Chains of Loss (16 page)

“So, how was your welcome into the family?” 

“Good, sir.” She hefted the meal.  She jokingly thought of keeping it as a souvenir. 

“Just Mike, please.”

“Mike.  All right.”  And she was now on a first-name basis with the heir to the most influential house of Kaitopolis.

“How do you feel now, Lieutenant?”

“Just—Lydia, please.”

“Oh, that would hardly be proper.  You have rank.”  He took a bite from his own sandwich as Lydia frowned.

“Don’t you?”  He shook his head, still chewing.  “But…doesn’t House Keiths own the Corps?”

“Mmm-nnnn.”  He swallowed.  “House Keiths
employs
the Corps.  My father
established
the Corps.  But I never joined the Corps and thus hold no official rank.”  He took another bite as Lydia mulled it over.

“Huh.  I can’t imagine any member of the Corps refusing to follow any order you give.”

Michael nodded, swallowed, and said, “It’s from one of our old books.  One of the ones my father collected.  He actually found a book about leading people and fostering a city, and one of the big things it says is that the best thing you can have is for your people to love you.  He structured House Keiths by the tenets of the book.”

“But what if someone tries to take over the Corps?”

“I don’t hold rank, but Styx does.  He'll protect me.  Speaking of him, though, how much did he tell you of your mission?”

“Very little, sir-Mike.” 

“Well, you’re far enough into the puddle that there’s no point in keeping secrets about this project.  We have a guest coming to join us that I wanted to introduce first.  He’s…strange.”

“How so?”  She smiled.  “Like Kailyn?”

He shook his head, his face grave.  “No.  Kailyn’s fun.  This…person…is a defector from Talestri.”

“Is he an – a taerlae?”

“No.  Not human either.  Not a vampire or a rikari or anything else you’ve probably heard of.  How familiar are you with the Kormyssalar?”

She hesitated, then shook her head.  “Not even slightly.”

“It’s a very, very old record of taerlae history.  You know about Vhaes, right?”

“The rulers of Talestri.”

“The title, at least.  Well, the Kormyssalar is about the
first
Vhaes, back on the t
aerlae homeworld.  He was a wizard, the likes of which this world has never seen.  He established the city, became the first rikari, started a major war, and was eventually slain in battle by the
t
aerlae hero, Kormys – hence the name of the story.  Traditionally, all his successors have had his spirit advising them, access to his power, et cetera.  Effectively, none of them have done even a hundredth of what he did in his life.”

“You sound impressed.”

“Who wouldn’t be?  Kaitopolis is somewhere around four hundred years old.  My father arrived in this city at the age of sixteen, fresh from the loss of Redmere, with nothing but his talents to his name.  He survived Lord Kaitar’s death and helped establish a new system.  He spent his entire life building up this city, and it’s continuously on the edge of destruction.  Vhaes’ entire race turned against him before his death—not without cause, mind—and tried to destroy Talestri for millennia afterwards. 

“The city doesn’t just predate the Sundering, it does so by more than six thousand years.  Sure, it’s changed a lot – especially since human contact – but it’s
endured
.  I can only hope we can find conscionable methods by which Kaitopolis can do the same.”

Lydia nodded.  “We’ve avoided war with them – ”

“Kind of.”

“Sir?  I mean – ”  He waved it away.

“They made the first moves.  The latest Vhaes is a problem.  He came to power about ten years ago.  We don’t know what happened, but two years later, our spies gave a report that he was behaving differently.”

“How so?”

“I’m afraid the report was inconclusive.  They said he was different, they were going to investigate as subtly as possible, and that’s the last report.  For ten years, every spy that we’ve sent has gotten caught.  Every infiltrator that has encountered this Vhaes has been caught.  Immediately.  We’ve only gotten first-hand information on him from people who defected after their meeting, and those are
incredibly
rare.”

“Do we know how he’s catching our spies?”

“I can’t go into too much detail, of course; Styx would be most upset.  Anyway, there are two main possibilities; the first is that he’s got a
better
spy network than we do, and he’s managed to suborn someone on our side.  Generally speaking, this was what we thought likely; it’s just a part of espionage.”

