Requiem (46 page)

Two of the hounds moved off toward the metal men. One watched Winters.
Why have you brought us to this place?

Winters blinked at the words. “You can speak?”

Who are you? You have the smell of Abomination about you. And yet …
The voice did not finish.

“I am Winteria bat Mardic,” she said. “Who are you, and why are you pursuing this man?”

We are the Hounds of Shadrus, and we hunt as our master commanded.

Her eyes narrowed, and she watched them as they prowled a perimeter around them. “Shadrus is your master?”

The lead hound regarded her with curious eyes.
We hunt Abominations on his behalf in service to his master Lord Y’Zir. Who are you to challenge the hunt?

Abominations.
Winters had heard the term before; the regent and Ria had both called Neb the same. Looking at the man behind her, it was clear that they knew their work very well.

She wasn’t sure how she knew to do it. Perhaps it was the dream. Or perhaps it just seemed to make the most sense at the time. But Winters sheathed her knives, took a step forward and extended her hands before her. “I am the last heir of Shadrus,” she said. “And I have returned bearing his Final Dream. I am your master now, and I command you to cease your hunting.”

The man behind her gasped when the hounds, as one, sat and bowed their heads to her.

She turned to the man. “Where is Nebios ben Hebda?” she asked. “And how do you know who I am?”

The man smiled. “I almost didn’t without the mud and ash,” he said.

His voice was familiar, and the more she studied his face, the more familiar it became as well. Though now his hair was brown instead of gray. It didn’t seem possible unless maybe the dream had somehow done this. “Petronus?”

“Aye,” he said. He nodded to the tree. “And Neb is in the tower waiting for us to unseal him from it with your dream.”

She followed his nod, and for a moment, the tree was dwarfed by a massive bone-white structure. For a moment, the meadow of flowers was replaced by a clearing in the thick jungle. And in that same moment, a large scarred planet hung overhead to cast its shadow over all of them.

Then, only the field and its solitary tree and its multitude of witnesses remained. Isaak stepped forward, the Blood Guard moving beside him.

“Hold,” Winters shouted. When she did, she felt the word roll out away from her, carried by something more powerful than any voice magick. Everyone stopped and looked to her.

I do not know what to do.
But maybe she did not have to. She’d heard it called the dream that Shadrus drank. Which meant it was inside of her and inside of each who went before. A story written into her bones that had slowly been dreamed over generations to this final moment.

Winters raised her hands and gave herself to the dream, closing her eyes and hearing a distant murmur that grew on the air. When the wind moved over her, she opened her eyes and watched as it rushed out over the field. All turned to follow it as it closed in upon the tree, and when it reached the tree, it swirled around it once, twice, three times before moving up over its surface. As it moved, it pulled the seeds from the branches to form a white billowing snake that spun upward, over the tree, only to dive down and swirl once more three times around it again. Then, it engulfed the tree, and there was a loud cracking sound as the writhing mass of seeds exploded over the tree and began to rain down slowly over the meadow.

Now the tree stood dead and black.

Yet a wave of euphoria washed over her, through her, leaving a profound sense of calm in its wake. There was something beautiful in what she’d seen, though she could find no meaning in it. She looked around at the others and saw a look upon their faces that she knew must now also be upon hers.

It is hope.

When the words took her, she fell, and as she fell so did every other soul who stood upon that field. And this time, though she knew the words she uttered were in the glossolalia of her dream life, she understood them fully, and she knew that everyone around her did as well. She climbed back to her feet and reached out a hand to point to the tree. “That which was closed is open,” she cried out. “That which was lost is returned.” Winters stretched herself up to her full height and raised her arms into the sky. “The Homeseeker is now Homefinder. I call the children of Shadrus forth to take back their place upon the moon and serve the temple of their forebears.”

Collective gasps and shouts rose up among the multitudes, and at first, Winters thought it was at her words. But then, she realized they were all looking down.

And there, where each seed had struck the waiting ground, the white sapling of a newly planted tree sprung up.

Weeping at the sight of it, Winteria awoke.

Petronus

Face wet with tears, Petronus forced himself to his feet, disoriented from the sudden, jarring return to the edge of the jungle. He was naked now, the silver robes burned fully away, and most of his wounds were healed.

He looked around.

The hounds regarded him in silence where they sat, and stretching out behind them, he saw the rolling, grassy plains that led to the base of the massive white tower that dominated his northern horizon, with his broken homeworld as a backdrop that dominated the sky around it. A wide canal moved north through the grasslands, though the water smelled wrong to him, and somewhere leagues behind, Rafe and the others followed. He checked his pouch, felt the silent crescent within it, and then turned at the sound of moving brush. The last of the mechoservitors broke through into the clearing, steam and smoke billowing from tears in its metal skin. One of its eyes was cracked and dark, its shutters twisted and ripped. They’d tried to hold the hounds back, but when Petronus had seen the first of the metal men fall, he’d pushed himself to run faster to draw the hounds off of them. The mechoservitor limped to him and stopped. Its mouth opened and closed, and a rasping, wheezing noise leaked out but formed no words Petronus could understand.

“You are damaged,” Petronus said.

The mechoservitor staggered closer, then placed its hands upon his upper arms. Its fingers began to press his skin, and it took him a moment to comprehend the words.
I am functional.

Barely, at best,
Petronus knew. He turned to the hounds. “Are you finished with us?”

They met his words with silence and he sighed, turning again to take in the tower. He wasn’t certain what to do with what he’d seen and heard, and he found himself wondering if Aver-Tal-Ka hadn’t made a mistake in choosing to give his life, his very essence, to prepare Petronus for something that, here in the moment, he could not begin to comprehend. And there were parts of it, like his arrival in the meadow of flowers and the multitude of ghosts that populated it that seemed hazy and dream-like to him. And there were other parts, like the rising wind and the whirling mass of seeds, the words Winters uttered and the saplings that rose up, that seemed very clear. As if they were seared into his memory.

