The Stars Askew (52 page)

The Furies were loosed.

Max knew what he had to do. In truth, he had known it for a long time but had kept the knowledge from himself, for it had frightened him. Now he withdrew into himself, gathered all his forces together, and looked down onto the landscape of his mind, at all the features he had once been so proud of: at his intelligence, like some great monolith towering over a plain; his talent with the Art, which lit that landscape up; at the dark valleys and chasms of his hurts, the places where he had taken blows. He looked down on that landscape and at the creature he had once thought of as a god: he gazed down at Aya.

Max let himself plunge down over that landscape like a flood. In that instant Aya realized Max's intention.

No!
The mage screamed and lashed out, trying to force Max back.

Max offered no resistance to Aya, but engulfed him like water. He kept no barriers to his mind. Aya lashed out, but with each blow he only sunk deeper into the formlessness that was Max.

Sudden flashes of memory came to Max then, as he lost himself. He did not know who he was, or where he was. Now he was a maelstrom, a seething mass, twisting and turning. Pieces of him broke off. Pieces of Aya joined him. Knowledge flooded into him; other things he forgot, remembered again. All aspects of his life were reconstructed, seen anew, so that they seemed like different events, events that took place beneath a different sun. Pieces locked together in new ways. New emotions came into being. He felt a great distance—an isolation—enter him, along with snatches of the language, the prime language, which he came to know and understand. Aya cried a terrible, lonely cry as his personality finally dissolved. The maelstrom quieted, the water settled, and he came back into consciousness, as Max, as Aya, as some hybrid of the two of them. No: as Max, but terribly transformed, a Max barely recognizable.

The dull light pierced his eyes, and he came up. He glimpsed movement: a mask, white and deadly; whips; something coming at him with fearsome rapidity. Bloody ropy muscles and tendons, yellowed fangs from red gums. Not a dog; a horse. Not a horse; some exotic creature moving at unnatural speed. An unnatural creature. It was almost on him now, and two fragments of his memory came together as it did. He was not whole, but he knew this thing should not be here. It belonged on the Other Side, and it planned to take him with it. He slowed down time, so that the creature seemed to float through the air.

He stood up, and the equations rose up to him. His head tilted back and his arms reached out as he channeled the universe's power.

He—whoever he was—set the universe's awesome power loose. The air was rent. A blinding light shone forth.

 

FORTY-THREE

The Furies descended on the remains of Kata's forces. There was little she could do now except die with the rest of them. Across the square, Alfadi smiled cruelly, his ruined face hitching itself up like some ship's ragged and torn sail after a storm. She looked into those pale and empty eyes and saw only bleakness and violence. He had bested her, just as he had bested Aceline.

The Furies flew through the air, their speed unnatural and frightening. As Kata's guards broke and ran around her, or pressed themselves down on the barricades, as if they might somehow melt into it and disappear, she stood tall, her head held high. Time seemed to slow, movements delayed, sounds stretched out. The calls and cries of the seditionists beside her seemed to yawn through space. Two of the Furies came at her, racing each other.

On they came, first thirty feet away, then twenty. Bolts were loosed from the scorpions behind the barricades and bolt-throwers held by desperate guards. Time itself seemed to distort. The bolts seemed to fly forward, hover gracefully in midair as if halted by some unseen force, then speed on to their targets. Some flew past the creatures; others disappeared into the darkness surrounding them. One of the Furies skidded across the cobblestones, rolling and twisting in pain, disappearing into the darkness. For a moment Kata thought it might be sucked back to the Other Side. But no, it recomposed itself and sped on.

Now ten feet away, the other Furies flew toward her. Still, she seemed to see every movement, every tiny detail as death came at her. She prepared herself for the creatures to smash into her and rend her with their teeth.

With one giant leap, Dexion brought his hammer down onto one of the creatures' heads. It crumpled to the ground, and an instant later the two of them were at each other, spinning and lashing out, like wild dogs fighting.

