Tyrant's Stars: Parts Three and Four (36 page)

I shall see you in the next world, if the fates allow.”

He looked straight ahead. Milky fog eddied, clouding his field of view. The master monitoring center lay in its depths.

The fog wasn’t really fog. It was the substance that filled the universe—the ether. It was said to be imprinted with records of the entire universe, spanning the past, present, and future. Even the science of the Nobility hadn’t been able to decipher those records, and history contained the names of only a few individuals who could read what was written there. They included Nostradamus, Abramelin, Paracelsus, and Swedenborg. The Sacred Ancestor was also on that list. One theory held that it was after reading the record one night that the Sacred Ancestor began his mysterious experiments. The “akashic record” was the general term given to the great ether that recorded all of creation.

After sacrificing the last of Callas’s life and now adding his own, what was Kima trying to read in the ether?

“Open the door to the vault,” he ordered.

Somewhere there was the creak of hinges that resembled a protracted scream. The milky whiteness crushed in around Kima. No matter how dense the super alloy used to contain it, the ether always seeped through it like some kind of ghostly matter.

“Was bringing him back to life the right thing to do? And what
is
he? I shall travel as far as my ability allows, Lord Valcua!” And then, after a pause, Kima added, “And Lord D!”

“Cold night, isn’t it?” the hoarse voice said.

Naturally the wind couldn’t find its way into this building, but the left hand seemed to know the weather anyway.

“They could change the temperature with one press of a button. I’ll never understand how the Nobility think.”

Being the living dead, vampires were generally unaffected by the surrounding climate, yet they seemed to prefer the same range of temperatures as ordinary people. In other words, they favored warmth over cold. That they nevertheless left outside temperatures the way they had always been could only be attributed to some odd complex involving the living.

“When that little girl wakes up, she’s gonna try and get to Valcua. She’s still under that brainwashing.” Catching a breath, the left hand continued, “That shock wave earlier—it was like one mountain banging into another. Leave it to a Noble medical facility to stand up to that.”

Though the massive shock wave of unknown origin had shattered the outer walls of the hospital and broken windows, everything had been repaired in five seconds’ time. The repair system was nearly flawless.

“That explosion of power could’ve come from Valcua, but the only ones who’d drive him to do something like that are Braujou and Miranda. Well, I guess there’s one other. Valcua was probably fighting
you.’’

“I wonder whether he won or lost,” D said as he peered into the darkness beyond the window.

“Oh, it’s not like you to get curious like that. Whichever it was, the smartest thing to do when Sue wakes up would be to get away from Valcua as fast as we can.”

After her treatment was finished, Sue had gone to sleep in one of the recovery rooms. Losing Seurat had come as a great shock to her.

Quickly stepping away from the window, D walked toward the door. He was in a large hall.

“Hey! Where are you—” the left hand started to ask, but then it suddenly said, “Is he here?”

D went into the center of the hall. Moonlight speared through the skylight, turning the darkness within as bright as day.

Opening the door from the front hall, the man in silver entered. Before the two faces of D, even the moonlight seemed to grow bashful.

The man slowly walked toward D. When he was fifteen feet away, his gait became unsteady. Falling forward hard, he made a thud that echoed through the hall.

“Don’t kill him! He might have information we—” the left hand blurted out. It had noticed that as D walked over to the fallen man, his right hand was going for his scabbard.

A cold and fierce will to kill crushed down on the figure on the floor. This young man wasn’t one to show mercy to a fallen foe.

The man suddenly lifted his face.

D halted.

It was neither Valcua’s nor D’s.

“D,” the man said, using both arms to lift his upper body from the floor.

“Well, I’ll be—” the left hand said before breaking off.

The world underwent a transformation. It was as if it had become a place for pious prayer.

“Do you remember me?” the man asked.

The unearthly air that gushed from every inch of D put his earlier will to kill to shame.

“You and I must—”

D kicked off the ground hard. Powerless to stop him, the man took a deadly blow from the Hunter.

“Remarkable,” the man said. “But that time still flows in a place beyond your reach. You should continue your journey, D.”

The casual manner in which the man got to his feet and walked away would’ve calmed the ire of rougher men.

“I’ve said it before, but you were my only success.”

As the figure strode past, D swung his sword at him once more, but the blade went right through his opponent as if he were made of water, and the man kept on walking without stopping.

