A Quantum Mythology (16 page)

‘Somebody has knowledge they shouldn’t possess. And Benedict/Scab also predicted he’d go for Miss Negrinotti—’

‘No,’ the Monk said. ‘He guessed.’

‘Nevertheless, he guessed right. Which means he requires her skills for something.’

‘He got lucky, but it suggests he wants to steal something. Steal what? He already has the most valuable thing in Known Space.’

‘Or he wants to break in somewhere. But why bother?’ the
Templar
’s AI asked. ‘Pythia was a test run. He needs to find a way to profit from what he has without being destroyed, that will be difficult.’

‘So one of the Citadels? The Cathedral?’

‘As with Miss Negrinotti, the answer has to lie with what he knows. His past.’

The Monk sighed. ‘He’s on board, then?’ she asked.

‘Transferred from the poor
Lazerene
as she limped back towards the Cathedral. Still limbless, no neunonics, and I’m holding him in a secure airlock.’

‘Therapeutically, I need to kill him.’

The AI knew she didn’t mean it. She wasn’t that sort of person. But she had meant it before the sedative, when she’d been caught in a rage.

The door opened. In the constant light pollution, the diminutive figure with the tall hat sitting in the wicker bath chair cast a long shadow. The chair rolled forwards. Security had deprived him of his faceless automaton attendants. In front of him was a marble desk so large it looked like a piece of pre-Loss architecture. The tall man behind the desk was difficult to make out even with augmented eyes. The harsh glare from the large window, which looked out onto the core world’s crowded high orbit, turned everything into a silhouette.

The lizard ’faced an instruction to the bath chair and it stopped just in front of the desk. The door closed behind him like a tomb being sealed. He wasn’t sure – information on the man behind the desk had proved elusive – but the lizard had the feeling he was on the board.

‘I like your reputation,’ the human started. His voice was so deep that the lizard found himself becoming aroused by the vibrations. With a thought he rearranged biochemical stimuli so he didn’t embarrass himself. ‘Unlike many bounty killers, you are not simply a gunman. You know how investigate, how to track.’

‘I come from a clan of hunters.’

The tall human’s nod was slow, almost ponderous. ‘Can you find him?’

‘With the resources you’re offering me? I believe so.’

Mr Hat suddenly found himself in credit.

12

Ubh Blaosc

Hollow animal skulls looked upon her. The horse of winter held her down on the warm, moss-covered stone altar. She knew it had been a trick. The ritual sex, the joining with Fachtna, it was in preparation. They wanted her with child. That would make the sacrifice all the more powerful. One life, some of it spent, and a new life, full of potential.

She tried to struggle but the frail-looking hand was surprisingly strong. Words were spoken from behind bone in a language she almost understood and she froze, unable to move. Then she really started to panic. There was another robed figure wearing an animal skull standing over her. Britha was sure this one was a woman under the bone. She moved a wand of ash over Britha’s naked body, chanting some kind of invocation as she did so. Britha tried to shout at her but found she had no voice.

The horse of winter was smearing some kind of ointment onto her skin. It was disappearing as it touched her, almost as if it was being sucked through into her body.

The female animal skull held up the wand. Britha was sure she saw some kind of glow from within the bone mask. The horse of winter was looking at the female animal skull, who nodded. Britha heard herself scream as blackness engulfed her.

Her own cries woke her as she sat bolt upright on the cot, touching her stomach. Nausea overwhelmed her. She scrambled out from between the furs and grabbed for a bronze bowl close to the smouldering fire pit. She just managed to get hold of it before she started to throw up. There were muttered complaints from some of the others trying to sleep in Fachtna’s hall.

Britha sat down, feeling miserable, her buttocks on the warm stone floor, the bowl of vomit cradled in her lap, and looked back into the cot she now shared with Fachtna. He hadn’t woken. He slept soundly. Peaceful. Beautiful. It had been so easy. He was not the Fachtna she had known back in her own world. This one was gentle, softly spoken, strong but not boorish, capable but not arrogant. After she had gone with him to the grove, after they had lain together on the stone altar, it had been so easy to keep doing that and time had passed. He was well made, and not unskilled as a lover.

Though no rites had been performed, she lived as a royal lady. She wanted for nothing. She did not work her magics any more. She was not required for childbirth, nor sickness, nor animal husbandry.

She was not herself and she knew it. There was so little strength left in her. People didn’t respect or fear her, and they didn’t seek out her wisdom. She didn’t inflict her will on them, not even when she knew herself to be right.

She remembered the spear speaking to her, the demon in wood and iron urging her towards blood, to make wounds in others. She remembered the sickening feeling, the violation, of Crom Dhubh whispering to her inside her head. The agony of the crystal in her mind. The connection to the Muileartach. That had not been her, either. There had been so many conflicts inside her. Voices foreign to her flesh. When had she last been herself? Had she been herself with Cliodna? Had the selkie done something to her? If she could not recall when she had last been herself, what difference did it make? Let Fachtna provide for her. Make the hard decisions. Shoulder the burdens. Though in this land of plenty, her lover’s responsibilities appeared light indeed. The people were healthy and strong, as were the animals, and the crops abundant.

