Deathstalker Return (40 page)

“Deathstalker! A Deathstalker has come to us! See the ring, the ring . . . It is the prophecy!”

And from all around came distorted voices, saying
Deathstalker
and
prophecy,
like a great murmuring chorus. Still saying the words, over and over, the monsters knelt to Lewis, or crouched down if they could not kneel, or at least bowed their great heads to him, saying his name, their gleaming eyes fixed on the black-gold Deathstalker ring on his finger. Lewis lowered his sword and his gun, honestly at a loss for anything to say.

“You know, I used to have to sing three arias and an encore to get a reaction like that,” said Jesamine. She leaned wearily against Lewis, and he put an arm around her. “What the hell is going on here, Lewis? Why aren’t they trying to kill us anymore? And how do they know what a Deathstalker is, let alone recognize the ring? Do they think you’re Owen?”

“I don’t think so,” said Lewis. “That one there said
a
Deathstalker had come. Like they’d been expecting one. Still, as long as it stops the fighting, I’m not complaining. And don’t you say a word, Rose, I am not in the mood.” He put away his sword and his gun, and turned off his force shield. The monsters watched him silently, eyes glittering. Lewis addressed the one who’d spoken first. “I’m Lewis Deathstalker. Descendant of Owen. Uh . . . you can all get up now. If you want.”

The monsters rose up, but held their places. They looked at Lewis expectantly, as though waiting for something. Finally the albino creature cocked its long head unnaturally far to one side, and forced more words out of its misshapen mouth. “You are surprised that we can speak, Deathstalker. That we can reason. We were not always monsters. We are the Empire’s droppings, its rejects, its discards. It was long ago, but some of us still remember what it was like to be human. Some of us were taken and altered in the laboratories of Shub; others were the subjects of experiments by Lionstone’s scientists. Some of us remember Silo Nine and Wormboy Hell. They all did their work well—so well that we live on and on, even though many of us would rather die than be what they made us. The only hope we have ever had is you, Deathstalker; that one of your Clan would come here, bearing the ring, to be our savior. Will you permit us to escort you to our city?”

“Jesus,” said Jesamine. “You’ve got a city?”

“Yes,” said the albino, trying something that might have been a smile. “We’re not monsters all the time.”

“All right,” said Lewis. “Let’s see how much weirder this planet can get. Do you guarantee our safety, my own and all my companions’?”

“Of course. You are the Deathstalker.”

“Do you think we can trust it?” Jesamine murmured in Lewis’s ear.

“Do we have a choice? Not a word, Rose.” Lewis bowed to the albino. “Lead the way, Sir . . . Do you have a name?”

“Yes,” said the albino. “But we have all sworn never to use our old names until we are made human again. And you couldn’t pronounce what they call me now. This way.”

“Hold everything,” said Rose. “Where’s Brett?”

They all looked around them. Rose moved away to check among the bodies of the fallen. Jesamine tugged surreptitiously at Lewis’s arm to get his attention, and then murmured in his ear.

“These creatures expect to be made human again? They were dumped here because nothing could be done for them. What do they expect you to do?”

“I don’t know,” Lewis said quietly. “And all this talk of a prophecy worries me. I’m no one’s savior.”

“He’s not here,” said Rose, coming back to join them. “But he’s not dead. I would have felt it, if he’d been killed.” She looked slowly around her, and then pointed positively at the clearing they’d come from. “He’s hiding. Poor Brett. He’s always hiding.”

She went back into the clearing to look for him. Lewis and the others stayed where they were, because the monsters got visibly restless at the thought of their Deathstalker going away again. Rose walked slowly into the clearing, turning her head back and forth as though listening for something only she could hear. She and Brett were linked, mind to mind, now and forever, and even his esp compulsion couldn’t hide him from her. She found him, huddled inside the stinking guts of a dead monster. She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him out. He tried to resist her, howling miserably, but he was no match for her strength. She sat him down with his back against the carcass, and mopped the blood from his face with the rag she usually used to clean her sword. He finally recognized who she was, and then he burst into fresh tears, throwing his arms around her and holding her tightly to him. Rose let him, holding herself still. He put his tired head on her leathered shoulder, exhausted by fighting and panic and tears, and she slowly put an arm around him, to support his weight.

