Blood Betrayal Page 26

  “Then do it, and come back to me. I’ll wait. I’ll wait here.”

  “And who will protect Rumedia? Who will keep Zheng or Dahk from interfering with the world again?”

  “It’s not your responsibility!” she cried at him.

  “But it is,” he argued softly. “You helped remind me of that after I retreated from everyone and everything. Remember?”

  Dropping his hands from her tear streaked cheeks, he took hers and held them tightly as he leaned in for another kiss, this one so tenderly bittersweet that they were both loathe to break it. They continued to hold hands as Cor stepped backward, their arms stretching to allow them to maintain contact. Only their fingertips still touched when Cor dropped into the Chronicler’s chair, the final motion separating them once and for all.

  Paul Chen’s vision faded to black as he heard the whirring and hums of the machines that would make Lord Dahken Cor Pelson the Chronicler of Rumedia.

  Cor Pelson, Chronicler

  No stranger to pain, Cor had felt no stranger pains than those the chair inflicted upon him. He had some idea what to expect, just from observing where Paul had been connected to the thing, but surprises still came. The burning on the back of his head, the smell of burnt hair and flesh and the blazing hot boring sensation that followed was one of those. It hurt dreadfully, but oddly, he didn’t really feel it at the same time. It was almost as if the pain was there, but something prevented his brain from really perceiving it.

  Everything was black, pure darkness except when he opened his eyes to behold the bizarre, circular metal room. He couldn’t turn his head, but he could just barely see the body of Paul in his peripheral vision. Cor suddenly felt like a lost child looking for a parent, panic at the enormity of things he didn’t understand bearing down upon him.

  “I am here,” said a voice, Paul’s. “Don’t worry. I’ll show you everything you need to know. It’ll only take a few minutes. Come here.” The voice was in his head, not something he actually heard with his physical ears; those heard no sound except those peculiar noises still made by the chair as it finished its work.

  Cor felt a tugging at his very being, and he allowed it to take him where it willed. He found himself in a cramped room only about seven foot square, apparently made almost entirely out of metal. Lights such as those that lit the room his body sat in burned overhead, and to his right was a mirror and a basin set into the wall. On the wall directly in front of him was a wide shelf, upon which appeared to set a mattress, and underneath that a young man sat upon a chair that appeared permanently fixed to the floor. He had the dark hair, skin tone and facial features of a Tigolean, but they were diffused somehow. He wore a single piece of dark blue clothing, perhaps made of canvas that covered him from his head to his feet where it was tucked into black boots of an unfamiliar design.

  “Paul?” Cor asked, hopefully.

  “Yep.”

  “You look much younger.”

  “Yeah, this is what we call a residual mental image,” Paul replied, and seeing the apparent lack of comprehension in Cor’s eyes, he elaborated, “This is what I look like in my own mind.”

  “Is that where I am now? In your mind?”

  “Sort of. These vaults the gods exist in, well they’re nothing more than storage drives in a computer, living minds taking up hard drive space. This place is, was my quarters on my ship, Herbert Walker.”

  Cor, “I don’t understand your words.”

  Paul, “It doesn’t really matter. Maybe one day you will, and I’ll always be here to help you, at least until my data decays. Until I go crazy.”

  “You asked me to allow your friend to come retrieve you. Did you mean your body?” Cor asked.

  “Yes and no,” Paul answered with a momentary head tilt. “You won’t understand what I say next, either, but I hope she downloads me. You see, Cor, what you’re talking to right now is actually just a copy of Paul Chen’s mind. I’m not Paul Chen. He died right there on the floor. I think I’m Paul Chen, but I’m just a duplicate.”

  “If she comes for you, does that mean you’ll be gone from here?”

  “No, at least, I don’t think so. She’ll make another copy. I’ll be here to help you for a long time, Cor, long enough for you to figure everything out. I’ll be here until I finally start to go crazy.”

  “Is that what happened to the others? The gods?”