Except she remembered what Fachtna told her when she first arrived: ‘
I went to war. The
drui
put certain geasa on me. They change us. As warriors we have to behave a certain way.
’ Perhaps it had been a long time since she was last herself, but she didn’t recall being the soft and compliant creature she had become. All the knowledge she had learned about the fair folk told her that you should not eat of their food, or drink of their drink. She had done both. Had they glamoured her? Geased her? Changed the way she thought?

Yes, this was comfortable, easy. Yes, it had been a hard time before she was reborn in the cauldron, but she did not like the way that her oaths, her duties to the Cirig, her people, felt so distant. As if that life had happened to another person. As if the memory was wrapped in heavy fog.

Nausea surged through her again. She drooled and spat vomit into the bowl.

Fachtna was awake when she finally climbed back into the pallet they shared. He didn’t say anything to her, just wrapped his long, powerful arms around her and held her. Strong, calloused fingers found just the right points on her back to rub and press to ease her discomfort. He kissed her hair.

And Fachtna was nearly perfect. Accepting him was easiest of all. Except he wasn’t Cliodna. Except he wasn’t Bress.

Maybe this is happiness
, she thought,
and I just can’t accept it.
She felt Fachtna touch her stomach.
Of course I would end up with child
, Britha thought,
the
dryw
lie for the good of their people.
She knew this because she had done it all the time.
Back when I was a ban draoi.
Distantly she wondered when she had stopped being one.

The chariot was sleek and fast. Its armoured skin looked like handsomely carved wood inlaid with semi-precious and precious metals. Not too ostentatious, just enough to let you know that the warrior who rode in it was someone of rank and means.

Teardrop shaded his eyes from the sun to watch it land. There was nothing difficult about the manoeuvre but it was obvious that the charioteer knew what he was doing. Part of the larger rear section – the weapon’s cupola – split open and Fachtna stepped out onto the plain. He walked to the arrowhead-shaped forward compartment and spoke a few words to Adarc, his charioteer. He was dressed in thin woollen trews and a light shirt, his skin already darkening. The Forge burned fierce, hot and close above them. They were beyond the shade of Lug here. Teardrop was more bemused than insulted that his friend still wore a sword and dagger at his hip. No torc, though, he noted. His position notwithstanding, the metal got hot in this climate.

Fachtna walked through the haze and dust towards the Croatan. He smiled and held out his hand. They grasped forearm to forearm, and Teardrop pulled the grinning Gael to him as they hugged. Stepping back, Fachtna looked down at Teardrop’s lean, hard body. The other man was stripped to the waist, wearing only buckskin leggings and calf-length moccasins. His long, dark hair was tied back in a simple braid.

‘You’re looking good,’ Fachtna said. There was little or no fat on Teardrop’s lean frame. ‘The warrior’s path must agree with you.’ For a moment, a shadow appeared to cross Teardrop’s face.

‘It’s a simpler path to walk. It must be if one as foolish as you can excel at it.’

Fachtna laughed, shaking his head. ‘Sword, spear – I will meet you with whatever weapon you wish.’

‘Wit?’

‘And already I see where this conversation is going.’

Teardrop laughed as well then and turned, leading Fachtna towards what appeared to be a large crater in the plain. There were a number of Croatan warriors around the crater, and more further afield on the fast ponies they bred specifically for their warriors. Fachtna knew there would be many more he could not see, and that the Croatans’ medicine people would have also spun many protective wards around the site.

‘And how is your mortal girl?’ Teardrop asked. The humour had gone.

‘Don’t call her that,’ Fachtna said quietly. ‘You should visit. She remembers you.’

Teardrop was already shaking his head. ‘She does not remember me. Never me. Laughs told me what that Teardrop was like—’

‘He was in pain. He was going to die.’

‘This’ – Teardrop pointed at the crater – ‘this is a better way.’

‘We didn’t know where and when to find Bress,’ Fachtna said. Teardrop nodded, looking grim. ‘He lives yet.’

‘That can’t be our problem any more. We’ve given enough.’

‘We didn’t give anything.’

Teardrop stopped walking and looked at Fachtna. ‘What?’

‘What we’re doing, it’s wrong,’ the Gael said.

‘Providing for her in a place of plenty. Where she can always be healthy, never has to worry about her next meal, about being attacked. I’m not sure we’re quite the monsters you want us to be. If she so chooses, she can stay here, live for ever.’

‘We’re manipulating her.
I’m
manipulating her.’

