The Dinosaur Knights (62 page)

“You heartless monster,” he said. Then he burst into tears.

How long he sobbed on his knees with his face cradled in his hands, Karyl couldn't tell. When he looked up, spent at last, she stood over him, smiling gently down.

“I wish I could take you in my arms,” she said, extending a hand above his head.

“What's changed now?” he demanded. He swiped at the hand, forgetting his would go right through. It did. “Why didn't you feel that way when I was naked and desperate at the Hassling? Why haven't you—why haven't you helped any of us? Why have you watched us suffer and die for centuries? Cheap amusement?”

“No.” She knelt by his side. “Now get up and into a chair, at least.”

“Why should I?” he said, knowing it was petulant.

She laughed like gentle rain. “I'll tell you things,” she said. “That's what you really want.”

Painfully he climbed up to fall into a camp stool. He had cracked ribs, he knew; those had their way of reminding you they were there. The Emperor had had his personal physicians tend to Karyl, over Karyl's objections that there were hundreds with real injuries awaiting care. The doctors had anointed his rib cage with pain-reducing salves, and wrapped him tightly with bandages. They had also offered him herbal decoctions to take the edge of the still not-inconsiderable pain he experienced whenever he found himself having to do something like breathe. These he declined. He didn't want to dull his wits or reflexes any more than fatigue had done already. He knew that deadly danger was always near on Paradise. And pain he'd learned to live with.

Otherwise his bones, miraculously, seemed intact. If there was a square centimeter of him that wasn't bruised to the bone, though, it wasn't making its presence known.

“You have me at your mercy, then,” he said. “I've nothing left to fight you with.”

She laughed again, louder this time. “This from the man who defeated Raguel single-handedly?”

“I didn't; that was my Shiraa.”

He was so exhausted that even his joy at being reunited with his oldest friend felt muffled. His good girl herself lay gorged and asleep in an especially stout pen south between the battlefield and the nearby town of Canterville. She'd been so worn out that a mere dozen handlers had been able to restrain her when she went snarling and snapping at Snowflake. Who was himself so tired he could barely lift his head to blink a ruby eye at her.

“You fought him. Hand to hand, and
made
it a fight. No other man in the whole history of this world has done so. Some especially brave or rash souls have tried. They died instantly. Believe me: I know.”

He waved wearily at her. “As you say. You have things to tell me, you say. But I'll bet you're not going to tell me what I really want to know.”

“What?” she asked. “Why you're still alive, you mean? Where you spent those months between the time you fell from the cliff above the Eye with your life's-blood bursting out of your severed left arm and a live horror clutched to your breast like a child's doll, to when you found yourself tramping a nosehorn wagon track in Sansamour? Or do you mean, why you humans exist on this world? Why, indeed, the world exists?”

“Yes.”

“You're right. I won't tell you that.”

He blinked. She consistently managed to surprise him. He didn't like that.

“Then what?”

“I can tell you that your fervent and frequently expressed disbelief in the Creators is mistaken. The Creators are real, the stories of Creation true. Substantially.”

He held up his left hand, flexed filthy fingers. “So much I surmised,” he said. “And something about facing a Grey Angel in single combat tended to dispel any last lingering doubts I had, I must admit. So, who are you?
What
are you? Will you tell me that, at least?”

“I am the Soul of the World,” she said. “Paradise is I. I am she. I was Created at the same time as the world, and observed the final shaping of it. Now I am its caretaker. The Creators' major-domo, as it were.”

“So why don't you just strike me down and finish the job your fellow-servitors the Angels failed to?”

She shook her head. “We are … separate. We were created for separate tasks.”

“Was it you who resurrected me?”

“No. I told you: I cannot directly intervene in human affairs. If you ask, can I make a rainstorm—yes. I can. If you ask, can I make it rain to help you—or to hinder you—no, I cannot. Healing you was the outermost limit of what I am allowed to do. And even that entailed fearful risks which you cannot be allowed to understand.

“The Creators … limited and bound me. The truth is they exerted far more effort ensuring that she—like the Grey Angels—should never become too powerful, than in making them powerful. And they were wise to do so.”