A light gleamed to Kata's left, like a powerful lamp. Kata realized she had been vaguely aware of it for a while, but now it burst into a glowing brilliance. She looked to the side and saw Maximilian there. A blinding ray burst from the radiance surrounding him, and then another and yet another, until it seemed that a white sun burned. Only the silhouette of Max was visible; the rest of him was a bulb of incandescence. Kata averted her eyes, looked back and away once more.

Ahead of her, the Furies cowered and scrambled away sideways, having forgotten their prey. Like dogs that had been kicked, they scratched and scrambled farther back, their bloodshot eyes fearful, terrified.

Alfadi's thaumaturgists held their arms to their eyes and crouched, as if expecting a blow.

Only Alfadi faced the brilliance uncowed, but his cold white eyes were filled with a desperate anger and surprise, his ragged face grimacing under the beams of blinding light. The thaumaturgist rushed forward, his hands burning red with thaumaturgical power. He raced up the barricade directly into the globe of light, intent on attacking Max. But as he entered the searing globe, Alfadi's body seem to shrink, as if it had aged rapidly. His suit emptied itself and fell down. A bundle of rags tumbled from the barricade and onto the ground, nothing more than a ruin.

One by one the Furies screamed, terrible unearthly cries, as they were sucked back into the Other Side like water down a hole.

The enemy thaumaturgists cowered. Some crawled away over the cobblestones, the white light of some new form of enchantment bearing down on them with a terrible weight. Others lay prostrate, clamped down to the ground by the relentless force.

When they saw the thaumaturgists turn and flee, the gladiator troops behind them broke.

Dexion staggered to his feet, his skin torn and blackened, and his voice rang out. “A mage. It is a mage of old!”

*   *   *

Kata's troops pursued their enemies down the streets, toward Market Square. Leaving Dexion with a now unconscious Maximilian, she staggered after them. Bodies lay strewn along Via Persine, cut down from behind. The seditionist guards were not inclined to forgive, it seemed.

Around the Opera, corpses lay scattered like rag dolls in a nursery, their arms and legs at unnatural angles. Blood lay in pools beside the bodies, entrails held in place by stiffened hands. Most of the bodies were vigilant guards. Though they had defended the building resolutely, they were no match for the trained force of the gladiator army. Here and there a gladiator lay fallen, a trident or short-sword by his side.

Already a slightly unpleasant odor hovered in the front hall. Here she found seditionist guards rummaging through the bodies for valuables. The Opera's mobile lights pulsated an intense, angry red and refused to come down from the ceiling.

Kata rushed into the southern wing, looking for Rikard. She could feel the hope inside her, a little spring emerging from the rocks of her heart, even though she knew it was misplaced. The wing resembled a bloody harvested field: nothing remained standing; there were only stray stalks of wheat scattered on the ground. Corpses were strewn in the corridors and jammed up in the corners of rooms.

Kata came to Ejan's former office. Across the room lay a dark-haired man, facedown. Rikard! She ran to him, noticing as she did the pool of red and black blood that lay beneath him. The spring in her heart dried up. She turned the man over. His middle-aged face had been smashed in, his stomach slashed with a hundred cuts of a sword. It wasn't Rikard.

Numb with the horror of it all, she continued to an open courtyard. Here some moderate guards were piling the bodies up on a hastily constructed pyre, built from ruined furniture and paper from the printing presses.

“We won't be able to bury them all.” One of the seditionists looked around despairingly.

“Ejan's lieutenant Rikard. Have you seen him?” said Kata.

“He's in one of the rooms off the corridor. We moved him there so he'd be more comfortable.” One of the men threw a broken lamp onto the pyre, which began to burn quickly.

Kata stumbled back, moved from room to room until she found one filled with injured seditionists. Some groaned. Others lay pale-faced and grim. A good-looking bearded man moved from patient to patient, offering water and words of comfort.

Along one wall lay Rikard, one side of his face burned horribly. He held one hand against a deep wound in his stomach. His smile was part grimace.

Kata dropped to her knees beside him.

“They got me,” Rikard said. “Made sure of it.”

Kata looked around for healers or apothecaries, but there were none. “I'll find someone to help you.”