“You thought.  You mean something else is more likely now?”

“Well, part of the original legend said that the First Vhaes couldn’t be deceived.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.  You’ve heard taerlae curse words, right?  Vhaeskolni?  It means the truth of Vhaes.  He also couldn’t lie.  Regardless, either a normal part of espionage was occurring or a four-thousand-years-dead myth held by another species had come back to life.  So.  Your move.”

Lydia took a breath as Lord Michael took another bite from his sandwich.  She still hadn’t started on hers. 

“This defector brought you proof, didn’t he?  What kind of proof?”

“Best kind.  Physical evidence.”  He gave her a crooked smile, crumbs on his lips.

“How – okay, what else is part of the myth?  What else was important about the First Vhaes?”

“He was a runemaster supreme.  You know how my father managed to teleport across the sea, right?”  She nodded.  That story had made the elder Lord Keiths into a living legend.  “Vhaes did better than that on a daily basis.  There’s half a dozen or so creatures that he’s famous for creating – things that nobody has made since.” 

Lydia sat up.  “You mean he can create Kharai?”

“Worse.  He was a necromancer.”

She relaxed a little.  Every member of the Corps was schooled in fighting zombies; they were hardly a threat.  “That doesn’t seem so dangerous.  Orcs do necromancy…and this was before the Sundering; he didn’t have titan bones to work with, did he?”

“Very good.  No, he didn’t, but that just means he’d be a lot scarier now, wouldn’t he?”

“Well, what did he make?”

“We're not sure.  The tales are vague.  But the names are descriptive.  Like the desolate.  Despite everything I've read, almost all I can tell you is that desolate were made by fusing living people with undead.”

Lydia shuddered.  But…  “How does that challenge seraphs?”

“It doesn’t.  And, we don’t have any proof that there’s any new desolate.  But the desolate were just the beginning.  After them came rikari – you know those, of course – and wretched, and some other things we can’t figure out.  But the worst ones were things called Nhori.  It translates into something really overblown; easier to just use the taerlae word.  He only made eight of them, but they were almost
more
feared than Vhaes himself.”

“What’s a Nhori, then?”

“That.”  He pointed behind her.  She whirled; a black-cloaked figure was standing – no, its feet weren’t touching the ground, it was
hovering
– next to the fireplace.  “Don’t worry.  He’s here by invitation.”  Lord Michael stood, pushed in his chair, and walked over to the figure.  “Lydia, I’d like you to meet Charon.  Charon, Lydia.  Charon is the reason we know that this Vhaes is a lot more like his progenitor than any of his predecessors were.”

The figure raised its head; its face was wrapped entirely in black linen, with no holes for eyes or mouth.  It extended a gloved hand.  A deep, resonant voice came from within.  “Charmed.”

Lydia really didn’t want to take its hand, but wasn’t going to balk in front of Lord Michael.  The glove was thick leather and felt like it was stuffed with cotton, but the hand inside gripped hers with significant strength.  “I – pleased – uh – ”

The deep voice sounded again.  “Same.”  The figure’s face had not moved; the linen, Lydia noted, actually bound the jaw shut. 

“What…are you?”

Michael stepped in.  “The details aren’t really important.  It suffices to say this: Charon here is very old.  Pre-Sundering old.  He was human back then; Vhaes turned him into something else, but didn’t take enough steps to guarantee his loyalty.  He decided he’d rather help us instead.”  The black-swathed head nodded.  “He doesn’t like to talk much; it’s kind of hard.  Instead, he’ll prefer to do this.” 

Lydia stared as a pad of paper lifted off of the desk and floated to the Nhori.  The pad stopped a short distance away from it, completely motionless in midair.  Charon hadn’t even twitched.

Lord Michael grinned.  “Creepy, isn’t it?”

“That…wasn’t sorcery.  Or…anything.  What
was
that?”

Sections of the paper blackened as letters formed. 
I do not know either.

