The Blood Solution (Approaching Infinity Book 3) (9 page)

She stretched out her hands for him but he faded as Stoakes drove the sharp-angled chisel tip of the Suicide Knife into her temple and slowly pushed the blade up to half its length into her head, pricking what he knew to be the source of the funnel. She opened her mouth, trying to speak, but little more than faint, plaintive whimpers escaped her throat. She frowned but could not move. Everything was fading and getting farther away, abandoning her.

Stoakes pulled the blade free with a forceful yank and the wound at her temple, a perfect hairline of red, hissed as it spat out a fine, cherry mist. But when it was done, there were only droplets of blood beading the hairline cut, some of which shook free to spot the floor when Anis steadied herself from a sudden spell of dizziness. She moved forward, seeking a nearby table for support and a chair to collapse into.

Stoakes backed away, sheathing the Suicide Knife, and made his way out of the room, never once glimpsed by his victim.

Anis would recover, which meant that she would live and that her discomfort would pass. But she would never be Anis again. She would respond to simple commands, would do so with a smile even, but whatever it was that made her unique was gone now, along with her memories and her ability to reason.

Stoakes stood atop Kapler Tower. He’d taken a few moments to appreciate the Lightning Gun, thinking that even the Viscain Empire could occasionally learn from those it meant to conquer. Now, though, he looked down at the commotion on the Black Fields, much as Anis Lausden had. The jump ship was still below, but Kapler couldn’t be much longer.

It was time to go. He went Dark again and jumped high and far, passing through some low-lying clouds, sailing over all below. As he drifted down to touch ground for the second time, he heard the jump ship come up from behind and overtake him.

Despite its superior speed, though, Stoakes arrived at the Root Palace shortly after the jump ship. He entered the Palace courtyard and made a point to climb the wall that held the landing deck. There he returned to normal, joined the crowd of spectators that had come to meet the ship or get a good view from the height the wall offered. He passed close to Kapler who stood upon the deck, waiting for someone or something. As he proceeded towards the Palace proper, he saw Jav Holson approach, probably coming to meet Kapler. As the two passed, Stoakes was sure he could feel Holson’s eyes on him, like weights pressing down, scrutinizing. He was likely imagining it, but Stoakes was also sure that Holson was frowning. Regardless, they passed each other without incident.

Bask Sosa never showed his face, but neither did he ever go unrecognized. He wore a mask of sorts, an animate serpent’s head, flat black and the product of his Entitlement.

Stories abounded about why he hid his face. Some said he’d been horribly scarred in his youth and inspired as much terror as the Fifth Secret of which he was the most accomplished Initiate. Some said just the opposite, that he was painfully beautiful and must hide his face in order to prevent the birth of a new cult of death with him as the focus of worship. Some said that it was to hide a double life, that his lay life would be jeopardized by his Church persona. There were countless variations of these three core ideas, all very colorful and dramatic. In truth, though, it started out as a boyhood fantasy and then became a necessity.

Bask Sosa had always wanted to be hero, just like the ones he’d read about as a child: upholders of justice, protectors of the weak, with masked anonymity serving as the badge of idealized altruism. In the peace of the Three Worlds, such heroes were perhaps unnecessary, but Sosa was a romantic and his vanity was as boundless as his aptitude for the Secrets. As Sosa trained and unraveled each of the first four—the Lesser—Secrets, he began to see that he might also understand the mysteries of the Fifth. To grasp the Sixth or the Seventh would have fit the hero’s path better, but there was room for dark heroes as well, especially on Iss where the austere stonework and icy landscapes stood in stark contrast to the affluence and lush paradise landscapes of Shaala or the technology and sophistication of Voskos.

Issians were a hardy people, strong and determined in spite or because of the unequal distribution of resources among the Three Worlds. It was said that Shaala produced wealth, that Voskos produced the very future, and that Iss produced spirit. Many seeking Entitlement came to Iss for their training, hoping that the planet itself would help condition them and aid their progress and understanding. There was no magic formula of course, but native Issians consistently made up a larger percentage of Entitlement holders than those from either of the other two worlds. Sosa was the greatest Initiate of the Fifth Secret any of the Three Worlds had ever produced and the Issians were fiercely proud of their champion.

