Deathstalker Return (72 page)

He relaxed his thoughts, and everyone dropped back onto the floor again. They all looked at him with varying amounts of awe and respect. They’d forgotten, in the presence of Owen Deathstalker, that Captain John Silence had been a legend too.

After that, no one else seemed to have anything to say, so they all just stood there and watched Owen float, waiting for something to happen.

He looks so . . . ordinary, just sleeping,
thought Lewis.
Even if he is doing it in midair. And we need him to be extraordinary. Nothing less will do, to stop Finn Durandal and the Terror. What if I’ve made a terrible mistake, and brought back only a man, not a legend?

Jesamine was also thinking about mistakes. For once, Brett had raised a genuinely important point, even if it was something no one really wanted to think about. Going into the Maze would change them; they’d all known that. But the possibility of becoming monsters, of becoming something utterly inhuman, like the Terror . . . there’d been nothing in the legends about that. What if they all started to
change,
to outgrow their merely human forms . . . might they all end up like the abominations in the Maze’s annex, or even like the poor distorted creatures they’d found on Shandrakor?

Jesamine hugged herself tightly, as though trying to hold herself together against as yet unfelt forces of change within her.
I don’t want to change. I don’t want to be a monster or a legend. I only went into the Maze because I couldn’t let Lewis go in alone. What if we both change, but in different ways? What if we become people we don’t even recognize anymore?

She turned suddenly to glare at Silence. “What the Maze has done to us; can it be undone? If we went back in again, could the Maze make us just human again? The way we used to be?”

“No,” said Silence, almost kindly. “Evolution is a one-way track. The butterfly cannot turn back into the caterpillar. But you mustn’t be frightened, Jesamine. I have lived with my powers for over two hundred years, and I like to think the old Captain Silence would still know me, and approve of me. It’s not all bad. Children find the ways of adults mysterious and incomprehensible, and fear to grow up. And then they do, and wonder what all the fuss was about.”

“One more strained metaphor from you, and I’ll nail you to the wall with an aria,” said Jesamine. “I get the point, all right?”

“The Owen I talked with back in Mistport seemed very human,” said Lewis, coming over to join them. “In every way that mattered. I liked him.”

“Lots of people did,” said Silence. “And even his enemies respected him.”

“The stories say much the same about Hazel d’Ark,” said Jesamine. “But what those two went through in the Maze still drove them apart, for all their legendary love.”

“But they never admitted their love for each other,” said Lewis.

“Idiots,” said Jesamine, and let Lewis hold her.

“To be fair,” said Silence, “there was a war on. We always thought there’d be time afterwards, to say all the things we wanted to say. And most of us were wrong. We all lost people we cared for, in the wars.”

Brett gave Rose a considering look. “Do you feel any . . . different, yet?” he said quietly. “Do you feel any powers coming on?”

“No,” said Rose. She didn’t look up from polishing her sword with a piece of rag. “But then, I wasn’t in the Maze for long. It didn’t want me. I could feel it inside my mind, trying to change all the things that make me
me.
But I wouldn’t give in. I could feel myself breaking up, being torn apart. The Maze was killing me.” She looked at Brett suddenly, and he almost jumped. It was never an easy thing to face Rose’s cold, considering gaze. “You saved my life by bringing me out, Brett. I’ll never forget that. Wherever you go, and whatever you decide to do, I’ll always be with you.”

“Wonderful,” Brett said heavily. “So, do you feel any more sane now?”

Rose thought about it for a while. “No, not particularly.”

“I don’t know why I don’t just shoot myself in the head now, and get it over with,” said Brett.

John Silence moved off a way to be on his own, and studied the sleeping Owen. For two hundred years, Silence had been the only Maze survivor in the Empire. (Tobias Moon had disappeared on Lachrymae Christi, and Carrion had become an Ashrai.) Now Owen was back from the dead, and Silence had to wonder if other ghosts from his past might return to haunt him. The dead should stay dead, and allow the living to get on with their lives. That was at least partly why he’d stopped being John Silence, and became the much less important Samuel Chevron. But now Owen was back, and there was a whole bunch of new Maze alumni. For all his encouraging words to Jesamine, Silence was still trying to decide whether that was a good thing or not. He felt . . . relieved, because it meant he didn’t have to shoulder the responsibility of being Humanity’s guardian alone anymore, but there was no denying Owen’s great discovery about the Terror had changed everything.
Brett was right,
he thought tiredly.
We all have monsters within us, and the kind of power the Maze bestows could find and feed the monster in anyone. Eventually.
(Though truth be told, he’d never much liked or trusted Hazel d’Ark, back in the day.)

The first batch of Maze survivors had changed
everything.
They overthrew an Empress, converted the AIs of Shub, and restored the Recreated. They made the Golden Age possible. But that was different people, in a different time. Silence approved of Lewis and, to an extent, Jesamine; but he didn’t like or trust Brett Random or Rose Constantine. They were both dangerous, and not in a good way. Silence scowled thoughtfully. It might be kinder for Humanity to kill them both now, while they still could be killed . . . but he knew he couldn’t do that. They had to have their chance, like Jack Random and Ruby Journey, who both came good in the end.

And there was always Lewis. When all else fails, trust a Deathstalker to do the right thing.