undying legion 01 - unbound man (67 page)

“Gods, Clade, what happened? Are you all right?” Eilwen crouched before him, her concern twisting to revulsion as she caught sight of his deformed limb. “Gods preserve, what happened to your hand?” Her gaze flicked to his other side. “Are they both…?”

A fresh wave of fear filled him and he raised his other hand, his left; but it remained as it had been, narrow and unmarked save for a cut he had sustained while descending the cliff path.
Thank the gods.

He reached out tentatively with his good hand and took hold of a crabbed finger. It felt stiff, artificial, like a mummer’s false arm. When he tried to pull the finger straight it moved only a little, stubbornly refusing to unbend any further than a half-crook. Eventually he let it go, allowing the withered appendage to fall to his lap and gazing at it with hollow resignation.

His limb was lost. The fingers with which he had first learnt to trace the runes of sorcery; the hand with which he had struck down Estelle and Garrett, and each of his kills before that; ruined, all of it. Even the Quill would struggle to heal something like this, even in one not resistant to fleshbinding. Despite his best efforts, something in the sorcery had failed to balance, and the binding had found its own way to rectify the fault.

He supposed he should be glad it hadn’t killed him.

“Did it work?” Eilwen’s voice was anxious. “Because that thing’s still here, whatever it is.”

Clade looked up. “It’s still here? You’re sure?”

She shot him a harrowed look. “I’m sure.”

Tentatively, he lowered his defences, opening himself to the presence of the god. Silence answered, still and undisturbed, beautiful in its emptiness. He probed further, questing outward for any sign of Azador; and there, just on the edge of his perception, he felt a hint of the old, familiar weight.
There.
Eyes closed, he cast about for its touch, like an archer licking his thumb to test the wind.
Where are you?
It was faint, ephemeral, barely moving at all. He could almost sense its direction…

“The golem,” he whispered, turning to face the shackled figure. “It’s in the golem.”

A slow grin spread over his face.
It worked.
There was a slight flutter from the golem, faint as butterfly wings, and Clade began to laugh.
I did it. It worked. I’m free.

“See me!” Clade threw open his arms, gazing up at the golem’s distant yellow lamps. “I am no longer your eyes and ears. I am no longer your
plaything.
I am Clade Alsere, and I renounce you!”

His voice echoed around the chamber. Somewhere far away, Azador’s flutter settled into something else, something cooler. Clade nodded.

“You will come for me,” he said, pointing at the golem with his unmarred hand. “I know. But know this, Azador. You have an enemy. As you marshal your forces, I marshal mine. As you stretch out your hand, I seek to cut it off.
I am coming for you.
”

There was a pulse from Azador, thin and distant; then the faint presence lifted.

“It’s gone,” Eilwen whispered.

Clade turned away, his ruined hand dangling at his side. The space where Arandras had brought in the second golem was now empty. He walked to the doorway, peered into the chamber where the golems had been. The room was bare.

“He came back a couple of hours ago,” Eilwen said. “Led them out like the damn Kharjik Emperor.”

Clade nodded.

As you marshal your forces, I marshal mine.
He sighed.
What forces do I have? One good hand and an erratic part-time assassin with a limp. Look out, world.

Eilwen shifted behind him. “Did you mean what you said just then? About fighting back?”

“Yes,” Clade said. “I meant it.”

“Why?”

Because I was Oculus, once. True Oculus. An agent of restoration and renewal. And now we are corrupted, turned against our true purpose, and bent by Azador toward our own destruction.

Clade sighed again. There was no way to explain it. Not to someone like her.

He turned to face her. “You’ve felt it,” he said. “You know.”

She nodded. “It killed the
Orenda.
”

“It did.” Though if the reason were good, Clade would have killed the ship himself.

“Why?”

“Because it could. Because the ship had something it wanted.” Clade shrugged. “Does it matter?”

A pause. “I suppose not.”

He forced a smile. “Come,” he said. “There’s no reason to stay here any longer.”

She picked up the lamp, glancing over his shoulder at the shackled golem. “What about that?”