  “Yes,” Paul confirmed with a nod. “It’s called data decay. Over time, their storage essentially went bad, and they began to lose the older parts of themselves. So, they forgot who they really are. Were.”

  “You were right,” Cor said to an inquisitive look from Paul. “I really don’t understand.”

  “It’s okay. Are you ready? Is she gone?” Paul asked.

  Cor opened his eyes, dispelling the illusion of Paul Chen and his room, to find Thyss’ head in his lap as she wept softly. His head restrained, he could only just see the edge of her golden hair, and the front of his breeches were damp from her tears. To him, it had only been minutes, maybe even seconds since the Chronicler’s chair did its work to him, but somehow, he knew hours passed for her. His right arm was immobile, attached to the chair by a clear cord or tube that stabbed into it, but his left was free. He reached down and gently stroked her hair.

  “I’m not leaving. I’m going to die right here,” she muttered.

  “Then what I’ve done is for naught.”

  “I don’t even know how to get out of here.”

  Cor listened to the voice in his head a moment before answering, “If you go back the way we came, back to the same door, the panel on the wall next to it will have something glowing red. Press it, and the door will open. Go inside, press it again on the inside. The door will close again, the room will fill with water, and then the exterior door will open into the sea.”

  “I don’t want to go,” she said, looking up at him.

  “I don’t want you to,” Cor replied with a warm smile, “but we both know you’re stronger than that.”

  I’m sorry, can we begin? asked Paul’s voice from the dark recesses of Cor’s mind.

  “I have to go now. I love you, I always have, and I always will. I’ll be watching over you, I promise. Goodbye,” he said to her, though she did not turn her face to his, and to the voice he replied, Yes.

  The assault on his senses threatened to make Cor cry out in a mix of burning pain and terror, as sights and sounds across Rumedia burst through the darkness like the brightest of the morning’s rays when a black curtain is retracted. He saw everything and all at once – Thyss as she continued to kneel before him, Keth and the Dahken holed up in some seaside inn, Tigoleans, Northmen, Westerners, sailors, farmers, and merchants, golden and brown skinned people in Dulkur, creatures, insects, bears and fish. It went on and on and on, and Cor felt a pressure build in his head, a terrible pain as if someone drove a spike into the middle of his skull from above. He knew that, in the chair in which he would one day eventually die, his body had gone rigid as he gripped its steel arms.

  “It’s a lot at first,” Paul said, placing a knowing and comforting hand on the Dahken’s shoulder.

  They stood in a room without walls or ceiling, limitless black extending in all directions. At the same time, a vortex of lives, a whirlwind of colors and images of people living and dying across Rumedia swirled around them crazily. Cor stood in the center of it, grasping at his head with both hands, the power of it all threatening to drive him to his knees.

  “Pick just one thing,” Paul said, “and focus on that.”

  “I… can’t. It’s too much.”

  “I understand, but I know you can,” Paul reassured. “This world has seen its share of Chroniclers that were definitely weaker minded than you. You can do this. Choose one image out of the world, just one. Pick one person, one happening and watch him or her.”

  After a moment the cyclone slowed, the crazy amalgamation of colorful sound and loud visions lost power and began to dissipate. The image
s of different people from across the world winked out of existence one by one, eventually leaving Cor with just one. He’d had a dream once, maybe twice, where he saw himself dreaming, as if he floated above his body while it lay in bed, and this reminded him of that, so completely, that he couldn’t help wondering if the entire affair was in fact one long, horrific nightmare. He stood, or at least it felt like he stood, in a great circular room made of metal, lit with low, but pure white light. He watched as Thyss knelt in the center of the room before a diabolic throne upon which sat himself, king of all and nothing at once.

  “You need to practice. You’ll learn to watch multiple things at once, eventually to watch everything at once,” Paul explained from behind him. “The more you do it, the easier it’ll be.”