Teardrop narrowed his eyes, studying the Gael for a moment. ‘We need what she has. These bridges, these trods use too much power. Each use shortens the life of the Forge. If we want to leave, to be able to travel, to see what is beyond this shell—’

‘To take the war to the Naga?’ Fachtna asked.

This time Teardrop looked irritated. ‘To defend ourselves – or are you going to tell me you would not do that?’

‘I’m no coward.’

‘You fall in love with every mortal you meet, you always have—’

‘Three women! Three!’

‘You like them because their lives are fleeting, and to you that makes them more vibrant, more alive. Much more so than our staid existence, but we are fighting a war—’

‘Very slowly.’

‘And she is only one person. We are not going to harm her, but we must harvest the gifts she was given by the—’

‘Muileartach.’

‘The Seeder.’

‘She is carrying our child, and what we are is built on a lie.’

Teardrop put his arm around Fachtna’s shoulders. ‘You are a romantic. Marry this woman. Have children. Stepping in baby shit will soon drive thoughts of romance from you,’ the Croatan told him. Fachtna stopped dead. Teardrop sighed. ‘You really like this one?’ Fachtna said nothing. ‘Then learn to live with the lie. Anything else will lead to misery.’

Fachtna turned and walked away. Teardrop watched him go. It was all a lie. They changed so much, in their bodies, in their heads. Who knew what was real, and what was put there by the
drui
, by the medicine societies?

Teardrop glanced up at the Forge. He could see the pipes trailing down from the sun in the distance, carrying the raw materials they needed to survive, to create, to build, all harvested from the sun. He muttered something that was half a prayer, half a working, to the gods who made this place, whose magic had brought them here. Then he followed Fachtna to the edge of the enormous crater.

The Gael was looking down at the hemispherical scar in the earth. The rock looked raw, and ill-used where it had been removed. Fachtna knew that none of the quarried rock would go to waste, but it still looked ugly to him, a wound.

He concentrated and the distant lowest point of the crater came into focus. He could see the simple circle of standing stones and just about make out the pictograms on the rock. Painted members of one of the Croatan’s medicine societies danced among them, chanting, instructing the stones to their purpose. In the centre of the stones was a large, egg-shaped dolmen.

‘What did they make it from in the end?’ Fachtna asked.

‘Quartz,’ Teardrop told him. Fachtna nodded. The hard rock would have been made harder still.

‘And this will work?’ Fachtna asked. Teardrop shrugged. ‘A lot of resources wasted if it doesn’t.’ Fachtna glanced up at the Forge again.

‘The auguries were favourable.’

Fachtna rolled his eyes. The medicine people climbed into a large chariot. It lifted off silently and circled lazily around the stones before it started to rise. Teardrop turned away and let out a loud warbling cry. It was answered across the plain as the Croatan warriors warned each other to be ready.

The ground beneath them shook.

The water was freezing, but Britha had finally warmed up after swimming hard. The crystal-blue water in the cliff-lined fjord was little like the grey northern sea of her home. She’d still had to force Cliodna from her mind.

She reached the rocks just outside Fachtna’s village. The dress was where she had left it. It was a warm day, though, so she lay out on the rock, basking in the sun, her hand unconsciously touching her stomach. She was growing more used to the idea of motherhood.

Suddenly it became darker. Britha sat up and looked at the Forge, expecting to see clouds, or even one of Lug’s wings stretching across its surface for some reason, despite the hour. Instead her breath caught in her throat as she watched the Forge flicker.

She felt pain in her hand. Something hot and warm. She looked down and saw blood where her nails had pierced the skin of her palm. She stared at the blood. Let it drip down onto the rock and into the water.

The ground stopped shaking as light shone through the pictographic symbols on the stones in the circle. Suddenly there was a pool of black water among the stones. It was gone so quickly that Fachtna knew he had only seen it because of the Lloigor magics the
drui
granted the warrior caste. Then a nearly perfect pillar of water shot miles into the sky as if forced through a hole at tremendous pressure.

‘Something’s just occurred to me,’ Teardrop said.

‘We’re standing too close, aren’t we?’ Fachtna said as the column became spray miles above them and started to collapse. Teardrop had already turned and was running for all he was worth. Fachtna followed.

The medicine society had carefully calculated the amount of water that would be displaced and the size of crater needed to contain it. Teardrop and Fachtna, however, had failed to respect the violence of the water’s re-entry into the crater.

They had one last moment to gasp at air before the wave hit them both as it spread out across the plain. The force of the water tore them off their feet and then slammed them to the ground, through trees and against any rocks that had somehow remained anchored to the earth.

Fachtna’s entire body felt like a very tender and painful bruise. He cried out when he felt bones grind as they knitted together. He gasped for breath and ended up with a mouthful of funny-tasting water. Instinctively he tried to thrash around but more pain shot through his body. Finally he worked out that all he had to do was push his head up. He broke the surface of the water and was able to breathe again. He felt the Forge’s heat on his skin.