The Book of Deacon: Book 02 - The Great Convergence (4 page)

Myranda frowned.

"So you are as much a murder as he is," she
said.

"Heavens, no! If there is blood to be had it
is entirely upon his hands. I merely point him in the most
profitable directions," he said.

"And arm him," she said.

"Bah. We've had this discussion. A weapon is
merely a tool, and I merely make it. He is the one who decides what
to do with it," he said.

"But-" Myranda began.

"But, but, but. I have had decades to hone my
rationalizations. They are quite solid. I suggest you ask another
question rather than lecturing me," he said, not a drop of anger in
the voice. There was a sense of his having done all of this before.
There was that sense to everything he did and said, as though this
absurd life he lived was mundane.

"Well, what is this place?" she asked.

"A store room. One of many. A repository for
surplus funds, a library for old records. I keep most of my better
weapons here. Of course, in times of need, this place also serves
as a safe house, and ever since that fellow there decided to hand
you over to the Undermine, the times have most certainly been of
need. Clients tend not to react well when the person they hired to
capture someone decides to release the target. When the client has
an army at their disposal, it generally turns out poorly," he
said.

"What is the damage?" Lain asked.

"The tavern and the inn have been seized. I
still have access to a pair of the armories, but the rest have been
closed as well. Our little enterprise has all but disappeared from
the map," he said, almost grinning. "It will have to be rebuilt
from the ground up."

"What are you talking about?" Myranda
asked.

"We have a handful of legitimate businesses
that we use for meeting places and to attract clients. Trigorah and
her Elites have been taking them down one by one ever since her pet
target vanished. She can be a real pain sometimes," he said.

Lain stood and headed for the door.

"Where are you off to?" Desmeres asked.

Lain continued silently.

"Well, enjoy. I had more to say, but it can
wait," Desmeres said, obviously knowing Lain too well to expect a
response.

"Get back here! I'm not through with you! I
followed you here for a reason! You have a job to do and so do I!"
Myranda cried.

Lain slipped out the door, shutting it behind
him. Myranda rushed after him, but by the time she reached the door
to the entry room open again, the heavy trapdoor was clicking back
into place.

"Oh, never mind him. He will be back. There
is no place else in this world that will have him right now. He is
probably just out to hunt. Between you and me, he hates prepared
food. At any rate, you must have more questions, and if you don't
I've got a few," he said, leading her back inside.

Myranda was helpless to follow Lain even if
she had wanted to. She remembered the blades and knew neither how
to deactivate them nor what triggered them. She entered the dining
room and sat in Lain's chair.

"Any more questions?" Desmeres asked.

The young woman wondered for a moment why she
had ever thought she could convince Lain of anything now that he
had a whole world to hide in. In following him, she had left
paradise for the sake of a hole in the ground, and perhaps nothing
more.

"What does it matter? You will only lie to
me," she said bitterly.

"Oh, not at all. As a matter of fact I have a
feeling you will very soon find me to be the most infuriatingly
honest person you have ever met. So, if you have any questions,
feel free to ask," he said.

Myranda sat numbly and shook her head.

"Then I have a few for you. You say he has a
job to do. I assume you are not speaking of his still pending task
of turning you over to the Alliance Army. What then?" he asked.

"He is one of the Chosen," she said.

"The what? Oh, that's right. I remember them
giving that speech at least a dozen times in Entwell," he said.

"But it is true. It is proven!" she said.

"How so?" he asked.

Myranda explained about the ceremony that had
taken place in Entwell before she had left. She told of the
summoning of an elemental, a Chosen One, and the fact that Lain was
still standing when the creature was formed. The mystic being had
even approached him. According to the peerless minds of Entwell,
this was only possible if Lain was Chosen. Desmeres nodded
thoughtfully through the entirety of the tale, sipping at the wine
as it was told.