“Knock it off,” the left hand told the Hunter.

The man staggered, but just the same he headed for the elevator in the hall.

“Enough with the attacks already,” the left hand said.

Sword still in hand, D followed the man as he walked away.

Once they’d boarded the elevator, the man commanded, “Down.”

About two seconds later the door opened. They were greeted by a space filled with objects reminiscent of purple crystals. The place was swimming in white light.

“This was my research facility,” the man said. “Not even Valcua knows this is here. We’re thirty miles underground—and not below the hospital.”

The purple objects did not take the shape of crystals. Like the boulders in the valley or the equipment in Valcua’s laboratory, they came in various geometric shapes.

Standing in the center of the room, the man raised his right hand.

The various shapes took on unstable forms and began spinning slowly. They produced no sound or even a breeze. However, D could sense that what might be described as an endless power blanketing the whole world had quietly been set in motion.

“A trillion—no, ten quadrillion joules... No, even more ... With that much power, you could create a whole person!” the left hand exclaimed, seeming elated. “It stopped . . . More than a hundred quadrillion. But what’s he trying to do that he’d need to store up that much juice?”

It was impossible for any living creature to contain such an enormous amount of energy. In fact, it would be impossible to store it in any form in this world. All of it must’ve been kept in another dimension or some other place outside real space.

Something like a pedestal rose from the floor by the man’s feet. On top of it was what appeared to be a purple lever.

Taking a step back, the man looked at D and said, “Pull it. That will be enough to drain all the power from Valcua’s domain.”

“Can I ask why?” D said softly. Though his eerie aura had dissipated, it went without saying he could call upon swordplay that would leave gods and demons paralyzed if the situation warranted it.

In the light, the man said, “Don’t you see? This territory doesn’t belong to Valcua. It’s mine. It, and the rest of the world. Valcua has taken his lust for power too far. Dispose of him, D.”

“To suit your purpose?”

At D’s remark, his left hand made a stunned expression. It also sounded like it was laughing.

“It wasn’t supposed to be this way. He needed to be reformed.” “So you sent him out among the stars—but that wasn’t the end of it?”

“I knew from the start that was a pointless endeavor. He crafted a chip from scratch to guide his ship home and harnessed the energy of the universe. And though I did what I could to prevent it, I still knew it would happen.”

“None of that concerns me.”

“There’s nothing in this universe that doesn’t concern everything,” the man told him in a solemn tone. “From the moment of our conception—nay, from long before any of us are bom, we are all bound together, be the bonds deep or shallow. When Valcua returned from space, D, you were fighting Braujou. Do you think that was mere coincidence?”

In the white light, the young man in black had a soft glow.

“All of that was in accordance with my will. That was how you and Valcua came to meet, D. That, too, was unavoidable. D, Valcua is your—”

Valcua is your
—

Just as he was making that bizarre proclamation, an astonished voice exclaimed,
“Oh!”
The voice didn’t come from within the room. It was a cry from another world—one that only D and this man could perceive.

Turning his face to the ceiling, the man said, “Hmm, he read the akashic record.”

“Valcua?” D murmured.

“Forget about that, D, and prepare to head back,” the man said, looking at the door. “First, move the lever, and then get in the elevator. Part of the akashic record’s vault has been destroyed.”

A foglike substance began to fill the light. It glittered like the myriad stars of the Milky Way.

“If the record leaks out, it could warp the very fabric of the universe. I must prevent that. Hurry, D!”

D gazed at the lever. All around him flowed the dazzling Milky Way.

“D!” the man was heard to say, his voice calling out from the glittering depths. It flew as if in accompaniment to the action of the blade in D’s right hand.

“What’s this?”

This slight indication of surprise was swallowed by the light.

The lever had broken in half, and the pedestal in which it was set had fallen to the floor after being bisected at an angle.

“Why?” the voice asked, drifting even further away. “You won’t accept anyone’s help in destroying Valcua? Or are you worried that the Dyalhis children would come to harm if this land were utterly destroyed? Very well. The laws of the universe are immutable. When the two of you meet, you can reach your own destiny. That lever would have taken away all the power I’d provided to this domain. You shall have to deal with both Valcua and me, D!”

Deciding that it was too late to go after the source of that voice, D headed for the door, the hem of his coat whipping out around him.