Champion of Mars (16 page)

“The spirits know. They remember, even if we do not.”

“The spirits are less able to resist the power of the Quinarchy than we. In the Librarian’s absence, the Quianrchs’ power in the Second World is absolute. They are the embodiment of the Second World in a way I can never be of this one, even had Kunuk not been seduced by them.”

“If this is part of the plan of the universe, then I deserve my decreed fate. Endless death is the ultimate destiny of us all, after all. I only hope I am remembered for my deeds in the service of the Emperor, Librarian and People of Mars, and not as a traitor.”

“One does not placate the hatred of the Quinarchy easily, Yoechakenon, and one cannot dictate others’ perceptions of us once we are gone, especially when the same authority writes our life histories. Only what the Quinarchy decrees is truly fate or the past: it manipulates and plots, bending and twisting our paths to its own ends, and it is free to do so, for there are none to gainsay it. But I know the truth, my spies have glimpsed its innermost thoughts. It is as powerless against the march of time as we are, and it would survive the coming of the Stone Sun. It hates you. The Quinarchy would inflict an eternity of torment upon Kaibeli in revenge. Tell me that that does not matter. Could you stand by and watch her suffer? The souls of her kind are different to ours, and they can be made to feel pain in ways of which we cannot even begin to conceive.”

“And you?”

“I will be punished in my turn,” the Emperor says grimly. “That is without doubt. That is my fate. The spiral of my existence ends here, whatever transpires between us. The Quinarchy will smash my soul. There is no escape for me.”

“Then perhaps your punishment is just, but mine was not. You interfered when you had no right to do so, and damaged the proper course of things. I... I only did what was required of me by fate. I broke the taboo because I was fated to do so.”

“Am I not then also fated to do so, to save a friend? Your faith is conveniently set aside when needs be, Yoechakenon. Who makes you diviner, who can tell the will of destiny? Is this why you hate me in my turn, for saving you? What could I do?” The Emperor’s sad eyes search his friend’s face. “The arena was just and useful, for the Door-ward, as wicked as it is, is very particular about its duties. Nothing could touch you there.”

“It... it protected me from the Quinarchy?”

“Look at you. It is your thirst for life that drives you to hate me, not your wish for death. I know you, Yoechakenon, else my offer would be different. Come. I will show you proof.” He stands away from the railing, holds out his arm and beckons. “If you remain uninterested, then I will do nothing and you will be free to strike me down. It will only be hastening the inevitable, after all.” He gestures, and Yoechakenon’s pain bracelets fall to the floor. “You will not be needing those any more, I think.”

Yoechakenon rubs his wrists, flexes his hands. It would be so easy to kill the Emperor. He is in the same cycle of life as Yoechakenon, but looks a hundred times as frail; the throne has sucked him dry. It would be so easy to avenge two years of humiliation, a simple twist of his neck. Yoechakenon could part his uppermost vertebrae from his skull with the slightest effort. He could reach out, but he does not. “I could kill you now.”

“Yoechakenon Val Mora, I know you will not. I can see it in your eyes. You want to know what I have seen. Curiosity was ever one of your greatest vices, and it still burns in you.”

T
HE
E
MPEROR HURRIES
, his robe trailing a path in the dust on the floor, the eyes upon it still closed. He approaches a pillar hidden in an unremarkable alcove. He brushes his hand over it in a complicated pattern. The column soundlessly opens in response, folding out like a flower. The Emperor disappears within.

The pillar contains a tightly coiled staircase, so cramped that Yoechakenon cannot stand. His elbows touch both walls as he follows its curve, and his stomach rolls with strange vertigo. He pulls his feet leadenly one after the other up the steps, his mind at one moment compressed, the next as wide as the sky.

Kalinilak is several turns ahead of him, and by the time Yoechakenon emerges from the top of the stairs, the other man stands engrossed in a flickering image spread across the air of a dark chamber.

“Behold, Yoechakenon,” says the Emperor. “The Window of the Worlds.” Little is visible of the ruler of Mars beyond the glow of his raiment, and this too is muted. A movement, the glitter of the whites of his eyes in the gloom as he speaks. He looks like a hierophant in his cave on one of the temple terraces, performing tricks for profit.

Yoechakenon can make little sense of the image. The room about it is totally black.