"Hmm. I always hated Hollow," he said when
the recollection was through, speaking of the prophet who had
predicted the ceremony and its meaning. "Frankly, I’ve never
trusted the whole concept of prophesy. The fact that things
occurred precisely as he’d predicted they would certainly punctures
my theory that he has been speaking pure nonsense for all of these
years. And you say that this other Chosen One, the one you conjured
up, it just flew away?"

"Yes," she answered.

"That is a bit odd. You would think that
after being brought into existence one would be eager to get to the
task for which one was summoned. I haven't heard anything about an
elemental showing up and bringing widespread peace, though," he
said.

"I believe that the Chosen will not turn to
their task until all five have appeared and joined forces," she
said.

"Ah, yes. The fabled 'Great Convergence.' I
imagine that the meeting of the Chosen will be a rather difficult
thing to arrange with Lain dedicating himself to other tasks, the
mysterious elemental flying about waiting for something, and the
others sight unseen," he asked.

"I've seen one. In the field. He was dead,"
she said.

"One would imagine that would only further
complicate matters," Desmeres said. "Tell me. If he was dead, how
did you discover that he was Chosen?"

"He had the mark. This mark," Myranda said,
showing her scar.

"Say. That looks familiar," he said.

"There is one just like it on Lain's chest,
one on the forehead of the elemental creature, and it was all over
the dead swordsman's weapons and armor. It is the mark of the
Chosen," she said.

"Am I to assume then that you are Chosen?" he
asked.

"No, no. A Chosen One must be divine of birth
and born with the mark. I am only human, and mine is a scar," she
said.

"And yet you feel compelled to hunt the
others down. You do realize that if the prophesy has come true thus
far it is likely to finish itself off without your help," he
said.

"That is just it. I believe I am part of the
prophesy. Hollow may have mentioned me," she said.

"I see. You don't suppose you are suffering
from delusions of grandeur, do you? Well, I suppose you wouldn't be
very well suited to answer that. At any rate, this is all very
interesting but I hope you don't mind if I change the subject. I
tend to enjoy talking about things that have already happened
rather than things that are about to. Less chance of spoiling
surprises that way," he said. "I take that you set your mind to
magic back at Entwell. How far did you get?"

"Full master," she answered.

Desmeres tilted his head.

"No . . . in half a year?" he remarked in
disbelief.

"A bit less than that," she said.

"And yet an olo got a hold of you. Not very
fast with the spells yet?" he said, indicating the trickle on her
leg.

"I manage," she answered, directing a bit of
thought to the wound to close it.

"Hmm . . . I may need to renegotiate," he
said.

"Renegotiate what?" she asked.

"Your price. It is already the highest that
we've ever been offered, but now that you are a full wizard I may
just be able to squeeze a bit more out of them," he said.

"You are still thinking of turning me in?"
she growled.

"Myranda, it is practically all I think
about," he said, quite unapologetically.

"But now? After you know me? After you know
what I must do? How could you?" she asked, appalled.

"Did Lain ever tell you what you were worth?"
he asked.

"No! What does it matter?" she asked.

"Oh, with a number this large? It matters,"
he said, standing and hurrying out the door.

She stood to follow.

"No, no. Stay there. You were impressed with
the gold goblet, right?" he said amid door creaks and chest slams.
Finally he reentered and walked to the table. He slammed something
down on it.

It an enormous brick, as thick as her arm and
nearly as long. Gold.

"One gold ingot. Think of it as four hundred
gold coins melted together. We currently have just under thirty of
these, plus enough other gold coins and knickknacks to equal
perhaps one hundred more. The Alliance Army, for a reason that we
are not entirely certain of, is willing, nay, eager, to pay us one
hundred and twenty-five of these for your corpse and the sword you
carried," he said.

Myranda's eyes locked on the block of gold
and widened.