Tass Cathedral was the oldest Cathedral still standing on Iss. A pyramid of great gray stone blocks, it was half buried in the immaculate white wealth the sky dropped down upon the ground every day at dusk. Here, where Sosa was Steward, as at Cathedrals all over the Three Worlds, they provided education well-suited to both peace and war. Everyone spent age five through ten with the Church at Cathedral. After age ten, there was a choice regarding whether or not to continue, though sometimes ambitious parents stole that choice from their children. In the first five years, children received their primary education, learning to read, to write, to do arithmetic, and perhaps more importantly, they learned about right and wrong through tales involving the King of Hearts and the King of Spades. All of these were morality plays designed to capture the imagination and based only marginally on the core prophecy, but such tales served a dual purpose: teaching morality, of course, and preparing everyone, if only passively, for the prophecy’s eventuality. Those five years were also enough to determine if one had any potential to pursue the Entitlement of God. Formal training to illuminate the Lesser Secrets required an additional ten years, but everyone differed in his or her ability. The particularly gifted might complete training early, while others may spend lifetimes struggling with the Second or Third Secret.

Besides the children, Taas saw to 257 acolytes, but only 109 of them had as yet progressed beyond the Second Secret. From those, a mere twenty-two had shown promise for grasping one of the Greater Secrets. Only those who controlled one of the Greater Secrets, sometimes called the Powers, could be said to hold the Entitlement of God, and though countless thousands strove to achieve it at Cathedrals spread throughout the Three Worlds it was a prize that only an elite few could win. There were fifty-seven Entitlement holders in all the Three Worlds. This number had never troubled Sosa in the past, but it troubled him now.

He stood at the head of the training grounds below Taas Cathedral, a jet black figure—as always, his body, like his head, shrouded in the power of his Entitlement—stark against the blue-white of packed snow and ice. He was tall and powerfully built, but he moved willowy smooth and could generate lightning speeds in an instant, calling into question the laws of inertia. Everything about him seemed to be a contradiction: his size versus his agility, his fierce appearance versus his gentle disposition, even his chosen color of black versus that of icy, white Iss, which he called home.

He practiced the aspect of the serpent before 109 acolytes. He seemed patient and sure, afraid of nothing and deadly dangerous, mimicking the serpent’s supple movements, using them as a focus, a meditation on the Divine. But he couldn’t focus. He was plagued by doubts and other troubling thoughts.

Recently, imagery of the King of Spades from a play he’d seen as a child flashed to the forefront of his mind often and unbidden. In the play, the King was a man dressed in a skeleton suit—simple and rustic and yet somehow terrifying. Clever lighting had helped. The King had carried a long-handled spade, resting business-end up upon his left shoulder while behind him more men in skeleton suits climbed over toppled gravestones and out of graves freshly turned by their King. Sosa remembered having nightmares about the skeleton men and their slow, silent plodding. The King, by contrast, pranced lively and had a great theatrical voice, perfect for inspiring fear. When Olka Stusson had approached Sosa and explained the truth of the prophecy, Sosa had, for the first time in years, recalled that play and was shamed by the realization that he couldn’t remember any of the King’s lines.

“Begin!” a voice cried.

Sosa needed no additional preparation, though he was glad to have his reverie—his untidy thoughts—dashed so sharply. The 109 acolytes on the bare ground before him moved instantly en masse at the shouted command. He faced them every day, and every day they improved a little, or so he hoped. But just as fifty-seven Entitlement holders wouldn’t be enough up against the King of Spades, neither would 109 Initiates of the Second Secret be enough up against a single Initiate of the Fifth.