  Cor watched, for how long he wasn’t sure, as Thyss finally lifted herself to her feet, and he swore he could almost feel the pressure of her head on his legs disappear. A momentary panic struck him as he realized that it was likely the last time he would see her in person, the last time he would ever feel her touch. He wanted to call her back, to disentangle himself from the Chronicler’s chair and responsibilities, but he knew it was too late. He had weeks to come up with another plan, another way of defeating Cor’El, and nothing had come to mind.

  “Make it quick,” Thyss called out, apparently to the ceiling, just before she left the corridor for the terrible room he now knew was called an airlock.

  Once Thyss joined with the sea, Cor very carefully began to search through the world for the next person to enjoy his observation. A tendril of cloud made its way south and east across East Aquis, ignoring the other clouds and prevailing winds that did everything to blow toward the west. The going looked slow, tedious and tiring, which would seem odd as the journey was endured by vapor, but with the Chronicler’s powers at his command, Cor recognized his son even in this form.

  Cor watched tensely for hours, until it became obvious that despite how quickly Cor’El seemed to move, he was still at least days from reaching Thyss or the Dahken, and as impressive as his power was to cross the miles so easily in this form, even he would need to stop to rest sooner or later. The sun overhead crossed the sky, slowly moving toward the horizon. Cor’El pushed on as an early autumn evening set in, clearly urged by a need that Cor was afraid he understood all too well. But as the sun fell below the horizon and the air cooled substantially, the wisp of cloud seemed to flag and lose the strength to go on. Eventually each mile, a distance that previously only took him about a one hundred count, turned into an arduous challenge, and the cloud Cor’El descended toward the ground.

  Cor would even swear that he saw his son’s form emerge from the cloud when it was still yet a few feet off the ground. He wondered how long Cor’El had been pushing himself in such a way, for the boy was asleep as soon as his face touched the soft, mossy dirt underneath. He lay in a clearing, no more than fifty feet across, surrounded by a dense forest of oaks, pines and elms, the babble of a stream somewhere in the background with its chorus of frogs. The place was loud with these sounds as well as those of any number of insects and larger animals moving through the foliage, but nothing bothered the sleeping emperor.

  How did I come to this? Cor thought. What did I do wrong?

  He wanted to reach out and brush away the dirt from his son’s face, push back the golden hair that had fallen over his eyes, hair the exact color and texture of his mother’s. As just a baby, this boy had saved his mother from a certain and terrible death. He’d sensed what was happening and used healing powers passed down by Garod to save her. He was the same baby that Cor used to watch garner so much glee from pounding his fists on Cor’s empty helm. He had been full of joy and promise, but at some point, a melancholy or darkness had come over him. Had Dahk encouraged it, or even created it somehow? Cor forced himself to believe so, because anything else would mean facing his failure as a father.

  Within minutes of his face touching the ground, the young man’s eyes rolled back and forth quickly, something Cor had seen in the past when he watched people sleep. It seemed to happen while they dreamed, for sometimes they spoke unintelligible words or flailed about as they did. After perhaps an hour of this, Cor’El’s eyes stopped and he fell into a deep, unmoving sleep, his snores adding to the cacophony of the forest at night. Cor continued to watch him, perhaps for hours as the moon and stars moved across the sky, as he was completely unwilling to do anything that may break the boy’s repose. He felt paralyzed into inaction, for he finally faced the hard truth of murdering his own son, the only child he had ever and would ever have.

  It was only the memory of Thyss’ naked, shuddering frame sobbing against him in a dead king’s bedroom in Byrverus that finally broke the spell. When it was done, snoring no longer serenaded the surrounding trees as a pool of blood slowly seeped into the moss covered ground.

  Denouement

  Thyss

  Thyss broke through the surface with a gasp of cool air, having turned herself back from a watery form just moments before. She looked about in all directions and cursed all Tigoleans because the ship was no longer there. The sun had dropped low in the sky, the air cooling, and she knew she needed to make it to dry land soon. With what strength she still retained, for she had used much this day, she rose from the ocean waters to join with the air currents above. She allowed herself to be blown west, to the shore of what once was Losz. She spent no time looking for civilization, but instead regained her human form, completely nude, on some rolling hills about a mile inland.

