Banner of souls (37 page)

Elaki frowned. Yskatarina rushed to the balustrade and looked down. Dreams-of-War's spinning shape was al-ready as small as a broken doll. No one could survive such a drop, unarmored.

"Get down there!" Elaki shook a nearby excissiere by the shoulder. "I want you to make sure she dies."

"The haunt-engine is running, Aunt." Yskatarina has-tened to distract Elaki's attention from the Animus's fail-ure.

"I can see that." Elaki grasped her firmly by the arm and led her through to the window. Yskatarina looked out across the plain. From the banks of the Grand Channel onward, the Sown were rising from the ground, rank upon rank. She could see the great armored heads moving from side to side, the tight multiple limbs, similar to those of the Animus but more massive, beginning to unfold. Far on the horizon, a line was crawling.

"They march on Winterstrike and the spaceports," the Matriarch said. She gestured upward. The Chain glinted. "It opens. For Earth."

Mars

Dreams-of-War had had little thought of anything other than escape, but on the long way down, it struck her forcibly that this had not been the best way to go about it. The round circle that was the hall of the Memnos Tower was growing with terrifying speed. Dreams-of-War flung out an arm, grabbing at one of the lower balustrades. Her hand slipped, then held, with a wrench that came close to pulling her arm from its socket. Dreams-of-War hauled herself over the balustrade, to stand on a lower landing.

Two storys above, she caught a glimpse of Embar Khairs armor, moving swiftly downward amid a flock of spirits.

"Armor!" Dreams-of-War cried. She struggled up the stairs to meet it. "Wait!"

The armor's face worked; it reached out a tentative hand toward her—but then it was turning away and walking on, called by the lure of the haunt-engine. Higher up the stairwell, she could hear pounding feet: the excissieres, presumably. Dreams-of-War ducked through a door, flinging it closed behind her. It was a warriors chamber. A battlesword hung on the wall; Dreams-of-War seized it. Behind her, the door was kicked open. Yskatarina stood in the entrance, the Animus at her shoulder.

"I have decided to finish you myself," Yskatarina said. She drew a long knife from her belt. The Animus soared up to float above them in the chamber.

"You are a half-person," Dreams-of-War said with de-liberate scorn. "What harm can you do me?"

Yskatarina grinned. "You might be surprised."

She charged. Dreams-of-War swung the sword in an arc, but Yskatarina easily dodged out of the way. Her speed turned her into a blur. Dreams-of-War once more lashed out; again, Yskatarina was not where she had been, but already across the other side of the chamber. A long bloody slash had appeared across Dreams-of-War's breast, from a knife so sharp that she had barely felt it. She wheeled around.

Yskatarina stood at her shoulder. Dreams-of-War looked into her eyes and thought: She is
quite mad
.

"A half-person?" Yskatarina said softly. "Then what does that make
you?

Dreams-of-War lunged. Yskatarina was away and turn-ing. Again, a wound appeared, this time along Dreams-of-War's forearm. She feinted, struck, feinted again, and skewered Yskatarina through the shoulder. Yskatarina, hissing, pulled away. Dreams-of-War looked down to see an oozing hole beneath her underharness, where Yskatarina's blade had entered.

"My aunt has offered me a bargain," Yskatarina said in conversational tones. "If I kill you, she will let the Animus live."

"This is foolish." Dreams-of-War spoke through gritted teeth. "You do not trust her. Your creature told me so."

Yskatarina grinned again. "I did not believe her, and neither did my Animus. I kill you because I want to." She lunged. Dreams-of-War twisted away and threw the sword upward with all her strength. Black, sticky rain spattered downward. Yskatarina shrieked, an eerie, unhuman cry. The Animus made no sound. It spun, then crashed to the floor where it lay twitching. The sword had pierced its exoskeleton, where a heart should be. Ire-palm flickered wanly across the floor.

Yskatarina fell to her knees. Dreams-of-War kicked her hard in the jaw; she fell, sprawling, but next mo-ment, with a whine of mechanisms, she was once more standing. The Martian grasped the knife by the blade and twisted it from Yskatarina's hands. Yskatarina turned, but the knife tore through her breast.