"However! That is merely the base price. If
you are still breathing when we hand you over, the price is
increased tenfold. One thousand, two hundred and fifty of these
bits of auric masonry. That is equal to five hundred
thousand
gold coins. Five
million
silver coins. Two
hundred
and fifty
million
coppers. I would say that
you are worth your weight in gold, but that is a massive
understatement. You are worth something on the order of
three
hundred times
your weight in gold. You are the single most
valuable thing I have ever seen," he said.

"But . . . why?" she asked, dumbfounded.

"As I said, their motivation is a mystery to
me. Most interesting is the fact that they did not even want
specifically you. At least, not at first. Their orders were to
retrieve that sword of yours, which we have by the way, and anyone
who touches it directly and lives. We were also told not to touch
it ourselves, if we value our lives. I do and I have not," he
said.

Myranda's mind began to stir.

"That sword . . . that sword belonged to the
swordsman. That sword is what gave me the mark. It has something to
do with the Chosen. And they want me, alive . . . " she thought
aloud.

Deep in Myranda's mind, thoughts and
instincts clashed together. Thoughts that had been forming since
Lain had first told her the truth about why he captured her.
Longings and hopes merged as she tried to find some explanation for
such actions. Almost hammered into her mind at birth was the belief
that the Alliance Army had the best interests of the people and the
world at heart. That thought planted the seed of an idea. They
wanted the person who touched the sword, if possible alive. The
seed grew until finally it found its way to her voice.

"They know! They know about the prophesy!
They came to the same conclusion I did, that the person who is
scarred with the mark by the sword is the one who will join the
Chosen together. They must want my help!" she said, more certain of
it with every moment.

"Possible. I have seen greater stretches of
the imagination come true," he said, nodding thoughtfully, then
frowning. "Not the least bit likely. In fact, now that I th-"

"Desmeres, I must meet with the Alliance Army
at once!" she said.

"Not so quickly, I am afraid," he said,
dropping the interrupted thought and embarking on a new one. "You
see, when Lain decided to free you and keep them at arm's length
from you, it made them believe that we were no longer willing to
turn you over. That has put the two of us on a very exclusive list
of insurgents who are to be killed on sight by the Elites. It is
clear that those very same Elites are the ones who seek to claim
you as well. Until we can establish that Lain's little
idiosyncrasies are harmless and that we are indeed still willing
and able to relinquish yourself and the sword, we are going to have
to wait."

"I will just go to them myself," she
said.

"That would not be wise. Lest you forget, the
attempts to capture you have been less than pleasant in the past.
The rest of the agents out after you are not so well disciplined as
the Elite, and I would wager to say that they have not been offered
the same compensation as we. If you meet them first, which you most
certainly will, they might be just as willing to turn over a corpse
as a captive," he said.

"I will take my chances. I can take care of
myself," she said.

"That freshly healed wound on your leg and
the close calls of the past would seem to indicate the contrary,"
he said. "Besides, if you go off and turn yourself in, we will not
get paid, and that would just be a tragedy."

"Hmm. And Lain is Chosen. I would have to
find him again after all," she said.

"Precisely. So what do you say? You stay on
as our guest until I can smooth out relations just enough to allow
an exchange. That is, of course, unless you don't want to, in which
case you will need to stay on as our prisoner. I would suggest
choosing the former. It has better accommodations and the
conversations are a tad less one sided. That will give you time to
convince Lain of his place in the cosmic way of things, and it will
allow us to protect our investment. Then you and he can go off and
find elementals and all manner of other eldritch companions and
create a tale we can all tell our children about," he said, lifting
the ingot to return it to its storage.

Myranda frowned at his mocking tone toward
the end of the speech. When he reached for the gold, it made
Myranda realize something.

"Wait. The war is good for you. Why would you
allow me to help bring peace?" she asked.

"Do you honestly believe that you will be
able to convince Lain to join forces with the Alliance Army and put
his life on the line to somehow put this war to an end? They have
hunted him for decades, and when they caught him, they tortured him
for a month, if my sources can be believed. He will never work with
them without what he considers to be a very good reason, and I
doubt such a reason exists," he said frankly.