Eden's Jester (19 page)

Crap.
 

I was right back where I started.
 

For the millionth time, I cursed whoever it was that brought me into this world. How could I be expected to do whatever it was that I was made to do with so little guidance? Without the Preceptors, tradition, and the Doctrines, I was left only with that which accompanied my awakening, my birth: five words, and only two of them were instructions.
Two words.
All I heard that day was a voice from the heavens, “You are Elson. Follow me.” Follow whom? I looked around at the remarkable land of Chile. How could I be expected to know? Two words.
 

Okay, so as Jill had pointed out, I had been given more than just words. I had also been given a little voice inside my head that was trying to kill me. Quite a package: nebulous words and a homicidal conscience. At least my creator had a sense of humor.
 

What all this boiled down to was that my plans had to change. Breaking Diomedes out of one of Sancrotos’s prisons was another kind of operation altogether. Chile was one thing, the UK was another.

I released Koenk with instructions not to discuss our conversation. He staggered away, out of the chasm. I didn’t care where he went or how he got there. His cohort laid there, still catatonic.
 

I looked down the length of the chasm. The other end was dark and stale. An icy breeze expelled pieces of chaff out of the dark throat as if, its life consumed, the chasm had no more need of it. The wind whispered to me. There was something down there it wanted me to see.

I entered the deserted and empty darkness. It was clear no one had been down here for a very long time. The bottom was smooth. An ancient river, dried up long ago, had carved out a wide path. Few ashes from the volcanoes made it to the cracked clay riverbed.
 

Ancient art, similar to cave drawings, covered the walls. The people who drew them didn’t know much about their world, either. Crude but beautiful images of wildlife and hunters dotted the walls, along with larger images of fires with little stickmen huddled around. Food, warmth, and community. These were the essentials of their world.
 

Near the end of the chasm, where the long-gone river had met a wall and descended below the ground, stood a graveyard--the end of the line, the entrance to the underworld.
 

Burial mounds were scattered about with no apparent order. Loose bones were strewn about like litter. Blackened pieces of burnt wood were concentrated in a pit between the burial mounds and the back wall. Cut stones lay strewn about the pit.
 

I wondered how these simple people dealt with higher concepts, like purpose and death. They probably didn’t have much time for the former and couldn’t resist the inevitability of the latter.
 

The pictures that covered the end walls had a different character. Scenes of death mixed with abstract symbols. The stickmen had a skeletal look.
 

One scene was larger than the rest and covered roughly the center of the end wall. It had an official look. Stickmen approached a giant stick-skeleton, presenting it with several non-dead stickmen, apparently as some kind of an offering. It looked like they were trying to bribe death with sacrifices of the living. I could almost hear them saying, “Here, kill these guys and leave us alone. We didn’t like them much anyway, but you’ll find them to be good enough chaps. Thank you, good-bye, and hope never to see you again.” I wondered how that worked out for them.

I kicked around in the human rubble. A rock rolled over and turned out to be a small skull, a child victim. I picked it up and brushed it off. It looked up at me in amused silence, its grin mocking me for being so stupid as to live. Who was this young joker? What kind of games did he or she play, so long ago? How did the kid end up here? I’d never know. But the nearby stones were arranged in a way that had the look of an altar, broken and wasted. This was possibly a child sacrifice. People shouldn’t need to sacrifice their children to survive. What had this child’s life purchased for his people? Did his short existence make a difference? Such an end should have meaning.

What kind of world was this that drove people to such horrors, such crimes? It was Aeson’s kind of world, and Melanthios’s too. He wouldn’t be above such atrocities to gain some advancement, some prize.
 

I didn’t like this world anymore. Something had gone wrong at the highest level and the sickness drizzled down like slime, corrupting everything it touched. Half of me wanted to leave. To go anywhere else. Surely, somewhere, there had to be a place not so diseased. But the other half of me wouldn’t allow it. I had a duty, and it was to this very world.
 

The conflict squeezed me in its vise, crushing the breath from my artificial lungs. Like great tectonic plates pressing against one another, something had to give. Running a microscopic guerrilla war was no longer sufficient.
 

I looked at the chalk drawing of the giant skeletal figure. Shadows reached out from all around me, seeking to consume any remnant of light that stubbornly insisted on shining. Dirt and death invaded my sight wherever I looked.
 

This place sucked.

I lifted up the child skull and commanded its elements to return to their primordial form. Brilliant light filled the chasm like it never had before. These rocks had never seen such pure light. Fire erupted and began to cleanse the rock of its sad past. The small area contained the heat, causing the walls to melt. Glass began to form, reflecting hues of blue and green as the strength infused into the skull’s atoms since the beginning of time was released to do its final work. The chasm shook as the top of the walls blew away from the heat and expanding air. A great valley was formed where the chasm had been. As the skull’s light faded, it was replaced with the warmth of golden rays from a newly risen sun. This place would never be shrouded in shadow again.
 

A strange hissing sound filled my ears. I looked behind me to see water bubbling to the surface, instantly vaporized by the residual heat held within the rock. The ancient river had returned. In this valley, life would invade the depths of death and push it away.
 

I looked at my handiwork, and it was good. It occurred to me right there, right then, that a fundamental change had to occur.
 

No more mister nice guy.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

What the powers-that-be needed was to be turned upside down. They, and I, had lost something down through the eons of serving the Designers: we had forgotten to serve this world. To be truthful, most of us felt we were doing just that. Our confusion lay in what this world was. We saw it as a whole, treating all the parts equally, as if it were a gigantic body that had good parts and bad parts. We cultivated the good and pruned the bad. We looked upon the people of this world as cogs in some wondrous machine, and the machine was paramount.
 