He tested that hypothesis by repeating her words aloud, surprised that though he recalled the meaning of each, the actual words that he could recall perfectly were in the ecstatic utterance that Winters had spoken them in.

“I call the children of Shadrus forth to take back their place upon the moon,” Petronus said, “and serve the temple of their forebears.”

The mechoservitor’s single eye flashed as Petronus spoke, and when he finished, the metal hands sought his arms once more.
I do not understand,
it said.
My auditory capacity may be damaged.

Petronus squinted at the metal man. “They are the words that Winters said, in the dream.”

The fingers moved again.
I understood the words in the dream,
it said,
but I do not understand these.

Petronus turned to the hounds. “What about you? Did you understand what I was saying just now?”

They said nothing.

He furrowed his brow and looked back to the metal man. “But you understand everything else I’m saying? And you can recall the other details of the dream?”

The metal man nodded.

“That,” Petronus said, “would be a curious type of auditory damage.”

It may have occurred during her actual speech,
the metal man pressed into his skin.

“Curious.” A cool wind arose and reminded him of his nakedness. Petronus shivered and traced his fingers in the air. “Clothe me,” he said.

Mist lifted from the ground, and he felt it moving over his skin like liquid until his robes were restored. When he rubbed the hem of the sleeve between his thumb and forefinger, he felt resistance and knew that the blood of the earth would not let him push himself beyond what his body could handle. And he knew just as instinctively that the blood was in him now, working its way over his body to heal tissue and organs damaged in combat, mitigating his pain and hydrating him.
I am not ready to run,
he realized.

And so he set out for the tower at a brisk walk, the mechoservitor falling in beside him and the Hounds of Shadrus padding along behind. He walked while the light gradually faded into a twilight cast by his former home. Overhead, he saw the greens and blues of the Named Lands, his eye naturally pulled to Caldus Bay. He marveled at whatever magick or machine had given Winters’s dream enough range to reach him on the moon. By the looks of the crowd, she’d drawn in far more than just Petronus, and he found himself wondering just how many might’ve experienced her Final Dream along with him. And what impact would that have?

He himself had no idea what it meant, but just the experience of it alone was a profound moment. There was a singularity of purpose about that wind and a clarity in Winters’s proclamation perfectly punctuated by cascading seeds that took root and grew. There was deep longing and deeper satisfaction in it, as if something inside of him was completed by the act, and it altered his perceptions in a way that he wished Franci B’Yot were alive to study. He had experienced something larger than himself, something less cerebral than his so-called light. And yet, somehow he knew that even that which gave him this experience was a product of the same light, sparked in aeons past on Firsthome.

As he walked, he found himself whistling, and as he did, it rang out clear on the darkening night. He whistled the canticle that had for so long filled his mind and ears, a song he’d become intimately familiar with in the last year. He whistled it in time to their walk, and it became a cadence that they kept.

Lasthome was setting, and the sun was on the rise when he reached the base of the tower. When its new light fell upon the white surface, he saw shadows that he’d not noticed before. And when he stretched out his hands to touch them, he felt the symbols carved there.

They were more noticeable as the sun rose, and he traced a line of them with fingers and eye.

He walked at least a league with the rough surface passing beneath his outstretched hand before he stopped suddenly and took a step back.

Those symbols held meaning.

Temple,
he realized. One of the words that Winters had uttered.

He felt the other symbols around it, and as his fingers found them, those that comprised the individual letters began to take shape. Then, he continued on, pausing as other words and other symbols became familiar.

And at some point, as he walked, Petronus began to read and comprehend the story waiting for him there, weeping and laughing as he went.

Chapter

24

Vlad Li Tam

The air was heavy with smoke, and Vlad Li Tam inhaled the taste of his handiwork on the hot wind. His full complement of Knives surrounded him now, and Aedric stood at his right hand. They huddled close to him, hidden by the staff.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked over to Som Li Tam, who pushed a small stack of folded notes, bound together with twine, into his hand.

“I was asked to give you these,” his nephew said.

Vlad took the bundle and slid it into his robe. He knew what they were without looking at them, and it twisted in his stomach like a knife.
Their last words.

He looked up and around at these lost children of House Li Tam, and he made a point of meeting each one’s eyes. “Let us hope,” he said, “that no last words need sharing. I have further work for my Knives beyond tonight.” But even as he said it, he knew that tonight could not happen without losing more of his family, and it broke his heart in ways that it never had before.

He looked to Aedric. “Are you ready?”

The first captain nodded. “Aye.”

Vlad turned to Som Li Tam. “Okay. Go.”

Som and half of his Knives slipped to the edge of the alley, already shadows as their magicks took hold. They were on the run now for the Temple of the Daughters. He counted to thirty and then left the alley himself as the others magicked themselves and stayed near.

The courtyard was empty. Most of the available soldiers were fighting fires or policing the sick and those displaced by fire. And the elite Blood Guard were all now in the very place Vlad planned to go.

He drew in a deep breath and then moved for the gate. Each step ached now, but he willed the pain to fuel him and it obeyed.

And then the world exploded into light even as a vertigo seized him and drove him to his knees. His Knives fell, too, and when he rose, he was no longer in the courtyard.

He stood in a field with a multitude of others surrounding a tall and ancient tree gone white with seed. He saw Y’Zirite soldiers and Blood Guard gathered on the plain along with magisters and Daughters of Ahm. And farther out into the crowd, he saw the men and women and children of Y’Zir.

Vlad felt a jolt of power from the staff that moved up his arm and out into the rest of his body, finally leaving through his feet. He felt it trembling through the ground, and as it did, a wind rose.