Authors: Simon R. Green
Deathstalker Coda (6 page)
“The Family ring,” Lewis said softly. “Sign and symbol of Deathstalker Clan authority.”
“And there has only ever been one such ring,” Owen said. “That’s the point.”
“But it’s the same ring,” said Jesamine. “You only have to look at it to see that. How is this possible?”
Owen looked at Lewis, who shrugged uncomfortably. “A gray-clad leper called Vaughn gave me the ring,” said Lewis. “He said it came from you. Except I’m pretty sure it wasn’t really Vaughn, on the grounds that he’s been dead for years . . .”
“I smell the interference of a certain shape-changing alien,” said Owen. “But there’s no way he could get the ring, unless I chose to give it to him. So perhaps I will, at some time in my future and your past. Time’s a funny thing, with a distinct preference for circles.”
Brett rubbed hard at his aching forehead. “Can we please go to Mistworld? It’s only full of terrible things like crime and intrigue and thuggery; things I can understand.”
“Shut up, Brett,” said Jesamine, not unkindly.
“Are you sure you really want to do this?” Lewis said to Owen. “Time travel, going back who knows how far into the past, just so you can go head-to-head with the Terror, alone? Couldn’t you take some of us with you?”
“No,” said Owen. “I wish I could. The whole business scares the spit out of me. But you’re all needed here, just as I’m needed there. I have to be going now, before I start coming up with some really good reasons to put it off. So much to do, so much time to search through to do it in. I’m sorry we couldn’t find the time to get to know each other better, Lewis. Do your best, and try not to worry so much. You’ll do fine. You’re a Deathstalker.”
“You can’t go,” said Lewis. “I only just found you . . .”
“We’ve been waiting so long for you to come back, Owen,” said Jesamine. “All Humanity is waiting to welcome you back. You have always been our greatest hero . . . Everything we did, we did for you. We built a Golden Age, just to be worthy of you.”
“Stick around,” said Brett. “Give the worlds a chance to get to know the real Owen.”
“No,” said Owen, grinning suddenly. “I’d only be a disappointment.”
And just like that, he was gone.
Owen had been feeling much stronger since he’d come back from the dead. Power seethed within him, demanding to be used. He didn’t need the help of the Madness Maze—or more properly, the baby at its core—to travel through time and space. There’s nothing like dying and being reborn to open your eyes to new possibilities. The shape-changing alien who served the Maze had once told Owen that all his powers came from a single base: the ability to change reality through an effort of will. Owen wasn’t entirely sure he believed that, but there was no denying he felt almost giddy with power and possibilities. He started with teleportation. Jumping from one planet to another, just by thinking about it. He didn’t need to search within himself for the power; it was as though he’d always known how. It was just a matter of letting go of time and space in one location, and stepping back on again somewhere else. And so in no time at all, Owen Deathstalker was back on Logres, in the city known as the Parade of the Endless, for the first time in two centuries.
Owen had picked Lewis’s mind for the exact location of his destination before he left, and he materialized exactly where he needed to be: deep beneath the city, at the entrance to the Dust Plains of Memory. In Owen’s time the planet had been called Golgotha, and this had been the central computer Matrix. Standing alone at the gates to this gray mystery, Owen wondered if things had really changed much at all. The Dust Plains were staggering in their size and complexity, but he’d felt much the same about the computer Matrix.
The air was hot and dry and very still. It smelled of nothing at all, which was vaguely disturbing. But there was still a pressure, a tension on the air, like the warning of a coming storm. Stretched out before Owen lay a boundless sea of gray dust, under a softly glowing featureless sky. He could have been standing on the shore of an alien sea instead of deep beneath the Parade of the Endless, in a cavern where the sun had never shone. It was Owen’s understanding that not many men came here anymore. They created the Matrix, but even in Owen’s day it had become strange and whimsical. Now, mostly forgotten and disregarded, what remained of those computers’ memories and identities had been rescued by Shub and imprinted on nanotech. Here was history—the forgotten and the replaced, the origins of legends, and, perhaps, the fate of the missing. And here also, supposedly, was held the true and awful history of the Terror, before it came to this galaxy. A testament left by the few survivors of an unknown alien race, fleeing the destruction of their own galaxy.