“I don’t belong here,” Brett said wretchedly into her shoulder. “I’m not a hero, not a fighter. I’m not up to this. And I lost my sword.”

“We’ll get you another one,” said Rose. She wasn’t used to offering comfort, but she did her best. She thought she understood the concept now, even if she never felt the need for it herself. She wouldn’t have done it for anyone else, but Brett . . . was different. She patted him tentatively on the shoulder, and even rocked him a little. “You stick close to me, Brett. As long as you’re with me, you’ll be fine.”

His tears dried away into sniffles, and she got him back on his feet again. She tugged at his clothes here and there, trying to tidy him up, and then gave it up as a bad job. Brett had a hard time looking presentable even under the best of circumstances. She led him back to the others, who were politely pleased to see he was all right. No one said anything about his running off and leaving them. This was Brett, after all.

“Interesting new smell you’ve brought back with you,” said Jesamine. “If it was any stronger you’d have to have it on a leash.”

Brett ignored her, looking glumly about him at the watching monsters. “Am I to assume we’re all chums now? And they don’t mind about all their fellow nasties we blew up, shot the shit out of, and generally sliced to pieces?”

“This is Shandrakor,” said the albino. “Everything dies here.”

“I want to go home,” said Brett.

Everyone took turns to explain the situation to him, and then again more slowly when he refused to believe it, and then finally they all set off towards whatever monsters considered a city. They made fairly quick progress through the jungle, the larger creatures going on ahead to spread the word and break open new trail where necessary. The four humans huddled together, followed by Saturday, and tried not to react to the growing number of creatures surrounding them. Word—or something very like it—passed rapidly through the monster population, and it seemed like every living thing in the jungle had come to witness the arrival of the prophecied Deathstalker. Jesamine tried to make a joke about whether they were inviting the humans to dinner, or to be dinner, but was so nervous she messed up the punchline and quickly fell silent again. Rose was practically holding Brett up as they walked together. Lewis made a point of talking with the albino monster, trying to draw him out about Shandrakor’s more recent history.

“We were abandoned here,” said the albino, looking straight ahead as he talked. “We were an embarrassment to an Empire that had rescued us but couldn’t cure us, and then couldn’t bear to look at us. We were left here to live or die; they didn’t care which. Perhaps they were counting on the native monsters to finish us off, when they didn’t have the guts to do it themselves. But we survived. The native creatures were no match for us. We were smarter than they were, even if we weren’t all that we used to be. We understood the value of working together, of setting traps and ambushes. It occupied us; gave us something to do. It wasn’t long before we dominated the native creatures, and began interbreeding with them. Don’t look so shocked, Deathstalker. We have human thoughts, but inhuman appetites and instincts. That is part of our torture. It has been hard to hang on to our humanity down the years . . . to our memories, and our souls.

“At first, many of us were uncertain whether we even wished to survive; that perhaps the only comfort left to us was to be found in death. Some defied their instincts, to sit quietly and starve themselves to death. But then Shub intervened. They sent emissaries, the steel robots. Many of us destroyed the robots on sight, remembering Shub only as the enemies of Humanity, and our tormentors. But they persisted, and finally we listened to what they had to say. It took us a long time to really believe they had changed and seriously wished to make amends, even if they couldn’t undo what they had done to us. They gave us their creed, their own new belief, that
All that lives is holy.
Even monsters like us. And they gave us a prophecy, that someday a Deathstalker would come to us, and that would be the beginning of the end of our suffering. A Deathstalker would set us free. That was long ago, and many times we have thought that Shub just told us that to give us hope, to keep us going . . . but here you are. Searching as Owen did, for the Last Standing of your ancestors. For the ancient castle wherein miracles are born.”