A torrent of blood gushed forth. Yskatarina, however, was still upright. She swung to face Dreams-of-War. Her eyes were welling up, and at first, bewildered, Dreams-of-War thought that she wept. But it was the glitter of a blacklight matrix that filled Yskatarina's gaze. The blood still fountained from her breast; one hand reached upward, groping, and sealed off the wound.

"We are not so easy to kill," the Animus said from the floor, with a hiss that might have been a laugh.

And it seemed to Dreams-of-War that the voice was no longer the artificially modulated tones of the Animus itself, but Yskatarina's own.

"Animus?" Yskatarina faltered. Her voice was a rasping murmur. Something was uncoiling behind her eyes. "I re-member—"

"I, too," the Animus whispered. "You and I are one."

"What?" Dreams-of-War snarled, but she was be-ginning to suspect that she already knew. "You're both Kami, aren't you? The vanguard. And so is that aunt of yours."

Yskatarina, eyes full of blacklight, metal hand seal-ing the gaping wound in her chest, spoke with diffi-culty.

"I remember… At last, I remember. Elaki brought me back. Do you know what it is like, to cling to the walls of a world, ethereal, incorporeal, with the Eldritch Realm waiting only a moment away? Our ancestors betrayed us. When they strove for the mind-body separation, they thought to liberate us from the flesh. They sought to make us immortal. Instead, they turned us into liv-ing ghosts with only the dark to cling to. I sought true death, for all of us. Elaki, as she was then, disagreed. She fled back, to possess the woman who summoned her."

"But you and the Animus—you're the same soul?"

Blood oozed between Yskatarina's metal fingers; she tottered.
Surely
, Dreams-of-War thought,
she
cannot stand for much longer, reanimated or not. Give her a moment, then strike, and we'll see
who is far from the Eldritch Realm then
.

"She split me," Yskatarina said. She fell to her knees. "We were old rivals, in the realms of the last night. When she summoned a Kami to possess her niece, she brought me back, and only then knew me for an enemy. She could not kill me, for then her niece's body would die also, but more important, it would serve nothing—I would flee back to the Eldritch Realm and plot against her. So she separated me, sent me deep into this body's mind and that of the Animus, kept me separate, so that I would be pow-erful and yet under her control." The bitterness was pal-pable.

"No wonder you hate her," Dreams-of-War said.

"No wonder." She thought Yskatarina might have tried to laugh.

"And what is Lunae to you?"

"Lunae is the enemy of all of us," the Animus said, for Yskatarina's voice was now no more than a husk. It crawled to its mistress, its other self, and curled around her as she sank to the floor.

"But if you hate Elaki—"

"I want to bring my people here, then send them into the Realm," the Animus said, and Yskatarina's mouth moved in a silent echo. Dreams-of-War was reminded of the Grandmothers, and filed that thought away for later. "But I've no love for you or your kind. I will not help you, if that's what you are hinting."

"I never hint," Dreams-of-War said. "I do not agree with the prospect of bringing the Kami here. I do not be-lieve you. And your ability to help anyone is in serious question." She looked down at them.

Yskatarina knelt on metal legs, hand still clutching at her breast, and the blood pooling with the dark ichor of the Animus. If she struck off their heads—but would that make any difference to a reanimated far-future ghost? And Yskatarina was, at least, giving her answers…

But Dreams-of-War did not believe in either intrigue or mercy. She sliced through the throats of both Yskatarina and the Animus, severing nerve and sinew.

There was a bolt-bow hanging on the chamber wall. She took that, too. Then she strode through the door of the chamber, locking it behind her. Later, she thought, she would come back and check that they stayed slain. Once she had dealt with Elaki.

The gaezelles moved swiftly Lunae was soon out of breath and stumbling to keep up. The hard Martian ground beneath her feet was uneven, strewn with boulders and stones. The herd flowed smoothly around ancient pits and craters, up and down the hills and hollows of the plain. Lunae, panting, could see the Memnos Tower in the double moonlight. Its summit was a blaze of light, casting the crawling shadows of the plain into sharp relief.

"Those are more of the Sown," Lunae gasped.

"We have to head for the canal," Essa said.

"Why?"

"Look at the ground. There."

Lunae did so. A little way ahead, the earth was broken into long, regular furrows.

"They've risen from here," she whispered.

"And they may not have finished rising. If another phalanx rises up and finds us in their midst… We must reach the canal. The banks, at least, will be safe from the emerging Sown. But not from excissieres."