“Even in your case?”

“Especially mine,” she said sadly.

“Can you be killed, like Raguel?”

“I don't know. I suspect so. Angels die. But make no mistake: Raguel is far from dead. What your loyal and lovely friend destroyed in such a timely way was no more him than this illusion is me. His essence was safe, unreachably distant from the battlefield. He's merely … inconvenienced.”

“What's to keep him coming back to finish, then, even angrier than before?” Karyl asked in real alarm.

“He won't,” the World-Soul said. “The Seven Grey Angels have their own hierarchy, their own culture, their own conflicts, their own rivalries—politics, if you will. Having failed this time, Raguel will be a long while trying again. Even as you reckon.”

“But other Angels will?” asked Karyl, not hugely reassured.

“Rest assured they shall.”

He blew out a long breath. “You oppose them, though?”

“In this,” she said, “yes. They mean to wipe out humanity. I've come to love your kind, Karyl. And beyond that, I believe the Angels have come to misinterpret the Creators' desires.”

“Why don't the Creators set them straight?”

“The Eight have their own agendas, let's say.”

“So what do you want with me?”

“Remember that I told you, that day on the Hassling, that I thought I sensed something special about you? Some kind of destiny?”

His fingers clenched on the camp chair's arms. His overtaxed hands promptly knotted in cramps. He bent over, wincing, prying the fingers loose by sheer will.

“I doubted my perception then, I admit,” Aphrodite said. “You proved my doubts wrong. You possess unusual gifts, not least of survival. And so I have chosen you.”

“Chosen me for what?”

“My champion.”

“What does that mean?”

She smiled. “As with your other questions, that awaits you learning enough that you can understand the answer.”

She leaned toward him, pursing her lips as in a kiss. Where the phantom mouth touched his forehead, he felt a tingle.

“Wait!” he cried. He lunged for her.

His arms wrapped air. She vanished. He fell on his face.

He was still weeping broken-heartedly when servants came to ready him for the great thanksgiving feast.

*   *   *

Rob Korrigan—Sir Rob, now, Baron Rob If-You-Please—was drunk.

Not just drunk. Not tipsy. Not shitfaced. Gloriously, rousingly, thunderously drunk. As only a goblin-brew of fatigue poisons, the exhilaration of sheer unexpected survival, and liters of better booze than he'd ever dreamed existed could make him drunk.

And, well,
he thought,
I am shitfaced. That too
.

When a body sucked down such pelagic quantities of alcohol in many forms, particularly the Emp's own beer and ale (ambrosia!), there were certain regular and predictable consequences. And so Rob, cut loose after the great banquet broke up, was stumbling about the dark Imperial camp behind Le Boule in search of a place to pee.

Having found a tent grand enough to conceal him from wandering eyes, he took himself in hand. He was experiencing relief so pure and profound he was surprised he didn't just deflate like an air-filled strider bladder and fall flat down, when he heard voices close by. One voice, in particular, seemed familiar. If only of recent acquaintance.

It came through the tent wall, he realized. He noticed, then, as the release of pressure on his bladder allowed blood to flow to his brain again what he had failed to mark before. By the light of the rising Eris, the tent showed distinct broad stripes. Of red and gold.

Well, Rob lad, and isn't that you all over?
he told himself.
No sooner made a noble you are, than you go and piss behind the Emperor's very tent.

Or, to give the Truth more service than is your custom, piss
on
it
.

The voices murmured on. There was something about the second one, a dessicated rasp that reminded him of insect wings, which made him furrow his brow. It didn't sound right somehow.

That was when he spied the tear in the cloth.

It was a small hole. A mere slit, really. Probably from some random arrow. Strange to find one here; but he'd been told the fighting had swirled everywhere, there at the end. Battle raged clear to the vast supply-wagon fort even farther back down the Chausée Imperial toward the village.

Until Shiraa bit that devil Raguel in two. Neat as you please.