“It’s still bound to Arandras, I would think. But now also to Azador.” Frowning, he felt for his purse, loosening the clasp with his good hand and reaching awkwardly inside. Coins clinked and jangled as he dug beneath them; then the jagged edge of the shackle key brushed his finger and he nodded, satisfied.
Here you stay.

Eilwen flinched and raised her arm. “It’s back,” she said, her voice taut with strain.

Clade slung his bag over the shoulder of his ruined arm. He had nothing more to say. Turning, he extended his good hand to Eilwen and she accepted it with gratitude, leaning heavily against it. Somewhere far away, at the edge of his mind, Clade thought he heard a scream, or the echo of one: a sound of bitterness, and futility, and vast, unappeasable rage. He smiled.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Epilogue

The world is not as it should be. You know this to be true. Yet this is the only world you have ever seen, so whence comes this knowledge?

— Jeresani the Lesser

The boy slid his hand into the frigid water, shivering as he reached blindly for the concealed shelf and the row of sealed clay bottles.

“Come on!” Jon cast an anxious glance back at the collection of huts that made up their village. “Mother asked us to fetch them before mealtime!”

Noash ignored his brother. It was Jon’s fault they were late. Jon had insisted they stop at the mouth of the narrow inlet to skip rocks across the lake, an activity that provided the opportunity to show off his superior strength over his younger, smaller brother. Noash knew better than to try to dissuade him; defiance made Jon angry, and it might be days before he let it pass. Besides, Jon was the eldest, and their mother would hold him responsible for any delay.

His questing fingers closed around a fat clay neck and he drew forth the bottle of cow’s milk from its cool storage place, heaving it onto the grass at Jon’s feet.

“Now the other one,” Jon said. “Hurry!”

Noash returned his hand to the clear pool, setting his teeth against the chill; but as he did so he felt something stir out in the lake, the ripples of its motion reaching up the inlet and into the pool to brush against his fingers like an underwater shadow. He gasped, snatching his hand back and scrambling to his feet.

Jon gave him a startled look, then burst into laughter. “What happened? Fish nibble your finger?”

“No.” Noash gazed down the inlet at the vast, placid lake. The shore curved away behind a low rise that concealed the first of the cliffs away to the west. “Something’s coming,” he whispered.

“Mother will be coming if we don’t bring back her milk,” Jon said. “Fetch another one and we can — hey, where are you going? Hey!”

Noash darted away, heading for the rise that marked the edge of the village’s land, his brother’s shouts receding behind him. It was in the air, now: a hush, as though a hundred men all held their breath together.
Something’s coming.
He pushed himself up the hill, slowing as the ground steepened, until at last he reached the top, stumbling to a halt and looking out along the rocky shore.

Strangers trudged toward him, two light-brown men and a dark-skinned woman; and there, marching beside them, a giant made of stone and clay, walking with a sound like a millstone. Noash stared at the great, lumbering shape in amazement. It carried a fourth figure in its arms, holding it close like a mother cradling its child.

The woman nudged the man beside her, the one with the beard, and pointed directly at Noash. Terror closed over his heart. He turned and ran, pelting down the hill and toward the village as fast as his feet would take him.

Jon stood by the pool, shaking his arm dry, a pair of clay bottles on the grass beside him. He glanced up at Noash’s approach and scowled. “Mother’s going to be so angry when I tell her what you did.”

“Strangers,” Noash gasped, sprinting past his brother and on to the village. His father spent each morning out on the lake, catching the fish that fed them all, but he would be in by now, cleaning his catch, or maybe mending nets. Noash craned his neck as he ran, searching for a glimpse of his father’s shaggy head.
There, by the boats.
He veered toward the shore, calling out and waving his arms. “Father!”

His father looked up, dropping the net and coming out to meet him. “Noash? What is it, son?” He crouched, reaching out his great arms, and Noash was swept into their embrace, burying his head in his father’s chest. Then the hands took hold of his thin shoulders, pulling him away, and his father put a finger under Noash’s chin, lifting his gaze. “What’s wrong?”