“Kata, it's not good. Look at the wound. No one can save me. Stay here with me. I don't want to die alone.”

It had been a long time since Kata had cried, but now the tears came, and she didn't try to hold them back.

From across the room, the bearded man smiled gently, nodded with compassion, tended to more of the injured.

“It's better this way, anyway,” said Rikard. “Look at me. Look at my face.”

“There's nothing wrong with your face,” said Kata.

“Will you tell my mother? Tell her it was quick, though, won't you? Tell her I didn't suffer much.”

Kata got to her feet. She would find that apothecary. But Rikard grasped her arm. He spoke in short breathless gasps. “No. Stay here, Kata. It won't be not long now. I wanted to thank you. You've got a good heart, underneath it all. Remember that history isn't kind. When great events come, hard decisions must be made. Of course you know that. I'm not sure why I'm saying it. And you alerted me to the dangers of hasty decisions, easy solutions. To the dangers of believing
we
know those solutions, that we are the ones with the right judgment. Thank you for that. It's a pity I haven't been able to make better use of it.”

Kata tried to think of something to say, but there was nothing. Instead she wiped her tears from her eyes.

“All those things I'll never experience. I thought one day I might have children, you know.”

Kata was shocked. “What?”

“Yes. A long way off, but why not? Life can be about the little things, can't it? You never saw that in me, did you?

“I associated you too much with Ejan,” said Kata. “And I associated Ejan too much with … I don't know, things I wanted to believe about him.”

Rikard groaned, and his words came more breathlessly. “That's it, Kata. It's coming now. I can see the Other Side, I think. I'm scared. See all those figures, walking soundlessly through the field. They're all dead, Kata. They're all dead. Can you see it? The black stairs, leading up to the long black field. Can you see it, Kata? I can see the Dark Sun. Those black rays are cold. The Dark Sun. It's magnificent, isn't it? Terrible and magnificent.”

“I'm here. I'm here.” She kept repeating it again and again as Rikard's breath came quick and ragged. He began to shudder, as if he were awfully cold. Then the shudders became spasms. His chest thrust forward. He stopped breathing, burst into three ragged breaths, stopped breathing once more, and was dead.

*   *   *

After Rikard's death, the bearded man came to her and she sized him up for the first time. His name was Irik, and he was from Varenis. His clothes were ragged and worn, and he had the lean look of a man who had been through hardship. Yet there was a softness about his manner and movement. He touched everything as if he were a gardener, tending to fragile flowers. He placed one hand on her shoulder, gently. “I'll look after him now. You don't need to worry. He's safe now. He's safe.”

So Kata left them both. Her tears dried as she walked blindly from the Opera. She wanted revenge on those who had killed her friend. She wanted Dumas's head on a pike.

Others had the same idea. On the balustrade, guards of both factions—moderates and vigilants—were carrying out executions. A line of prisoners kneeled, heads bowed, before a pile of bodies on the cobblestones beneath them. Behind the captives stood seditionist guards, bloodied swords in hand. In the square nearby stood even more guards, encircling the remaining miserable-looking prisoners.

Blades hacked into necks or drove through bodies. The line of captives fell forward, over the balustrade and onto the pile of bodies nearby. Another line shuffled to take their places. They quivered and whimpered as they waited for the final blow.

At the head of a battered group, Ejan emerged from the Quaedian, his bodyguard Oskar covered in another dozen bloody cuts that would one day add to his scars. Seeing the executions, Ejan called out, “No! Stop this immediately.”

The fragile-looking Elise stepped forward from behind the prisoners. Apparently she had been overseeing the killings. How things had changed. Everything had turned upside down: vigilants calling for mercy, moderates organizing a massacre. “They're traitors. They would have done the same to us.”

“You're right—they would have,” said Ejan. “But that's one of the things that separates us from them. There will be trials. They must have a chance to defend themselves. There will be justice, but no executions now.”

“Wouldn't it be easier if we kill them?” said Elise. “Wouldn't it be easier to cleanse the city of those who will destroy us?”

“They're no threat to us now,” said Ejan. “Take them to the dungeons in the Arbor Palace.”