The Grey Angel's end, or ends, had left all of the Crusaders whose souls he'd controlled blinking in befuddlement. Some began to cry; others wandered, hopelessly confused. And others were simply blank, as if in reaching etherically into their heads the Grey Angel had broken something in there.

That was most by far of the Grey Angel horde. A minority, of course, consisted of those who had willingly taken up the Crusade. And partaken eagerly of its dark rewards.

Those had vanished over the horizon as quickly as they could, once Raguel fell. Exhausted as they were surprised, the victors let them go. Over coming weeks and months they would hunt the willing collaborators down. Years, if that was what it took. Rob thought he himself might ask permission to join the hunt. Although he doubted there'd be any shortage of applicants.

Ask Karyl's permission as well as his Emperorship's, he reminded himself. He might be a Barón Imperial now, but Nan Korrigan's boy had his priorities on right-way to. And lucky he was his dear friend and comrade was also his liege lord, all through the magic of Imperial decree.

Again the voices whispered to him. Again his gaze strayed toward that hole. That inviting little hole.

He finished, shook himself, stuffed himself back in place, drew his drawstrings tight. No good walking about the camp with Little Rob peeking out all uninvited; unworthy of his aristocratic dignity, that was.

So was eavesdropping, of course. Not to mention lèse-majesté at the very least.

But then
, Rob reasoned,
things happen for a purpose in this fine world the Creators have made. Haven't we all seen the same today?

And so that hole … plus Rob … plus those voices … well, surely it all added up to the Creators' manifest Will. Had to. There could be no denying.

And Rob, being a pious man—however temporarily and under the direct influence of recent frightening spiritual manifestations as well as truly epic quantities of drink—was never a lad to defy his Creators. Not openly. No indeed.

He took out his dirk and, slipping the tip into the little tear, improved it ever so slightly.

It might be that his hand was not altogether unused to such a task.

He got the hole large enough, he thought, to peep through without holding it open with his fingers and risking getting caught like a lummox. The words swam into focus, like little fishes from the murky bottom of a pond to clearer water near the surface.

“Please, Fray Jerónimo,” Rob heard, and it seemed Felipe halfway sobbed the words. “I know what you told me before. But I confess: I still have doubts. The most terrible, terrible doubts. Have I truly done the Creators' Will, by defying Their own appointed emissary?”

Rob peeked inside. At first he could make out little. He was peering into a rear corner of this back room, made into an alcove by a movable screen. The only light came filtered through the paper from a single oil lamp on the screen's far side. Felipe sat on the other side as well.

Ah
, Rob thought, trying to sharpen well-blurred vision,
so there you are, my mystery lad. Let's have a look at you, then
.

Every eye in the Empire, it seemed, had striven without success for just such a glimpse at the power who sat invisibly behind the Fangèd Throne. And now to Rob went the golden prize! He called that no less than his due.

Shadow resolved to shape.

By some sheer twist of luck, Rob managed not to shriek. Managed indeed to stumble away into the night without gibbering aloud, though terror threatened to dissolve his bones within him.

Because Fray Jerónimo, sitting in a chair in simple cowled brown monk's robes, was not a man.

He was, quite unmistakably, a Grey Angel.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The number of people who have helped make this book possible has only grown. I can do no more than hit the high points.

Thanks to my friends in the Albuquerque Science Fiction Society and at Archon in St. Louis for your love and support.

Thank you, again, to my fellow writers of Critical Mass, past and present, who helped me do this thing: Daniel Abraham, Yvonne Coats, Terry England, Ty Franck, Sally Gwylan, Ed Khmara, John Jos. Miller, Matt Reiten, Melinda Snodgrass, Jan Stirling, Steve Stirling, Lauren Teffeau, Emily Mah Tippetts, Ian Tregillis, Sarena Ulibarri, Sage Walker, and Walter Jon Williams.

Thank you to my agent, Kay McCauley; my editor, Claire Eddy, and her indefatigable assistant, Bess Cozby; and to Richard Anderson, for what Walter Jon Williams called “the greatest cover in the history of the Universe.” And to Irene Gallo for signing off on it.