“Strangers,” Noash said, panting so hard he almost couldn’t talk. “Three of them, or maybe four, coming along the shore. And they have a giant made of stone!”

“A giant, you say?” His father gave him a grave look. “How big would you say it was?”

“As tall as our hut, at least,” Noash said. “And it made a noise like the stone Uncle Goloth uses to sharpen his big knife.” His father nodded, the corner of his mouth quirking in a smile, and Noash gave a frustrated cry, beating his hands ineffectually against his father’s chest. “It’s true, father! I saw it!”

“I’m sure you did, son,” his father said in that familiar, hated tone which meant exactly the opposite. He stood, resting his hand on Noash’s head and tousling his hair. “Look, there they are now.”

The four strangers stood at the top of the hill, one leaning heavily against a companion. Two were dressed in what looked like the same clothes, grey-black and earthy brown. The tall woman and the bearded man conferred, then seemed to come to a decision. At a signal from the man, the group began the descent toward the village.

There was no sign of the giant.

Noash stared with a mixture of relief and dismay, unable to understand what had happened. “It was there! I know it was!”

“All right, son.” One of the other men caught his father’s eye, and he nodded. “You run along now and find out if your mother has anything she needs done. We’ll go talk to the strangers.”

His father gave him a last tousle and moved away, heading out with Uncle Goloth and Old Rob to meet the strangers just beyond the first huts. Noash watched long enough to see them clasp hands, Uncle Goloth greeting them with his usual uncertain grin, his father exchanging a slight nod with Old Rob before turning and gesturing to the village.

“There was a giant,” Noash muttered as he walked away, remembering the sound it had made as it moved, the way it turned its head back and forth as though examining the ground before it. “There was. I saw it.”

When Noash looked up, he found that his feet had taken him back to the mouth of the inlet that led to the pool.
The pool.
He glanced along the narrow channel to the place where the villagers stored things that needed to stay cold.
That’s where I felt it first. In the water.

He looked out at the lake, then down at the clear water before him. A soft breeze stirred its surface, the gentle motion of the water throwing patterns of sunlight over the rocks below. Noash lowered himself onto the grassy bank, lying on his stomach with his head sticking out over the water. A grey fish no bigger than his finger drifted into sight below, then darted away with a swish of its tail. Clenching his teeth, he stretched out his hand and plunged it into the icy channel.

The sensation came stronger this time, thicker, as though he reached not into water but some other, more syrupy liquid. A thrill ran down his spine.
There’s more than just one.
They were moving together, purposeful in their advance. Some might even have been speaking.
A lot more.

Hundreds.

He sat up, shivering, wiping his hand dry on the grass. Hundreds of ghosts, all trapped in the bodies of giants; and all of them were out there, somewhere, beneath the surface of the lake.

A shadow fell across his lap. “Father’s taking the strangers across the lake,” Jon announced. “They wanted to go to Lissil, but Father said that was too far, so they decided to just go straight across.”

Noash glanced up. “Is there to be a banquet tonight, then?”

Jon shook his head. “They’re leaving right away. One of them’s really sick, and they think she might die if they don’t get help soon.”

Noash looked back toward the boats. His father was already there, preparing his small craft for launch.

Jon flopped down onto the grass beside him. “Oh, and Mother’s mad.”

“They have ghosts trapped in giants of stone,” Noash said, hugging his knees to his chest. “Out there, where the water’s deep enough to cover them.”

Jon gave a solemn nod. He always took Noash’s pronouncements seriously, ever since the night Noash woke him to tell him their grandmother was saying goodbye before anyone knew she had died. “Who do you think they were?”

Noash shrugged. “I don’t know. Just strangers.”

“Not the strangers. The ghosts. Back when they were still alive.”

Noash recalled the sense of purpose he’d felt in their movements. “Soldiers, maybe,” he said. But there was something different about these ghosts, something unusual in the way they felt. Ghosts were usually sad, or angry, or upset about something, and they never seemed to stay very long. The giants had a feeling of calm about them; a still, settled patience.
Almost as if…

He gazed out over the lake and gave voice to his thought, the words little more than a whisper. “I don’t think they ever died.”