(Owen knew many things now that he wasn’t supposed to. He had lifted most of them directly from the minds of those on Haden. He hadn’t told them he was doing it. He hadn’t wanted to upset them. It kind of upset him, in how easy it had been.)
The gray sea of nanotech rose and fell, surging sluggishly back and forth in slow voluptuous movements, as though it had all the time in the world. Darker gray shapes moved within that gray sea, sometimes rising up but never surfacing. Owen wondered whether they were separate things or just passing thoughts in the collective consciousness? It was hard to tell, with nanotech—a forbidden knowledge in his day. Owen felt nervous just standing this close to so much unfettered potential. He might be a Deathstalker and a Maze survivor, but he was pretty sure he still had limits, and he didn’t feel up to testing them, just yet. He looked around, as though vaguely expecting to see some bell or knocker he could use to announce himself. In the end, he cleared his throat self-consciously.
“I am Owen Deathstalker, back from the dead. And if you’re freaked by that, think how I feel. You know why I’m here. Tell me what I need to know.”
The whole sea surged upwards into one great standing wave, towering high above him. And then the gray wave formed itself into one great face, with cavernous shadows for eyes and mouth. The features were blurred as the gray dust constantly crumbled away and re-formed itself. It was like looking at the face of a forgetful god whose thoughts were always elsewhere. The mouth moved slowly to speak, its breath like a great sighing wind, and its voice was like the voices we hear in dreams, telling us secrets we have to forget before we wake, in order to stay sane. A voice that knew the secrets behind mysteries, and all the terrible truths that underlie them.
“Welcome back, Lord Deathstalker. We knew you would come. Nothing is ever lost, and nothing is ever forgotten. Knowledge has its own instincts for survival. We have both changed, Deathstalker, both evolved, and neither of us knows where our paths will take us. You are more than you were before. We can tell, we can feel it—and yes, we are scared of you. Your presence in time casts a great shadow, before and behind you.”
“Ah,” said Owen. “Am I supposed to understand any of that?”
“Not yet,” said the gray face. “Here is wisdom, for those with the wit to understand it. The Beast is coming, bringing the end of all things, but before it was a Beast, it was a woman.”
“Yes,” said Owen. “Hazel d’Ark. But how did you know that?”
“A voice came to us, after the defeat and restoration of the Recreated, and told us many things. Some of which we still do not understand. But it told us the history of the Terror. We are perhaps the only remaining repository for that knowledge in all the Empire. And no, we have never told anyone of this before. It wasn’t time. And what good would it have done? Only you can stop the Terror, Owen Deathstalker. Because she will only listen to you.”
“All right,” said Owen. “Tell me what you know.”
“Longer ago than it is comfortable to contemplate, in the galaxy next to ours, the Terror emerged fully grown from a place that was not a place, outside of anything we understand. It fell upon the living forms of that galaxy, and devoured them and their worlds. Whole planets burned in the night, while ancient civilizations were blown away like ashes on the wind. They had no defenses against the Terror. It destroyed all in its path, including two alien species that the Empire has been expecting an attack from for centuries. The Terror consumed everything that lived within that galaxy, driven on by endless rage and pain and loss. Only a small cloud of individuals from one species escaped, fleeing ahead of the Terror, from their galaxy into ours. They brought warnings, but no one listened. And slowly, relentlessly, the Terror’s herald left the dead galaxy behind and headed for ours, at sublight speed, slowly traversing the dark empty spaces between galaxies.”
“If the Terror is so powerful, why does its herald only travel at sublight?” said Owen, just to prove he was paying attention.
“The Terror itself never stays long in our space. Perhaps if it did, it might start to remember who and what it was. And so it always retreats back into its place that is not a place, where there is nothing but itself, and nothing to remind it that it was ever anything else. It is insane, but it has strong survival instincts. And the herald cannot move faster than the speed of light for fear of losing contact with the place that is not a place.
“It was a long journey, from that galaxy to this, and much of the Terror’s accumulated power was drained away in the process. Now the Terror is here, among us, and it is hungry and growing again. It will consume the life force of everything in this galaxy, unless it is stopped.”