“This is a secret place, a place only I know of. You stand high in the head of Wisdom, the third herm of the mesa,” says the Emperor.

“How can this be?” asks Yoechakenon. “We were stood but moments ago behind the right eye of Might.”

“The staircase does not function as others do, and it coils round more than the usual space. Were a man to attempt those stairs without my foreknowledge he would find himself falling far to his death on the canyon floor. The sensation you feel, the sense of displacement? This chamber is invested with a little of the energies of the Stone Realms. But do not be alarmed, it is perfectly safe. This image, before us, is important. The proof I offer you and more besides lies therein.”

“I see nothing but patterns of light. You have tricked yourself.”

“Ever the doubter of men and the lover of machines, you are! Look harder, let your mind free. Turn off your visual filters. Look at it with human eyes. This is the way the image will speak to you.”

So Yoechakenon shuts his eyes, and when he opens them he looks out through naked human sight. Even in the total blackness of the room, the picture is faint and distorted. As he stares, the Emperor speaks, his voice sounding out of the blackness. “This imaging device is constructed in the same manner as other astronomical instruments, though the lens is different. It is ground from a piece of crystal taken from the site of the Fortress of Tears. It is this lens, fashioned from a part of the Stone Realms itself, that allows me to look beyond the Veil of Worlds, to anywhere I choose. Its strange properties filter the spatial distortion from the light, and shield my mind from the attentions of those Stone Beasts who prowl the void. No! Do not look at me, stare into the image. Do you not see? Through this I may look upon our enemies unobserved.”

Yoechakenon looks and looks as the Emperor continues to talk. He speaks of many things, of lost empires, of ancient cities long cast down in ruin, and he points at them as he speaks, but Yoechakenon sees nothing. The Emperor speaks of far-flung worlds and heroes with names no other men remember. Yoechakenon cannot see anything in the shifting patterns of light. He gazes more intently, and the Emperor talks on, his voice hypnotic.

Suddenly the layers of the image fall into place, and to Yoechakenon’s amazement he is looking at a landscape. A ravaged, blasted world of desert and oily oceans, scarred by stone intrusion and ice caps made huge by the dimming of the sun. But there is life. He is looking at an arc of Yerth. A sliver of it is in darkness, the rest in greyish light. The dark grows, and as night moves over the world, he sees lights. They are dim and distant from one another, but they shine dauntless, undeniable, beacons of life in an uncertain sea of shadow.

“Do you see now? This is Yerth, and there is a lie. Those lights are the lights of mankind’s cities. This is no lifeless orb. If the Quinarchy will lie about our brethren, what else will it lie about?”

“This image cannot be real,” says Yoechakenon. “No one has looked upon Yerth since the time of the Third Stone War.”

“You do not believe that. Your face betrays that you do not believe your own words. I have become adept at reading faces, in my time away from the Library.”

They look again at the images of Yerth. Yoechakenon watches in wonder as the Emperor adjusts the viewing aperture, bringing into sharp focus vast cities with lights as bright as suns at their heart. He shifts the view, showing a party of skin-clad men bearing a slaughtered animal of bizarre appearance across a blasted heath. The device is so finely tuned we can see their faces, and the steam billowing from their mouths in the freezing air. If the Emperor has created this as a ruse, it is an impressive one.

We gaze at the image for several minutes, until a black shadow passes over Yerth, and the image fills with the suggestion of something large and gelatinous, undulating in a manner that makes Yoechakenon’s skin crawl. The picture contracts, and there comes an inhuman, distant cry as of many creatures suffering together, and the picture fades away.

“Stone Kin,” whispers Yoechakenon. He feels the chill of terror.

“Stone Beast,” corrects the Emperor. “A mindless animal that dwells within the Veil, not one of the Kin.” He says this steadily. “The higher forms are gone.”

“Where are they?” he asks.

“They are here,” says the Emperor. He moves his hands, and another image leaps into life, clearer.

This time we see a portion of Mars; where, I do not know. The images shimmer in that strange manner the air takes where the Stone Lands hold sway and men do not go. At first we see nothing, and then: “It is an army, I see an army,” says Yoechakenon.

“You do,” says the Emperor. “An army of the Stone Kin, coming to Mars.”

We look upon their ranks. They are strange to behold, when they can be seen at all. They are not of this reality, these creatures.