Lewis said nothing. He didn’t want to be a disappointment to the monsters. He had a strong feeling that might not be safe.

And finally they came to the city the monsters had made for themselves. Lewis and the others could smell it long before they could see it, but even the appalling stench did nothing to prepare them for the grim reality. The trees just fell away suddenly to reveal a massive clearing, carved raggedly out of the jungle by crude tools and brute force. And in that clearing, the city. Lewis and his people stopped and stared at it in disbelief, as they realized what it was. Brett made choking sounds. Jesamine shook her head slowly.

“No. This is just too much. Lewis, I can’t do this . . .”

“You can do it,” Lewis said firmly. “We all can. Just . . . tough it out, Jes. You’re stronger than you think. Try breathing through your mouth, see if that helps. And Brett, control yourself. We really don’t want to upset our hosts.”

“Oh, hell,” Brett said miserably. “Just look at it . . .”

The city was a nightmare, a necropolis, a city born out of death. A great sprawling place of rounded dwellings and blocky towers constructed entirely out of bone and meat and sinews. The fleshy parts had been roughly cured to make them last longer, but there were signs of slow decomposition and constant ongoing repair everywhere. Dead monsters hundreds of feet long had been cored out and turned into halls, and the towers were lattices of yellowing bones. The whole place stank of the charnel house; of blood and death and corruption only temporarily held at bay. Nothing normal or sane could have lived in such a city—only monsters. It grew larger and larger as Lewis and his party walked unsteadily towards it, stretching out before them, a dwelling place for the damned, a city of crimson and purple and festering yellows.

“We had nothing else to build with,” said the albino. “The trees are too hard to be worked, and what stone there is, is buried too deep for our crude tools to reach. The Empire left us nothing. So we made our city out of the remains of the fallen. It has grown much in two hundred years. Nothing lasts, of course. Everything decays eventually, and it all has to be replaced, over and over. But on a world like this, there’s never any shortage of raw materials.”

Lewis was stunned by the sheer size and scale of the city, by the great towers of bone and gut, and the long low buildings of discolored meat with dark veins still marbling the glistening surfaces, and his mind boggled at the thought of how many dead bodies must have gone into creating and maintaining the city down the long years. Jesamine clung tightly to his arm, staring fixedly straight ahead, murmuring quietly to herself a litany of prayers and expletives. Behind them, Lewis could hear Brett whimpering. The albino led the way through the main gate, formed from the distended skull of a creature so huge Lewis didn’t even want to think about it. Beyond lay an open square packed full of monsters, and as they saw Lewis, every one of them kneeled or bent the head to him. A low murmur moved among them.
Prophecy, prophecy . . .

“Stop that!” Lewis said sharply, and the sound cut off immediately. All kinds of eyes studied the Deathstalker as he stepped forwards to face them. He took a deep breath, and tried to tell himself he was doing the right thing. “Look, it isn’t fair to you, to give you false hope. Yes, I’m Lewis Deathstalker, but I’m here only because Jenny Psycho asked me . . .”

“Yes!” said the albino. “Jenny Psycho! We remember her. From Silo Nine, Wormboy Hell. She delivered us from that place. And now she sends you here, to deliver us.”

“But . . .” said Lewis.

“Save it,” Jesamine said quietly, sharply, just to him. “Whatever you say, they’ll find some way to make it match what they want to believe.”

A few of the more human-sized monsters crawled towards Lewis on all fours, grim and ugly shapes that looked like they’d been pieced together out of disparate leftover parts, and it was all Lewis could do not to retreat from them. They stopped a respectful distance away, and stared up at him with pleading eyes. One of them stretched out a trembling hand to him, speaking in a soft, disturbingly ordinary voice.