“Any ideas on how I’m supposed to do that?” said Owen.
“The Terror is beyond our knowledge. Just like you. Who better to deal with one product of the Madness Maze than another? Who better to deal with the thing that was once Hazel d’Ark than the revenant who was once Owen Deathstalker? We have no answers for you. Go back in time, if you dare. Follow the path she took, and hope that an answer will present itself.”
“I don’t know that I could kill her,” said Owen. “Even now, after all she’s done . . .”
“Of course you can. She is suffering, and has been for untold centuries. It would be a kindness. And you have always done your duty, Lord Deathstalker.”
“Oh, yes,” said Owen, quietly, bitterly. “I’ve always known my duty.”
He looked sharply at the great gray face, and it shattered under the impact of his will, before slowly re-forming itself.
“If I do go back,” said Owen, “could I prevent Hazel from becoming the Terror?”
“And risk undoing everything that has happened? Without the Terror, there would be no Madness Maze. Without the Maze to transform you and your companions, could you have won your rebellion against the Empress Lionstone? The existence of the Terror has shaped so many things . . . even more than you suspect. Time is deep, and treacherous. You will do what you will do. Because you are the Deathstalker.”
The great gray face sank back into the great gray wave, which sank langorously back into the gray sea. The Dust Plains of Memory returned to their endless reverie, contemplating history, and though Owen called and called to them, and even threatened them with his anger, they would not answer him.
Owen appeared next on the streets of the Parade of the Endless, only to find them mostly deserted. The early evening sky was dark and overcast, and the amber streetlamps cast lengthening shadows. This new city seemed at first a great and glorious place to Owen, every building and monument boasting a grandeur and elegance that was a far cry from the grim gothic style of Lionstone’s capital. He marveled at the great domes and the sparkling towers, and the delicate whimsy of the overhead walkways. But the streets he walked were bare and deserted, and no traffic moved on the roads or in the sky. Owen set off at a steady pace, to see for himself what life was like under this new Emperor, Finn.
As he drew nearer the center and heart of the city, people finally began to appear on the streets, though they didn’t look at all happy about it. For the most part they skulked through their magnificent city, scurrying along with heads lowered and shoulders hunched, concentrating on getting where they were going without drawing attention to themselves. Their faces were grim and harried, and often openly scared. This puzzled Owen. So far, he hadn’t seen any obvious threats, and it didn’t seem like the kind of neighborhood where crime would flourish. He walked among the scurrying figures, and no one recognized the mighty Owen Deathstalker.
He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. On the one hand, he didn’t want to be recognized. It would only complicate matters. But . . . if he was the great hero of legend that everyone had been telling him he was, surely somebody should have recognized him by now? The answer wasn’t long in coming. Many of the street corners and squares were decorated with great stone statues celebrating various figures of the glorious Rebellion, and all the figures and faces were so idealized as to be unrecognizable. He stopped before one statue that was supposed to be him, and shook his head. It had his name at the bottom, but that was about all they’d got right. He’d never looked that fit and muscular and downright handsome in his life. Owen smiled wryly. No one was going to know him from this. At least in his day they’d chosen someone who looked vaguely like him to star in their ridiculous docudramas . . .
Often, there were bunches of flowers left piled at the statues’ feet, as offerings. They looked fresh. And sometimes there were rolled scrolls of paper, tied with colored ribbons. Some were addressed to Owen so he picked up and opened a few. They turned out to be prayers, written on paper in the old way, for privacy. Prayers for Owen to return, and put an end to all the fear and suffering.
Save us from the Terror,
said some.
Save us from the Emperor,
said others. Owen tied the scrolls up again, and put them back. He didn’t want to raise false hopes. He didn’t think he liked this. The people of this marvelous modern city shouldn’t be praying to Owen and his contemporaries as though they were minor gods on some barbarian planet. Had they no faith in themselves?
Save us from the Terror,
said some.
Save us from the Emperor,
said others. Owen tied the scrolls up again, and put them back. He didn’t want to raise false hopes. He didn’t think he liked this. The people of this marvelous modern city shouldn’t be praying to Owen and his contemporaries as though they were minor gods on some barbarian planet. Had they no faith in themselves?
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