  There she slept, shivering in the deepest part of the night, until autumn sunlight warmed her flesh the next morning. She sat on a hilltop with her arms wrapped around bent legs and stared out toward the distant sea as the sun and her own strength burned off the cold morning dew. She simply stared, her mind blank, as she dared not face what she knew had to have happened by now, what she hoped happened. The longer she sat, listening to the calls of the gulls nearby, the more she realized she just couldn’t…

  Thyss climbed to her feet and stretched, feeling the sun upon her face and breasts, and an idle hand settled just under her navel for only a moment. She saw nothing and no one in the distance, except obnoxious birds that did nothing but eat and shit for their entire existence. She lifted her arms above her head, stretching them to the sky, and she felt the wind in her hair as she blew away to join the currents.

  Perhaps in time the lazy white clouds above, ponderously trekking across the skies, could teach her how to find peace.

  Ja’Na

  The aged Tigolean, approaching a hundred years by any calendar, awoke with a start, almost as if someone had whispered his name into his ear. He looked around, finding himself alone in bed in the dirty seaside inn where they had parted ways with Lord Dahken Cor Pelson and his consort, the dangerous Thyss. He’d spent the better part of a day, with Lurana’s help, scrubbing and washing his room to make it somewhat hospitable. The little girl slept soundly, nestled deeply in a pile of pillows on the floor that he had appropriated for that explicit use.

  He pushed himself up onto his elbows, a difficult task when one combined his advanced age with the under full straw mattress, as he continued to look about, pale moonlight just barely filtering in through the unshuttered window. Something twinged in Ja’Na’s gut, a slight pinch in the pit of his stomach, and he knew why he was now awake in the middle of the night.

  He managed to get his legs over the side of the bed and onto the rough, unfinished wood floor and fumbled about to light a candle that he knew was somewhere on a bedside table. Finally accomplishing that simple task with such agonizing slowness, he jauntily stepped over to his belongings that were piled in the corner of the room, struggling to find something with which to write. That was not the end however, for he needed parchment, and the longer he held off the Chronicler’s hand, the more the sickening cramps spread through his abdomen. Finally, he found a blank piece of rolled parchment, and had barely managed to hold it flat before the charcoal pen
cil in his hand started to write upon it frantically.

  It was the shortest connection Ja’Na had ever made with the Chronicler, lasting perhaps only a couple of minutes, and when it was done, he stared in wide eyed wonder at what he had written. The Tigolean had been a conduit of the Chronicler for almost his entire life, a fact that evoked both fear and fascination from those around him, but always he had written out stories, both short and great epics, that the Chronicler had shown him so that all in Rumedia would know the history. Only with the most recent Chronicler, as Ja’Na was somewhat aware of the change, had ever a message been directly conveyed through him, and this was the second time in just the last couple of months.

  And somehow, he knew that the Chronicler that now reached out to him was unlike any others that had come before him.

  The message read, “It is done. Tell everyone they’re safe, that Rumedia is safe. Tell Keth that he’s Lord Dahken now. Tell him we need to rebuild Aquis, try again to make it what King Rederick and I thought it could be. Tell Lurana that I’m sorry, that her mother and father were two of the bravest people I’ve ever known, maybe when she’s older. If you see Thyss, let her know that I’ll always watch her, and I’ll always love her. I hope one day her scars will finally heal.”

  Ja’Na read the messages several times over before opening the door to his room. Barefoot and wearing nothing but a simple white shift, he padded a few feet down to the room he knew Keth occupied, and he bent over to carefully slide the parchment through the tiny space between the door and the floor. As he stood again to begin the trek back to his own room, the hallway seemed to tilt to the left, and he used his free hand to reach out and touch the wall to keep him upright. His arms began to feel heavy, his legs slow as if each step were a battle with quicksand. By the time he made it back to his bed, he could barely hold the candlestick. He set it heavily on the bedside table and pinched the flame out between his thumb and forefinger.