"Do you have weapons?"

"The gaezelles will distract them." The horned woman spoke serenely enough, but Lunae remembered the havoc wreaked by the awt, and grew cold.

A short time later, they reached the banks of the canal. It was as Lunae remembered it: flowing slow as oil be-tween the high ridges. The hooves of the gaezelles clat-tered on worn, ancient stone, but it was easier to run. Lunae was, however, having to pause more frequently for breath. She felt like the kappa, permanently wheezing— and what had happened to the nurse? To Dreams-of-War? She took a deep breath and carried on. The profile of the Memnos Tower became sharper in the growing gray light. Dawn was not far away.

The gaezelles slowed and paused as they came to the gates of the lock. They had met no excissieres, no resis-tance along the banks of the canal, and now Lunae could see why. The Sown filled the plain before the Tower of Memnos. She could not have slipped a blade between them. They stood with their skull-faces turned to the blaze at the summit of the Tower. Lunae could not tell what was causing the light; it did not look natural. It was filled with sparks and dark spaces, which seemed somehow solid.

"What is that?"

"Haunt-tech," Essa said. To Lunae's dismay, she seemed to be growing fainter. Her voice was a murmur on the wind and the ranks of the Sown were visible through her body. The gaezelles, too, were growing less clearly delin-eated. Their flesh was filled with shadows, their eyes with light. They whispered among themselves in palpable dismay

"What's happening?" Lunae asked, but the horned woman was now no more than a shade, and the gaezelles themselves were twisting into spirals of pale and red, like colored smoke.

"Lunae, I—" Essa said, and was gone.

The smoke drifted up into the air and was sucked in the direction of the Tower. Lunae stood, staring at the ranks of the Sown in dismay. Then there was a rattle of rock and another phalanx sprang out of the soil.

It's feeding from them
, Lunae thought.
The Tower has taken the gaezelles, used the energy to
feed the Sown
.

"Essa?" she whispered, but there was no reply.

The new phalanx lay behind her. If they spotted her, then her only means of escape would be the canal or a time shift, and she was afraid of what the latter might bring. The only thing to do was to go on.

Lunae slipped into the shadows beneath the bank and continued walking swiftly toward the Tower.

Mars

The moment Dreams-of-War stepped through the door, she was forced to dodge back again behind a column. The El-der Elaki and the Matriarch were coming down the stairs, surrounded by excissieres.

Dreams-of-War waited until they had passed, then followed.

Avoiding the main staircase, she took the side stairs that led down the Tower.
There must be a way
actually to kill these things
, she thought as she ran. Her limbs ached, the war-whip weal across her shoulders stung and burned, and the edges of her numerous cuts were starting to fray once more with blood.

Yskatarina had implied that the Kami were only a mo-ment away from the Eldritch Realm, and if they could be dispatched there, they would need to be summoned back again through a haunt-tech interface before they could re-turn. But how to slay them? If they were living ghosts, in-habiting flesh as one might put on a suit of clothes—or was it that simple? She thought of the faces trapped in the cellars of the Mission, of the possessed woman in the meat market. How connected were the Kami to their borrowed bodies? Could the tie be severed voluntarily? If she was simply to kill Elaki, strike off her head from behind, what would the inhabiting consciousness be capable of once it was released into the air?

Anything? Nothing? Could they move from body to body?
Useless to theorize
, Dreams-of-War decided as she reached the small door that led into the main hallway
Just kill as many as you can and
see what happens
.

She paused before the door, placing an ear to it to lis-ten. If she had been in possession of the armor—but Embar Khair's battledress was marching down to the basement, drawn by the magnet of the haunt-engine. Cau-tiously, she opened the door. The hallway was empty. But she could hear voices and the strike of metal-shod feet on stone. Once again, Dreams-of-War went in pursuit.

At the bottom of the basement steps, before the begin-ning of the weir-wards that marked the entrance to the holding cells, she caught up with Elaki's entourage. The excissieres were massed at the back of the hallway: a solid phalanx of bristling armor and clattering weapons. Ahead stood Elaki and the Matriarch. They were standing before a set of iron doors, some twenty feet or more in height. These led to the labyrinth of passages that ran beneath the Crater Plain. But before the passages lay a cavern.