But that was not true. Nor was it true that we were separate from this world. We were part of it, along with the elementals, the humans, and who knew what else.

The intelligent beings of this world were the point. The rest was furniture, decoration. Evolution was not an academic concept to be measured on paper according to some abstract principles of civilization. Evolution meant people, humans and non-humans, becoming better at being people: collectively and individually. We had been looking only at the collective. We had sacrificed the individual. I had sacrificed the individual, many times. No more.

 
Our error was seeking to serve the Designers. I bet they never intended that. That’s why they’re not here. That’s why they left. They did give us everything we would need to do our job. Our job was just hidden from us. Who could do such a thing? That was only one possible answer--the Preceptors.
 

Ah, therein lies the rub. The Preceptors. The most powerful beings in this world, titans, in fact, leading us down a path. Why? I didn’t care. Their motives were irrelevant. The problem was their power.
 

How many of them were there? Only a few, I was sure. Maybe a dozen or so. I could only name about half that many. How many of us were there? Hundreds of thousands, by my best estimation.

What this world needed was less evolution and more revolution.

Everyone needs a hobby, I guess.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Aello deserved a better explanation for what I’d done in the cave. I needed to apologize to her before I left to begin my new project. She was a friend I’d betrayed, and I needed to set that right. No more sacrificing individuals--even Engineers. I’d apologize, explain, then help her get Diomedes sprung from jail. That should set things right. Besides, I could use some good counsel from a wise guy like Diomedes. Surely he had come to some of the same conclusions about the Preceptors long ago.
 

I called out to Aello, but got no answer. She’d be angry, no doubt. I’d have to go to her. Typical.

I focused on the glamour that I had placed on her, and listened. At first, I heard and felt nothing. Then, as if from a deep well, I could hear the echo of her pain. She was terrified. She was wailing in horror and anger and pain. Something had gone very wrong. Aello was tough. I shuddered to think what could drive her to such a state.
 

I tried to locate her through the glamour, but it led into a haze. It was functional. But something was obscuring my ability to discern specific details. I’d have to travel down it blindly to learn anything more. That sounded like a trap and half.

I decided instead to chance tipping off Aeson about my escape and headed for Washington. If Aello was in trouble, Melanthios would help. His beef was with me, not her.

The North American headquarters of Law looked much the same as it did the last time I’d been there. I walked up to the door and pounded hard.
 

Rolic answered the door. He stared at me but didn’t say anything or move to let me in. Something was wrong.

“What’s the deal, Rolic? Move or I might get rough. I need to see His Bigness, and I don’t have time to play reindeer games.”

“There’s a conference going on, Elson. You’re not on the list,” he said.

“Really? Who’s in the house?”
 

“None of your business.”
 

He didn’t sound happy about it. My curiosity was piqued. Who could show up that would rile the un-rile-able Rolic? But that would have to wait. I was sure that whatever was happening to Aello, couldn’t.

“Ok, man. Could you just quietly
tell him I’m here? I think he’ll want to see me. Tell him it’s about Aello. I’m sure she’s in real trouble. She needs him.”
 

His face fell and he looked away. I’d seen that expression before many times: guilt. He hesitated, was about to say something, then shut the door in my face without a word.
 

I waited. In about a minute, the door opened again. Rolic rushed me in. “He’ll see you.” He escorted me to the closed doors of the business office and stopped. Turning to me, he whispered, “Steel yourself.” Whatever that meant.

“Why? What’s going on?” I asked.

He looked up and down the hall. Seeing it empty, he said, “The balance of power has shifted. Certain servants of Law have,” he looked even more sickened, “left. Many servants. It has weakened Law tremendously. New alliances are forming as a consequence. So prepare yourself.”

I considered his words. “’Left?’ You mean ‘escaped,’ don’t you. What’s wrong? Somebody slip someone a file in their birthday cake? I know who you’re talking about, Rolic. And you know what? It’s just the beginning.”

Rolic’s eyes narrowed. “This is big, Elson. It changes everything. The balance of power between Law and Chaos has been stable for over seven hundred years, almost a thousand. Now Chaos has the upper hand, and it is a strong hand. Stronger than I ever remember.”

That kind of sucked. But it also sang like opportunity. But, again, that would have to wait.
 

“Whatever, Rolic. Let’s go. I need to help Aello. Melanthios needs to help her. So do you mind?”

He shook his head. He knocked and we entered the room.
 

I almost lost my lunch. The only thing that saved the moment from being a total embarrassment was a similar reaction from Melanthios’s guest--Aeson.

“Come in, Elson. We were just talking about where to go from here,” Melanthios said.

“Elson!” Aeson exclaimed. “How . . . I sent you to the Abyss myself. How can you be here?” He almost stuttered. He certainly spit.

Melanthios’s jaw dropped. Rolic stopped in his tracks. I was sure several heads popped out of doorways along the hall. This was priceless. I mustered every ounce of self-control I had and nonchalantly strode into the room and took a seat next to Aeson as if I owned the place. Anger at whatever betrayal was brewing, and what it could mean for Aello and Diomedes, pushed my fear of these two jokers into the pit. This was big. I had considered telling on Sancrotos, but changed my mind. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

“You put him in the Abyss? Surely you must be mistaken,” Melanthios said.
 

In the back of my mind I noticed Rolic, Apolik, and one or two of Melanthios’s secretaries eavesdropping.