lies our quandary. You see, naturally this sphere, this plane of existence, far pre-existed human beings. It was, however, chaotic. Unformed and void, almost unrecognizable. Humans were created to help bring it into sharper focus. They began as primitive specimens, but evolved over time. As they evolved, this sphere likewise evolved from the chaos that reigned to the relative order that now holds sway. The calamitous depopulation of humans has thrown this plane of existence out of whack. We are seeing, in the diminishment of the power of hotstars, merely the first step. If my theory is correct, if the few humans who are left should die off completely, the hotstars will not be the first things to give out. This entire plane of existence could come completely unraveled. It could well descend into the chaos that existed before humans were developed to hammer it into shape through their imagination, their will, their hopes and dreams and aspirations, and their odd obsession with ascribing names to everything. They even gave a name to the phenomenon: Entropy.

“Nor will it necessarily end here. The nearness of the Elserealms, its dependence upon hotstars, and the effect the current energy depletion is having, indicates that the deleterious effects may ripple through to the Elserealms as well. Both the Banished, and those who banished us, may well share the same fate.

“The depopulation of humanity may well be the single greatest calamity the Twelve Races has ever faced. There is only one solution that I can see: We must locate what humans there are and find a way to repopulate the species, all the while holding their dreams in check or turning them to serve us, lest they wind up—through sheer force of will—creating a series of circumstances that could lead to our utter destruction.”

For a long moment, the Overseer said nothing.

Then had come an explosive sound, like a crack of thunder. Lights had flickered on and off, and the very air seemed to crackle as if a storm were building up within the structure itself. Nicrominus had fallen to his knees, whimpering like a hatchling in the face of the unfettered wrath of the single most powerful being in the Damned World.

And for the first time since Nicrominus had shown up, the Overseer had spoken.

“
You,
”
thundered the Overseer,
“
Have
got.
To be
shitting me
.”

ii.

Nicrominus, during his relatively leisurely
voyage over courtesy of the Zeffer’s vast, dangling tentacles, had had a good deal of time to try and figure out just how the Overseer was going to react to his admittedly extraordinary theory.

You have got to be shitting me wasn’t it,
or even remotely close to it.

For starters, although Nicrominus understood the basic words being uttered, he suspected there was some sort of vernacular twist that he wasn’t entirely grasping. Furthermore, it simply didn’t sound like something that the single greatest power in the Damned World might say. It was so startling, so bizarre, that for a moment Nicrominus suspected that perhaps he had been fooled somehow. Perhaps this was not, in fact, the Overseer at all. An imposter, maybe? Someone who had been sent to test his mettle? Except who would have sent this individual? The genuine Overseer? Or unseen warders from the Elserealms?

All manner of possibilities rattled around inside his head as he simply stood there and stared at the armored figure.

The Overseer vaulted from the proscenium. When he landed, the sound echoed through the vast theater, the thunderclap-like impact of his previous bellowing reaction only having just died down. As he moved, Nicrominus could hear a series of faint whirring noises coming from the armor. He had no idea what they were. The armor was unlike anything he had seen before. It had an air about it, something that made him think of the Elserealms, clinging to it lingeringly as did the scent of, say, a female’s scent to one’s clothes on the morning following a night of passion. But there was also something about it that smacked of Damned World technology. The Banished had very little use for such things, but still, Nicrominus could spot it when he saw it.

He strode right towards Nicrominus and didn’t slow as he approached him. Nicrominus’s bones may have been old, his muscles might have been sore, but he was still capable of getting out of the way of an oncoming behemoth when the need arose. He did so at that point, stepping aside and almost falling into a row of seats to his right. He stood there and watched as the Overseer strode past him.

Left on his own, Nicrominus was uncertain of what he was supposed to do. The Overseer had not issued any instructions, or even really acknowledged his existence in any way save to listen to what he had to say. What was he supposed to do now? Stand there and wait for further instructions? What if none were forthcoming?

Nor was it his nature to simply stand around and wait for other people to tell him what to do, even when one of the other people in question was the Overseer himself.

But he couldn’t very yell out, “Wait!” to the Overseer. The Overseer did as he willed, when he willed it, and answered to no one. Or if he did, he certainly didn’t answer to an aged Firedraque.

Nicrominus folded his arms, tasted the air with his forked tongue, and then shrugged and started off after the Overseer. His tail moved aimlessly in mild agitation, an outward reflection of his inner worries. The Overseer was making no obvious effort to leave him behind, but neither was he taking his time. He was simply walking, and so Nicrominus followed him.

There was a large set of double doors at the back of the theater. The Overseer swung wide his arms and knocked them to either side. He passed through them and they almost slammed shut back into Nicrominus’s face before he caught them and stepped through. There was a large lobby with broken mirrors and faded gilt lining it. The Overseer kept going, heading towards the main doors that led out into the street. Nicrominus continued right after him, wondering if at some point the Overseer would turn, notice him, and obliterate him with but a gesture.

Nicrominus considered that possibility further and came to the realization that the prospect did not bother him particularly. He had led a long life, seen many things, had mates, eaten them, spawned children, eaten them, allowed one of them to live almost on a whim and found the experience to be, on the whole, rather uplifting. There were still things he wished to see and goals he wished to attain. He had no overt desire for death. But if the next few minutes were to result in his being a red and green splotch on the streets of the Spire city, well…it wasn’t as if he hadn’t had more than his share of experiences.