He stood still as the tide of bodies washed over him, all of them lashing out with fists, seeking to strike, disable, or topple him. His hands moved lightning quick—rather like serpents, actually—as a roiling black Halo encircled his head, like a streamer of black cream. He turned away all attempts at harm with graceful ease, his arms making gentle arcs that never broke course, regardless of the strength assailing him. Each defensive move he made turned quickly to an offensive one, his hands at the end of every arc finding targets and felling acolytes with single strikes every time. He always struck with the outstretched tips of his fingers which were held together in what was sometimes called a spear hand fist. More came at him and more fell. He pushed through them as the ground began to crowd with the fallen. None could touch him yet, none except Jarro Sessek who stood at the back of the host, the last and only challenge.

Sosa reached Jarro in ten minutes. All the rest lay unconscious, but Jarro attacked his Steward furiously. His fingers, like Sosa’s, were held together, but his hands fell in great, whooshing chops that never found their target. He recovered quickly, even deftly, from each missed strike, turning his hands back to the task of reaching Sosa. Sosa was elusive, though. Too elusive.

With a final effort, Jarro cried out and brought his axe hand down, whistling fast through the air. It would have cleaved Sosa from crown to crotch if he’d been there to receive the blow, but Sosa had leapt up and back, well out of reach. The edge of Jarro’s hand hit the ground, bared of snow by the rush of 109 men, with an impressive crash, bouncing up a centimeter or two just after impact. The ground below darkened, instantly frosted over anew, and cracked, leaving a fissure twice the length of Jarro’s hand and to a depth of a meter.

Aloft upon a column of black smoke, Sosa shot his right hand out, his fingers splayed, until it seemed his palm struck something unseen in the air. Blackness sprayed out from his palm and from between his outstretched fingers. It gathered and took shape, with mouth opening and fangs reaching, until a smoky black serpent gushed forth and overwhelmed Jarro, dropping him to his knees and robbing him of consciousness.

Sosa drifted back to the ground and sighed.

“They’re progressing, but slowly, eh Sar Sosa?”

Sosa whirled upon the speaker, once again all attention and deadly readiness, black light rising off him like steam to reform his Halo. He relaxed just as suddenly, though, and bowed.

“My humblest apologies, Sar Stusson,” Sosa said.

“You seem distracted,” the Chief Steward said.

“I am and have been of late.”

Stusson nodded. “There is much to weigh on the mind these days.”

“I think about the King of Spades more and more. You know my record in the ring, you know that I fear no man, not even Sar Braams, but there is something unnerving about fighting the dead, our own dead at that.”

“We still know little about what is actually coming,” Stusson offered. “Perhaps it will be more metaphor than reality. Besides what does the Black Snake, who wields the very power of death, have to fear from the dead? Are you not safe behind your black armor and helm?”

The line of Sosa’s muzzle, smooth and scaleless, bent into a grin. “Oh, no. Not you, too. Have you come here today to unmask me?”

“Hardly. I know the value of your brand, especially in light of what it hides. You see, I already know what—or rather who—lies behind the mask. You are Ress Baskaart, son of Vaars Baskaart. Many—too many—believe your father to have committed a heinous crime when in fact he was one of the most selfless of contract holders. He died for a lie and to protect the Blood Solution.”

Sosa stared open-mouthed as Stusson spoke freely, even casually, about Sosa’s other, and perhaps more compelling, reason for hiding behind a mask.

“If we could undo the effect of words, it might be possible to show the Three Worlds that your father was in fact a hero and not the monster he was made out to be, but words bear a double edge. They can serve right and they can serve wrong. Only time can soften or reverse their impact, though.

“I tell you these things, Sar Sosa, not to threaten you or to put you ill at ease. On the contrary, I chose you, knowing your identity. But if the people were to associate our current endeavors with the name Baskaart, I fear that the movement would come to an unceremonious end and we would find ourselves at the mercy of the King of Spades, ill prepared to meet his challenge.

“I apologize for not being honest with you from the start. That was an error in judgement.”

Sosa closed his mouth and swallowed down a combination of feelings he didn’t feel comfortable sorting out just now. In response to Stusson’s words, he simply nodded.

“I was a boy once,” Stusson continued. “It was long ago, but I still remember. I too had and
have
a fascination with heroes. I’m also a student of history—being long-lived makes that a sort of necessity after a while—so I know that you are not the first Black Snake.”