“Time moves differently for them, and they come but slowly from the Stone Lands. When the Stone Sun draws close to Mars, then they will come forth and join with their allies, the treacherous servants of the Quinarchy.

“There is more.” He passes his hands through the air. Another scene, another army, this one of men and machines ridden by spirits. In the centre of it, a great beast. It warps and flutters in the picture, its form yet to fully establish itself within the strictures of our reality. It hurts the mind. If I or Yoechakenon had any lingering doubts, they are gone.

“Do you see? Do you see now? The League openly employs Stone Beasts; the Quinarchs tell their allies they are the masters of these creatures. The League remains ignorant, I am sure, of the depths of its betrayal.”

We watch the army. It is assailing a citadel, the assault preluded by the particle fires we saw from the head of Might.

“This thing, this window, can you see the Librarian? How can you be sure he still exists?” asks Yoechakenon.

The Emperor shrugged, “He hides itself from all, as he has for ages. But his voice comes and goes, never within the halls of the Library, always outside. Sometimes it is a whisper, sometimes a roar. Sometimes it is not there at all. But it is there.”

“You do not know if it is truly there, then. You do not know that this is not a device of the Stone Kin to deceive you.”

“No, I do not.”

Dim lights come on in the room. There remains the possibility that the shimmering Yerth and the stone army is a trick, the last torment of a man soon to lose his throne. We both think otherwise.

“Go, Yoechakenon, take up your armour again. Find the Librarian of Mars. We will no longer be slaves to the Quinarchy, our people sacrificed to them. Perhaps from that our people will take heart, and Man will grow to be a power to be reckoned with once more. I have not been a wicked Emperor; but I have caused more pain than good. I want the few who are free enough of the Quinarchy to remember well the Emperor Kalinilak, and his champion Yoechakenon Val Mora, and I want that knowledge to bring them succour in the dark days ahead. This is no suicide mission, Yoechakenon. I intend for you to return, for how else will the people know what you will learn? That is to be your redemption. Return with the Librarian and you will be remembered forever. You have been punished, now, every man can see that, and the people love you as much as a gladiator as they did a champion. And they will love you as a hero thrice over. Think of it!” Agitated, the Emperor grasps Yoechakenon’s shoulders. His hands are dry and veinous, white, dry skin mottling the red. They are the hands of a used-up man. “My friend, that is what we have dreamed of for nigh on two hundred centuries, and you have the chance to make it happen.”

Yoechakenon’s throat constricts, his mouth runs dry. “And if I refuse?” he says carefully.

“You will not refuse, Yoechakenon. You have already decided to go. I can rest easy. Your honour is so great you will be compelled to carry out the task as long as you have strength in your limbs. Nor will you fail, for your pride will not permit it.”

“My pride, strength and honour mean little if I am slain. If I die, then so will Kaibeli. Your will shall lie broken in the dust, and our souls also. Here at least I have a chance to return to the stacks.”

“And you will certainly die here! You have no chance for the stacks, and they will be destroyed themselves. What more must I say to you?” The Emperor drops his head and stares into the dismal shadows of the room. His brow creases, as if he can see something that Yoechakenon cannot, and that thing disturbs him. He grips Yoechakenon’s shoulders the tighter.

Yoechakenon looks deep into the eyes of the Emperor. They blaze too brightly; the candle of his life burns fast. “I could refuse, even though I know in my heart that you are right, and that both Kaibeli and I will suffer greatly when the city falls. I could refuse and watch you suffer, knowing that you, too, will never have the legacy you desire. But I will not. I will have you know that I am not swayed by fear, likewise that I am not swayed by revenge. I am a better man than you. But though I agree to do your bidding, you shall never have my forgiveness.”

“It is not your forgiveness, but your skill at arms and will to survive I require.”

“Then you have my word, they are once more at your service, nothing more. My spirit remains my own.”

The Emperor closes his eyes and smiles, and his grip lessens upon the champion’s shoulders. “Good, good,” he sighs and nods, as if his mind has finally come to agreement with itself after a bitter dispute. “That is as good as I could expect.” He looks older and paler, a sick man who has expended a great effort. “Come, you must leave immediately before the Quinarchy discovers me and is forced to act. Even now, it will be growing suspicious; you have been away from the arena for too long.” He walks across the chamber. He makes motions that are swallowed by the weird illumination of the room, and a door opens that appears only as slivers of lights in the darkness.