Michael nodded.  “Don’t bother pressing.  He doesn’t know any more than we do about
how
he does what he does; what’s important is that he
can
do it – at will.  He demonstrated for me and Styx that he is capable of rapid flight, and that he can use that ability while moving.”

“Is he faster than a seraph?”

“We don’t know yet.  You’re the first one we’ve brought in to this section of the program.”

“God…he might be able to pull the feathers right off…”

“Worse.”

She winced.  “Wings?”

“Heart.” Lydia gasped. Lord Michael nodded sadly. “Styx assures me that he can pull a man’s heart out from at least five meters away. It took time, and the victim could fight it, but we don't know how to stop it yet.”

“But – you’re on our side, right?”  Lydia tried to force a smile at Charon.  “You’re on our side; we’re safe.  Right?”

The paper curled as if subject to intense heat. 

I am one of nearly three hundred. 

They know I am here.

***

Kailyn trudged down into the basement levels with some trepidation.  She didn’t know of anyone - other than the permanent residents - who
wasn’t
disturbed by the basements.  Her skin crawled; she knew the Hands were watching her as she made her way to Styx’s workplace.

He wasn’t there, but a Hand was waiting for her.  This one wore the customary black mask as if something other than a face was underneath it, and moved oddly, as if he had to plan each move before he made it.  He inclined his head towards Kailyn as she entered.

She hesitated.  If everything people said was true, speaking to a Hand was the same as telling Styx directly.

“It’s true,” she said.  “There are old scars on her back right where I was told to look.”

The careful Hand nodded, and she considered for a moment before asking.

“What does it mean?  Where did she get those scars?  They look like they’ve had years to heal, but the Kharai process should have wiped them away.  Why did you need to know about them?”

The Hand waited, as if considering, then beckoned her deeper into the tunnels.   She followed, thinking. 

It wasn’t that she feared the Hands, she decided.  As dangerous as they were, she knew she could take one, probably two of them at a time if they turned on her - not that that had ever happened; Styx kept a tight leash.  No, it was the things they did in these tunnels that would disturb anyone - things that she knew more of than most.  Styx said they only punished the guilty.  She knew of an entire sect that had started to pray nightly that he was right.

They entered a small, brightly-lit room.  Another Hand, this one with a half-mask that left his mouth exposed, was tending to a bloodied man who was tied to a chair.  A nearby table held a stack of ceramic tablets, a cage full of terrified rats, and a bin full of dead ones.

The Hand casually grabbed a rat from the cage and nicked it with a scalpel, then smeared the blood on one of the tablets, which Kailyn could see now were marked with a complex rune.  He then added a dab of the man’s blood and spoke a single word: “Join.”

The man twitched, then screamed, a hoarse, desperate and hopeless sound that was joined by a matching screech from the rat.  He struggled frantically, and began to babble.

“Everything.  Everything.  Told you!”

The Hand squeezed the rat and the man screamed.  “Tell us again, then.”

“Ask!  Ask!”

“What did you do to the Seraph?”  Kailyn suddenly had no pity for the man.  “At the end, I mean.”

“Finished her off.  Stabbed her in the back a buncha times.  I killed her and I’m sorry and I’ll tell you everything you want to know.  Everything you want to know!”

The Hand squeezed again, wringing a dying squeal and a brief crunch from the rat, which it then dropped in the bin.  The man spasmed and started whimpering as the Hand smiled a little more broadly than it should have been able to.

“You’ve told us everything you know.  We’ll be starting on what you don’t know soon enough.”  The smiling Hand nodded to the careful Hand, then escorted Kailyn out.  “We’ve learned most of what we can,” the Hand said, “But that was something we did not expect.  He gave more detailed descriptions of the injuries he inflicted when he was still a little more...coherent.  Our Seraph should be dead several times over, paralyzed, or at the very least comatose.  And yet, she walks, breathes, speaks, with only some faint scars to show for it.  She doesn’t have the power to heal herself, nor did she have any infusions to work with, so how is she still alive?”